Optimus Prime's unusual Charge

Settling in and clouded mind...

The children were dropped off at their respective houses, as it was getting late. June had gone out when Zucky was asleep, and did a few errands and grocery shopping for the coming week. Other than that, she bought a few non-perishable snacks, a toothbrush and toiletries.

Turns out, the base had a bathroom with a shower, so hygiene wasn't going to be an issue for Zucky.

Nurse Darby went to the drug store to buy a hairbrush, a few hair ties, a nail care kit (even though she had no idea how that was going to help with the dragon's enormous talons). Afterwards she bought a blanket, a new Bathroom towel, and even stopped by a thrift store to get some clothes and a Duffle bag for Zucky to store her stuff in.

June went back to base and dropped off the bag and went home directly after that.

Zucky was fine, Nurse Darby made sure she did a very thorough job on the wound before she left, so the bandages would last until the next morning.

I was still sleeping when the nurse stopped by, and only woke up a few hours later when I got hungry.

I yawned and rubbed her eyes. Trying to get up for a stretch, I almost fell over, due to my foot getting caught in the handle of the Duffle bag.

Fortunately, I reacted fairly quickly and caught myself on the crate next to the couch.

["Who left their bag here?"] I was going to move it out of the way to the side, until I noticed a note taped to the bag.

'Good evening, sleepyhead! :)

I was going to surprise you with this, but you were too exhausted still it seems.

I realised you probably didn't have any other possessions, besides the clothes on your body, so I went to get some essentials for you and some snacks to tide you over until breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Speaking of dinner, the container on the crate is yours. Bon Appetit!

Don't worry about anything inside this bag, consider it all yours!

See you tomorrow morning!

-June.'

["Wow, that's so nice of her!"] I thought. ["If they keep this up, I'll never be able to repay them for all the've done for me."]

Curious as I was, I carefully opened the bag and dug around in it to see what I was working with.

As soon as I saw the food, I could have sworn I heard a choir of angels in the distant skies.

I almost forgot why I woke up in the first place! There were a variety of snacks in there, including chips, trail mix, granola bars, dried fruit, nuts and crackers, but since I didn't want to wake up Ratchet, I went with the jerky.

["Hmmm... Never had Jerky before..."] I wasn't exactly familiar with the snack, but always wanted to at least try some.

I carefully opened the bag of jerky inside the duffle bag to muffle the crinkling plastic sound and tried a piece.

["Wow, that's salty!"] I hadn't had a salty snack in a long while, so I wasn't used to it anymore. Fortunately, there were bottles of water in the duffle bag, so that helped.

I continued looking through the bag to see what else there was as I ate, until I heard the 'wake up' sound I learned to associate with the bots coming from somewhere in the same room I was in.

I looked around, but couldn't see anyone, until I heard groaning coming from below the platform in front of me, but out of sight. Suddenly Ratchet transformed back into bot mode and I finally saw him emerge from his little spot at the foot of the platform.