Fic
Title: Borealis 29/73: 50 Frames Redux
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: ensemble
Warnings: Oh golly...implied slash I guess.
Summary: Wherein Maggie's phone gets an upgrade, Miles goes looking for Prowl, Sunny and Mikaela have a chat, Cliffjumper and Bee play freeway tag, Bluestreak intervenes at a press conference, Mikaela helps out, Arcee makes a couple of observations, and the Autobots get together for a special occasion. :DDD
~3400 words.
BOREALIS: 50 Frames Redux
I was the first one who saw him do it. It was an accident, I don’t think he meant to. He looked as surprised as I felt, that first second when my cell phone came alive and transformed and looked up at us quietly. Nothing like that psycho little Nokia of Glen’s back at Sector 7 ten years ago.
“Optimus?” I’d asked, embarrassed, because I’d done it again, left my cell up on the holo-table. I was heading for the ladder, thinking about how the table was huge to us, but looked too low to be a comfortable height for Optimus, and then how nothing in the whole embassy had been built to his scale, really. Except the repair and recharge tables, and those were adjustable. He didn’t even have a chair of his own.
“Here it is, Maggie,” he said, handing it down to me so I wouldn’t have to climb. It looked like a microchip between his fingers. Then blue energy crackled across his hand before I could take my cell from him, and there it was. Cute little beggar, clinging to Optimus’ fingertips.
“Oh dear,” said Prime.
“Hey, c’mere, little fella,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten Nokia-con, but this one was so adorable, wobbling on its four spindly legs, its wee hands clasped under its…well, chin I guess, great big blue optics swiveling from Prime to me and back again.
“A moment if you please, Maggie.” The new little bot scurried up Prime’s arm and across his chest, perching on one of his cheek guards. Optic-to-optic, silly as that looked at first. They were both very still for several minutes. Programming. That’s what the problem with the other Allspark-created human tech critters had been. They had no programming, no context to put the world into - in the middle of a battle, with the Allspark itself in danger. Of course they’d been crazy. The little keypad pieces on the new bot’s head fanned out and waved like a sea anemone.
“There you go.” Optimus extended his arm again - a bridge down to me. The little bot scampered and tumbled and flung itself into my hands, chirping and whirring happily, and then I realized it wasn’t just beepy electronic noises, it was speaking.
“Maggiemaggiemaggie!” it chirred, rubbing its head on my thumb. All right, I melted like a complete girl.
“Awwww! What’s your name, honey?” It was so adorable I didn’t even realize that I was probably out a cell phone, though Wheeljack could whip me up a new one, with all the special Autobot features.
“Chipchip!” it squeaked. And then it transformed. Back into my phone. “Taadaa!”
Glen was going to be so jealous.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“Hey, Red, where’s Prowl?” Miles could have walked up to the lookouts when he didn’t see Prowl there in the Security office, but it was easier to ask Red Alert.
Red turned to face Miles squarely and knelt, though his secondary optics remained on the mist screens. “Miles Lancaster, Prowl is in stasis.” He clicked in irritation, sensory fins flattening against his helm before fanning out again. Obviously no one had bothered to inform the young human of what had been, briefly, a substantial crisis and remained a grave concern regarding the tactician. Or perhaps Miles hadn’t read his email lately. Sometimes human modes of communication seemed terribly inefficient. Nevertheless, Miles’ admiration for Prowl was well known; it was unconscionable that no-one had told him.
“He’s…is he oka-I mean, is he going to be okay?”
“We don’t know yet. Ratchet is in the med-bay, reconstructing one of Ironhide’s knees. Again. If you are brave, you might ask him.” Red stood and resumed his habitual stance amid the swirling screens. Miles grinned.
“If I’m brave is right. Thanks, Red.” He fleetingly wondered if “reconstructing one of Ironhide’s knees” was a euphemism for something else, but decided Red wouldn’t have sent him down there if that was the case. He paused by the niche he’d hollowed out of the sandstone a few yards from the Security office doorway. Climbing the rough, narrow steps that lay against the wall, he placed a small vinyl figurine with the others.
Mr. Spock. Hellboy. Liz Sherman. Abe Sapien. Himura Kenshin. And now Miles had finally found a nicely articulated tachikoma model. He collected them because Prowl didn’t collect anything. There was nothing in the entire embassy that bespoke Prowl’s existence. He had no personal quarters, no belongings other than whatever was built into him. Miles couldn’t yet articulate why this bothered him. So he collected small oddments (like the aluminum “sheriff’s” badge from Miles’ gunslinger costume from the Halloween he was six) and action figures that reminded him of Prowl, and put them in the niche. It was high enough Prowl only had to stoop slightly to see its contents.
Once satisfied with the arrangement, he jumped down and jogged to the med-bay. The doors were open - a good sign. “Ratchet?” The bots were generally pretty adept at squishy-detection, but it was always a good idea to let Ratchet know you were incoming so he could close up anything radioactive or whatever.
“Oh no you don’t. Pull that stabilizer out of the way or I’ll do it for you - and let me finish this weld. All clear, Miles, just mind the old rust bucket here; he’s in a mood.”
“Who’re you calling old? Greetings, Miles. Picked a major yet?”
“Shut up, Ironhide,” Miles said, beaming. He climbed Mikaela’s gantry and sat on the edge, dangling his feet. “So what’s up with Prowl? Nobody tells me shit!”
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Ironhide sniffed.
“I was camping! Back to nature and all that.”
“For three weeks?” Ratchet lifted an orbital crest. “You’ve quit your job again, haven’t you.” He closed up Ironhide’s leg and slapped the weapons specialist’s helm. Ironhide snarled at him but heaved himself off the table and ambled out of the med-bay with a sketchy salute in Miles’ direction.
“Meh. It was getting too corporate. Come on, Ratchet, what happened to Prowl?”
Ratchet huffed and transformed his tools back into hands and forearms. He’d long since decided that the easiest way to cope with Miles was to consider him a Tower bot. Vanadium or Mercury, Ratchet couldn’t decide which. “Here, I’ll show you.” Extending a hand, which Miles climbed into, Ratchet brought him over to the stasis vaults. There were seven, including the three from Wheeljack’s ship. Ratchet hoped they wouldn’t need more than that at any one time. At a shortwave command, the pertinent hatch opened and the tray containing Prowl slid out.
Miles had never been the least bit squeamish, but seeing Prowl’s disassembled torso was disquieting. Ratchet briefly explained the events of the previous month. Sam and Mikaela had brought back an armload of gashapon and other goodies for Miles from Japan, and now that sudden and unplanned - for them - trip made sense. Miles squirmed and Ratchet allowed him to jump down onto the tray next to Prowl’s head.
The crimson sensory chevron looked razor-sharp, up close. Miles didn’t touch it. Prowl looked dead, felt dead, giving off no heat as the Autobots usually did. The only indication of life was the screen showing Prowl’s spark’s power output and several other parameters Miles didn’t understand. He hadn’t realized before how constantly the complicated parts of them moved. Seeing one so utterly still was unnatural.
“Damn,” Miles said softly, stroking the vertical plates of Prowl’s angular face.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Everyone spent time in the repair bay. It was no big deal. Avoiding minor injuries wasn’t even in their programming any more. You just waited until the doc was done and your brother was fixed. Or not. Sunstreaker wasn’t worried. It was just so boring without Sides around. He stood at the hangar door, watching the empty desert.
Mikaela rapped on a piece of armor on Sunstreaker’s leg. “Hey. You want to take a drive?”
Transforming where he stood, and Mikaela didn’t have to take even one step away, he opened the driver’s side door for her. “Hop in, sweetheart,” he said, his voice taking on a semblance of Harrison Ford’s.
They headed southwest, toward Nellis and Vegas, though maybe from there they’d tack farther south and east again to cruise around the borders of Lake Mead. It didn’t matter much to either of them. Sunstreaker wasn’t even in the mood to yank the local highway patrol’s chain. Having diplomatic immunity kind of took the fun out of it.
“You and your brother were in the same battalion as Prowl, right?”
“Yep.” Maybe he should have had the radio on, filled up the silence for the past hour. Then again, given recent events, the question wasn’t that far out of nowhere.
“So you’ve known him for a long time.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we knew him real well.”
“Oh.”
“We knew that his was the battle formation you wanted to be in when things were going to the Pit, ‘cause he’d always find some around-the-corner, weird-aft way to pull a win out of it. We knew that if you were going to land in punishment detail you wanted Prowl to be the officer in charge, even though he wasn’t, much, because he was fair and didn’t beat the slag out of people just for fun.” Prime had told them not to divulge some of the other things they knew about Prowl to the humans. This was Mikaela, though. Sunstreaker was tempted to tell her how they also knew it was far better to have Prowl as your executioner, when Sentinel handed down that kind of sentence. Because he was fast, and he’d shoot your CPU out first thing, so you never felt it when he cored you.
“I was just kind of wondering why he’s had a rough time, but you and Sides didn’t seem to have any trouble fitting in.”
“Oh, that’s easy. Sides and I are charming fellows who are loved and adored wherever we go. And we’re very good looking.”
“Uh huh.”
She was willing to let that be his answer, he could tell. She probably wasn’t expecting much else. Sunstreaker didn’t find humans particularly inscrutable. “Okay, the thing you got to understand about Prowl, though,” he said, enjoying how he surprised her, “is that he’s an officer. Him, Grimlock and Silverlance had to report directly to Sentinel, and then pass Sentinel’s orders down to the rest of us.”
“Short chain of command.”
“Compared to yours, yeah. We’re more like a militia. Started out that way, I guess. And then maybe for the first millennium or so there were more layers, but these days there ain’t enough of us for all that slag.”
“And Sentinel’s a psycho.”
“Well, whatever. Point is, me and Sides just did what we were told, and whatever else we could get away with. And sometimes slag we didn’t get away with. No pressure, see?”
“I guess. And you and Sideswipe are twins, so you’re always…you have each other, no matter what happens.”
“Yeah.” Being twins didn’t guarantee anything, but Sunstreaker hated confronting that particular truth. “Maybe that’s a thing, too. Prowl didn’t really have any friends. Swoop was his assigned interface partner, but that doesn’t always make you best buddies or anything.” He grinned to himself, but he already knew Mikaela wasn’t squickable regarding Cybertronian relationships. He hadn’t been trying to bait her. “Kept to himself a lot. Maybe that makes hard times worse. I don’t know.”
Mikaela nodded. “Being alone makes it a lot worse.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Cliffjumper, we should slow down. There are humans ahead.
Woohoo! Obstacle course! The little red Porsche 911 sped up, fishtailing at Bumblebee in a taunt. They had practically the entire western half of North America as their playground, and the long, deserted highways of Nevada alone were nice. But sometimes Bumblebee was such an automatic transmission Cliffjumper could scarcely believe they were the same forging.
Cliffjumper!
Oh, spare me, we’re not gonna hurt them. Primus, they’re so easy to dodge it’s almost not that fun, except there’re so many of ‘em. Come on, lead-aft!
Bumblebee considered refusing, but Cliffjumper would go ahead anyway and there was a chance Bee could herd the Porsche through the pack of human vehicles with fewer shenanigans if he rode Cliffjumper’s bumper hard enough. It’s not your reflexes I’m worried about. They tend to hit each other when startled…
Hey! Cliffjumper protested as Bee tapped him from behind. He poured on more speed, loving the way the rough road surface gripped his tires. But Bee stayed right on him. Is that all you got? What’s the matter, too used to squishy passengers?
Mind the traffic ahead, Bee pointed out calmly. There was no need to report to Prime. If there was a disturbance, local law enforcement’s bandwidth would alert Prowl and Red…no, just Red, Bee reminded himself. Prowl was in stasis. He let the anger churned up by that fuel his next push at Cliffjumper.
Fortunately it was a small group, commuters maybe from Boulder City heading home from Vegas. Cliffjumper dove in, weaving between two aging SUVs and a pickup. Maneuvering like that let Bumblebee, steady in the fast lane, get ahead.
Frag! Cliffjumper wriggled through another six cars, flashing his lights and bouncing the horn. The human drivers swerved within their lanes and braked, but none of them crashed. I cannot believe how non-fun you are!
Since cow-tipping is among your chief amusements, I am happy to disappoint you, Bee replied drily. Cliffjumper had pulled ahead again, so Bee slid up behind, nudging until they were clear of the humans. If you want real entertainment, come out to White Sands with Ironhide and I next time they need part of the range cleared. Driving donuts amid unexploded but primitive, mostly harmless shells - THAT was fun.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“If you Autobots weren’t here, they might just leave!” the reporter shouted. “Has anyone even asked these supposed ‘Decepticons’ what their side of the story is?”
It was an old argument. Older, in fact, than the civilization to which the reporter’s ancestors had belonged. Bluestreak pushed forward, unable to contain himself. “Please,” he begged them. “Please don’t ask us to leave! We thought the same thing on my world. We thought the Decepticons would leave us alone. They left no one alive, Mr. Raman. No one but me.” Prime unobtrusively put a hand on his back.
“Aren’t you from Cybertron?”
“Those who built me were from Cybertron, and of course my frame was taken to the Allspark to be kindled, but I have never lived there. I’m from the Praxian colony of Thulium IV.”
“You’re still a robot, like the rest of them.”
“Yes, but the B’dan weren’t robots, and the Ehr, and the Uuvaardii. Being organic doesn’t make them ignore you!”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Mikaela tumbled out of Bumblebee and sprinted into the hangar, veering right, into the med-bay, up a ramp and onto the mobile catwalk where her waldos hung, waiting for her.
There had not been such a thing as nurses, on Cybertron. It took a full vorn - nearly a century - to acquire the knowledge and experience required to become a Physician, and before the war they hadn’t needed many, comparatively speaking. Since then a cadre of field medics had been established out of necessity. They each received a massive download of basic medical knowledge, further files emphasizing the treatment of the most common kinds of injuries incurred in battle, plus the personal experience algorithms of whomever provided the download.
Mikaela understood that she simply would not live long enough to gain the knowledge to become a Cybertronian Physician or medic. But she refused to accept the idea that there wasn’t any way that she could help. So, Wheeljack, impressed with her tenacity, built her the waldos. She also had a radiation suit, appropriated from Sector 7, in case of spark chamber breaches. It wasn’t rated for the magnitude of fallout if the chamber in question was Prime’s. Ratchet wasn’t sure if this was just as well or not. Human physicians had long been forbidden to practice on family members, aware that their emotions might hinder them from making the best, most carefully considered decisions regarding treatment or prognosis.
Cybertronians, on the other servo, had never felt the need for such a restriction, and during the war you couldn’t possibly have held to it. What family meant to the bots was a far wider and fluid entity than what most Western humans meant.
Mikaela slid her arms into the harness - a lacy exoskeleton that read her arm and hand and finger movements more accurately than anything the humans had yet built, though many cyberneticists were happily closing that gap. A pair of robotic arms - approximately fifty percent smaller than Ratchet’s - unfolded from the ceiling. Ratchet didn’t spare them his usual bemused glance, right now he was glad of the help.
Prime was a lot of acreage to cover all by himself.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“He’s stirring,” Prime said.
Standing on the edge of the holo-table, Arcee saw him shiver and place a hand over his chest; and knew instantly what he was talking about. Who he was talking about.
“He’s more…aware… now than he has been. It’s so cold…”
“How long, do you think?” she asked, voice low. She. Hmph. She didn’t like that much, being lumped in with the big clumsy ones, just because the humans for the most part only had the two genders. Arcee was je - small, fast, focused. There weren’t many of her forging left because the Cons had learned early how dangerous they were. Ah well. The aes and zhes got called ‘he’ and that was just as ridiculous, if not more so. It didn’t matter, really.
“Soon. The humans are afraid.”
“They should have been more afraid, sooner,” Arcee grumbled.
“Perhaps. Fear makes them cruel. It does the same to us.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The curving red stone of the med-bay ceiling was the first thing he saw. Ratchet was at his side, but not leaning over; letting him come online quietly and assimilate his situation. According to his chronometer and Teletraan, he had only been in stasis for three months. That seemed highly unlikely, given the state of things when he’d been put under. How could they have forged a new spark chamber so quickly? The humans couldn’t have helped; they didn’t quite have the necessary level of metallurgy, nor were some of the required elements available on this planet in useful quantities.
Prowl reached out for connections, surprising himself. The Autobot cloud mind lit up as they felt him rejoin them. Many of them were on their way to the embassy now they knew he was online. Ratchet unlocked the doors, letting Prime in first, followed by Hound, Mirage, Tracks, Bluestreak and Smokescreen, who already happened to be there.
“How?” Prowl whispered.
Prime stroked his helm. “Sheffield Forgemasters in Britain were willing and able to rework some of their nuclear engineering facilities for us, once we had enough of the proper alloys.”
“And they were the high bidder for the tech rights,” Smokescreen commented, grinning. He managed most of the Autobots’ Earthly accounts. They were doing very well.
More bots flooded the room, quiet under Ratchet’s warning glare, but pressing close as Prowl sat up on the repair table. “Everyone donated slivers of alloy from their own chambers,” Ratchet explained. “A big chunk, in Prime’s case; scared the slag out of me when he did it, too.” The Allspark had facilitated the division and regenerated Prime’s chamber immediately. It was getting faster at that, and Ratchet still didn’t know what it portended. “It’s not the prettiest chamber I’ve ever installed, but it’s bigger than your old one, and since we reprogrammed your nanocells it should function perfectly.”
Prowl’s optics flickered, almost shorting out. Hound squeezed his hand and laughed. “Aw, Prowl, don’t crash! It was everyone’s idea. We all wanted to.”
“So,” Mirage said, insinuating himself between Hound and Prowl. “Who gets to help him test it under ‘field’ conditions?”
There was a clamor of “Me!” and “I will!” and “Me too!” and “Hey, we can share!” and “Autobot-pile on Prowl!” but Prime shook his finger at them.
“Ah ah ah,” said Prime. “DIBS!”
Table of Contents
.
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: ensemble
Warnings: Oh golly...implied slash I guess.
Summary: Wherein Maggie's phone gets an upgrade, Miles goes looking for Prowl, Sunny and Mikaela have a chat, Cliffjumper and Bee play freeway tag, Bluestreak intervenes at a press conference, Mikaela helps out, Arcee makes a couple of observations, and the Autobots get together for a special occasion. :DDD
~3400 words.
BOREALIS: 50 Frames Redux
I was the first one who saw him do it. It was an accident, I don’t think he meant to. He looked as surprised as I felt, that first second when my cell phone came alive and transformed and looked up at us quietly. Nothing like that psycho little Nokia of Glen’s back at Sector 7 ten years ago.
“Optimus?” I’d asked, embarrassed, because I’d done it again, left my cell up on the holo-table. I was heading for the ladder, thinking about how the table was huge to us, but looked too low to be a comfortable height for Optimus, and then how nothing in the whole embassy had been built to his scale, really. Except the repair and recharge tables, and those were adjustable. He didn’t even have a chair of his own.
“Here it is, Maggie,” he said, handing it down to me so I wouldn’t have to climb. It looked like a microchip between his fingers. Then blue energy crackled across his hand before I could take my cell from him, and there it was. Cute little beggar, clinging to Optimus’ fingertips.
“Oh dear,” said Prime.
“Hey, c’mere, little fella,” I said. I hadn’t forgotten Nokia-con, but this one was so adorable, wobbling on its four spindly legs, its wee hands clasped under its…well, chin I guess, great big blue optics swiveling from Prime to me and back again.
“A moment if you please, Maggie.” The new little bot scurried up Prime’s arm and across his chest, perching on one of his cheek guards. Optic-to-optic, silly as that looked at first. They were both very still for several minutes. Programming. That’s what the problem with the other Allspark-created human tech critters had been. They had no programming, no context to put the world into - in the middle of a battle, with the Allspark itself in danger. Of course they’d been crazy. The little keypad pieces on the new bot’s head fanned out and waved like a sea anemone.
“There you go.” Optimus extended his arm again - a bridge down to me. The little bot scampered and tumbled and flung itself into my hands, chirping and whirring happily, and then I realized it wasn’t just beepy electronic noises, it was speaking.
“Maggiemaggiemaggie!” it chirred, rubbing its head on my thumb. All right, I melted like a complete girl.
“Awwww! What’s your name, honey?” It was so adorable I didn’t even realize that I was probably out a cell phone, though Wheeljack could whip me up a new one, with all the special Autobot features.
“Chipchip!” it squeaked. And then it transformed. Back into my phone. “Taadaa!”
Glen was going to be so jealous.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“Hey, Red, where’s Prowl?” Miles could have walked up to the lookouts when he didn’t see Prowl there in the Security office, but it was easier to ask Red Alert.
Red turned to face Miles squarely and knelt, though his secondary optics remained on the mist screens. “Miles Lancaster, Prowl is in stasis.” He clicked in irritation, sensory fins flattening against his helm before fanning out again. Obviously no one had bothered to inform the young human of what had been, briefly, a substantial crisis and remained a grave concern regarding the tactician. Or perhaps Miles hadn’t read his email lately. Sometimes human modes of communication seemed terribly inefficient. Nevertheless, Miles’ admiration for Prowl was well known; it was unconscionable that no-one had told him.
“He’s…is he oka-I mean, is he going to be okay?”
“We don’t know yet. Ratchet is in the med-bay, reconstructing one of Ironhide’s knees. Again. If you are brave, you might ask him.” Red stood and resumed his habitual stance amid the swirling screens. Miles grinned.
“If I’m brave is right. Thanks, Red.” He fleetingly wondered if “reconstructing one of Ironhide’s knees” was a euphemism for something else, but decided Red wouldn’t have sent him down there if that was the case. He paused by the niche he’d hollowed out of the sandstone a few yards from the Security office doorway. Climbing the rough, narrow steps that lay against the wall, he placed a small vinyl figurine with the others.
Mr. Spock. Hellboy. Liz Sherman. Abe Sapien. Himura Kenshin. And now Miles had finally found a nicely articulated tachikoma model. He collected them because Prowl didn’t collect anything. There was nothing in the entire embassy that bespoke Prowl’s existence. He had no personal quarters, no belongings other than whatever was built into him. Miles couldn’t yet articulate why this bothered him. So he collected small oddments (like the aluminum “sheriff’s” badge from Miles’ gunslinger costume from the Halloween he was six) and action figures that reminded him of Prowl, and put them in the niche. It was high enough Prowl only had to stoop slightly to see its contents.
Once satisfied with the arrangement, he jumped down and jogged to the med-bay. The doors were open - a good sign. “Ratchet?” The bots were generally pretty adept at squishy-detection, but it was always a good idea to let Ratchet know you were incoming so he could close up anything radioactive or whatever.
“Oh no you don’t. Pull that stabilizer out of the way or I’ll do it for you - and let me finish this weld. All clear, Miles, just mind the old rust bucket here; he’s in a mood.”
“Who’re you calling old? Greetings, Miles. Picked a major yet?”
“Shut up, Ironhide,” Miles said, beaming. He climbed Mikaela’s gantry and sat on the edge, dangling his feet. “So what’s up with Prowl? Nobody tells me shit!”
“You didn’t answer your phone,” Ironhide sniffed.
“I was camping! Back to nature and all that.”
“For three weeks?” Ratchet lifted an orbital crest. “You’ve quit your job again, haven’t you.” He closed up Ironhide’s leg and slapped the weapons specialist’s helm. Ironhide snarled at him but heaved himself off the table and ambled out of the med-bay with a sketchy salute in Miles’ direction.
“Meh. It was getting too corporate. Come on, Ratchet, what happened to Prowl?”
Ratchet huffed and transformed his tools back into hands and forearms. He’d long since decided that the easiest way to cope with Miles was to consider him a Tower bot. Vanadium or Mercury, Ratchet couldn’t decide which. “Here, I’ll show you.” Extending a hand, which Miles climbed into, Ratchet brought him over to the stasis vaults. There were seven, including the three from Wheeljack’s ship. Ratchet hoped they wouldn’t need more than that at any one time. At a shortwave command, the pertinent hatch opened and the tray containing Prowl slid out.
Miles had never been the least bit squeamish, but seeing Prowl’s disassembled torso was disquieting. Ratchet briefly explained the events of the previous month. Sam and Mikaela had brought back an armload of gashapon and other goodies for Miles from Japan, and now that sudden and unplanned - for them - trip made sense. Miles squirmed and Ratchet allowed him to jump down onto the tray next to Prowl’s head.
The crimson sensory chevron looked razor-sharp, up close. Miles didn’t touch it. Prowl looked dead, felt dead, giving off no heat as the Autobots usually did. The only indication of life was the screen showing Prowl’s spark’s power output and several other parameters Miles didn’t understand. He hadn’t realized before how constantly the complicated parts of them moved. Seeing one so utterly still was unnatural.
“Damn,” Miles said softly, stroking the vertical plates of Prowl’s angular face.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Everyone spent time in the repair bay. It was no big deal. Avoiding minor injuries wasn’t even in their programming any more. You just waited until the doc was done and your brother was fixed. Or not. Sunstreaker wasn’t worried. It was just so boring without Sides around. He stood at the hangar door, watching the empty desert.
Mikaela rapped on a piece of armor on Sunstreaker’s leg. “Hey. You want to take a drive?”
Transforming where he stood, and Mikaela didn’t have to take even one step away, he opened the driver’s side door for her. “Hop in, sweetheart,” he said, his voice taking on a semblance of Harrison Ford’s.
They headed southwest, toward Nellis and Vegas, though maybe from there they’d tack farther south and east again to cruise around the borders of Lake Mead. It didn’t matter much to either of them. Sunstreaker wasn’t even in the mood to yank the local highway patrol’s chain. Having diplomatic immunity kind of took the fun out of it.
“You and your brother were in the same battalion as Prowl, right?”
“Yep.” Maybe he should have had the radio on, filled up the silence for the past hour. Then again, given recent events, the question wasn’t that far out of nowhere.
“So you’ve known him for a long time.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we knew him real well.”
“Oh.”
“We knew that his was the battle formation you wanted to be in when things were going to the Pit, ‘cause he’d always find some around-the-corner, weird-aft way to pull a win out of it. We knew that if you were going to land in punishment detail you wanted Prowl to be the officer in charge, even though he wasn’t, much, because he was fair and didn’t beat the slag out of people just for fun.” Prime had told them not to divulge some of the other things they knew about Prowl to the humans. This was Mikaela, though. Sunstreaker was tempted to tell her how they also knew it was far better to have Prowl as your executioner, when Sentinel handed down that kind of sentence. Because he was fast, and he’d shoot your CPU out first thing, so you never felt it when he cored you.
“I was just kind of wondering why he’s had a rough time, but you and Sides didn’t seem to have any trouble fitting in.”
“Oh, that’s easy. Sides and I are charming fellows who are loved and adored wherever we go. And we’re very good looking.”
“Uh huh.”
She was willing to let that be his answer, he could tell. She probably wasn’t expecting much else. Sunstreaker didn’t find humans particularly inscrutable. “Okay, the thing you got to understand about Prowl, though,” he said, enjoying how he surprised her, “is that he’s an officer. Him, Grimlock and Silverlance had to report directly to Sentinel, and then pass Sentinel’s orders down to the rest of us.”
“Short chain of command.”
“Compared to yours, yeah. We’re more like a militia. Started out that way, I guess. And then maybe for the first millennium or so there were more layers, but these days there ain’t enough of us for all that slag.”
“And Sentinel’s a psycho.”
“Well, whatever. Point is, me and Sides just did what we were told, and whatever else we could get away with. And sometimes slag we didn’t get away with. No pressure, see?”
“I guess. And you and Sideswipe are twins, so you’re always…you have each other, no matter what happens.”
“Yeah.” Being twins didn’t guarantee anything, but Sunstreaker hated confronting that particular truth. “Maybe that’s a thing, too. Prowl didn’t really have any friends. Swoop was his assigned interface partner, but that doesn’t always make you best buddies or anything.” He grinned to himself, but he already knew Mikaela wasn’t squickable regarding Cybertronian relationships. He hadn’t been trying to bait her. “Kept to himself a lot. Maybe that makes hard times worse. I don’t know.”
Mikaela nodded. “Being alone makes it a lot worse.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Cliffjumper, we should slow down. There are humans ahead.
Woohoo! Obstacle course! The little red Porsche 911 sped up, fishtailing at Bumblebee in a taunt. They had practically the entire western half of North America as their playground, and the long, deserted highways of Nevada alone were nice. But sometimes Bumblebee was such an automatic transmission Cliffjumper could scarcely believe they were the same forging.
Cliffjumper!
Oh, spare me, we’re not gonna hurt them. Primus, they’re so easy to dodge it’s almost not that fun, except there’re so many of ‘em. Come on, lead-aft!
Bumblebee considered refusing, but Cliffjumper would go ahead anyway and there was a chance Bee could herd the Porsche through the pack of human vehicles with fewer shenanigans if he rode Cliffjumper’s bumper hard enough. It’s not your reflexes I’m worried about. They tend to hit each other when startled…
Hey! Cliffjumper protested as Bee tapped him from behind. He poured on more speed, loving the way the rough road surface gripped his tires. But Bee stayed right on him. Is that all you got? What’s the matter, too used to squishy passengers?
Mind the traffic ahead, Bee pointed out calmly. There was no need to report to Prime. If there was a disturbance, local law enforcement’s bandwidth would alert Prowl and Red…no, just Red, Bee reminded himself. Prowl was in stasis. He let the anger churned up by that fuel his next push at Cliffjumper.
Fortunately it was a small group, commuters maybe from Boulder City heading home from Vegas. Cliffjumper dove in, weaving between two aging SUVs and a pickup. Maneuvering like that let Bumblebee, steady in the fast lane, get ahead.
Frag! Cliffjumper wriggled through another six cars, flashing his lights and bouncing the horn. The human drivers swerved within their lanes and braked, but none of them crashed. I cannot believe how non-fun you are!
Since cow-tipping is among your chief amusements, I am happy to disappoint you, Bee replied drily. Cliffjumper had pulled ahead again, so Bee slid up behind, nudging until they were clear of the humans. If you want real entertainment, come out to White Sands with Ironhide and I next time they need part of the range cleared. Driving donuts amid unexploded but primitive, mostly harmless shells - THAT was fun.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“If you Autobots weren’t here, they might just leave!” the reporter shouted. “Has anyone even asked these supposed ‘Decepticons’ what their side of the story is?”
It was an old argument. Older, in fact, than the civilization to which the reporter’s ancestors had belonged. Bluestreak pushed forward, unable to contain himself. “Please,” he begged them. “Please don’t ask us to leave! We thought the same thing on my world. We thought the Decepticons would leave us alone. They left no one alive, Mr. Raman. No one but me.” Prime unobtrusively put a hand on his back.
“Aren’t you from Cybertron?”
“Those who built me were from Cybertron, and of course my frame was taken to the Allspark to be kindled, but I have never lived there. I’m from the Praxian colony of Thulium IV.”
“You’re still a robot, like the rest of them.”
“Yes, but the B’dan weren’t robots, and the Ehr, and the Uuvaardii. Being organic doesn’t make them ignore you!”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Mikaela tumbled out of Bumblebee and sprinted into the hangar, veering right, into the med-bay, up a ramp and onto the mobile catwalk where her waldos hung, waiting for her.
There had not been such a thing as nurses, on Cybertron. It took a full vorn - nearly a century - to acquire the knowledge and experience required to become a Physician, and before the war they hadn’t needed many, comparatively speaking. Since then a cadre of field medics had been established out of necessity. They each received a massive download of basic medical knowledge, further files emphasizing the treatment of the most common kinds of injuries incurred in battle, plus the personal experience algorithms of whomever provided the download.
Mikaela understood that she simply would not live long enough to gain the knowledge to become a Cybertronian Physician or medic. But she refused to accept the idea that there wasn’t any way that she could help. So, Wheeljack, impressed with her tenacity, built her the waldos. She also had a radiation suit, appropriated from Sector 7, in case of spark chamber breaches. It wasn’t rated for the magnitude of fallout if the chamber in question was Prime’s. Ratchet wasn’t sure if this was just as well or not. Human physicians had long been forbidden to practice on family members, aware that their emotions might hinder them from making the best, most carefully considered decisions regarding treatment or prognosis.
Cybertronians, on the other servo, had never felt the need for such a restriction, and during the war you couldn’t possibly have held to it. What family meant to the bots was a far wider and fluid entity than what most Western humans meant.
Mikaela slid her arms into the harness - a lacy exoskeleton that read her arm and hand and finger movements more accurately than anything the humans had yet built, though many cyberneticists were happily closing that gap. A pair of robotic arms - approximately fifty percent smaller than Ratchet’s - unfolded from the ceiling. Ratchet didn’t spare them his usual bemused glance, right now he was glad of the help.
Prime was a lot of acreage to cover all by himself.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“He’s stirring,” Prime said.
Standing on the edge of the holo-table, Arcee saw him shiver and place a hand over his chest; and knew instantly what he was talking about. Who he was talking about.
“He’s more…aware… now than he has been. It’s so cold…”
“How long, do you think?” she asked, voice low. She. Hmph. She didn’t like that much, being lumped in with the big clumsy ones, just because the humans for the most part only had the two genders. Arcee was je - small, fast, focused. There weren’t many of her forging left because the Cons had learned early how dangerous they were. Ah well. The aes and zhes got called ‘he’ and that was just as ridiculous, if not more so. It didn’t matter, really.
“Soon. The humans are afraid.”
“They should have been more afraid, sooner,” Arcee grumbled.
“Perhaps. Fear makes them cruel. It does the same to us.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
The curving red stone of the med-bay ceiling was the first thing he saw. Ratchet was at his side, but not leaning over; letting him come online quietly and assimilate his situation. According to his chronometer and Teletraan, he had only been in stasis for three months. That seemed highly unlikely, given the state of things when he’d been put under. How could they have forged a new spark chamber so quickly? The humans couldn’t have helped; they didn’t quite have the necessary level of metallurgy, nor were some of the required elements available on this planet in useful quantities.
Prowl reached out for connections, surprising himself. The Autobot cloud mind lit up as they felt him rejoin them. Many of them were on their way to the embassy now they knew he was online. Ratchet unlocked the doors, letting Prime in first, followed by Hound, Mirage, Tracks, Bluestreak and Smokescreen, who already happened to be there.
“How?” Prowl whispered.
Prime stroked his helm. “Sheffield Forgemasters in Britain were willing and able to rework some of their nuclear engineering facilities for us, once we had enough of the proper alloys.”
“And they were the high bidder for the tech rights,” Smokescreen commented, grinning. He managed most of the Autobots’ Earthly accounts. They were doing very well.
More bots flooded the room, quiet under Ratchet’s warning glare, but pressing close as Prowl sat up on the repair table. “Everyone donated slivers of alloy from their own chambers,” Ratchet explained. “A big chunk, in Prime’s case; scared the slag out of me when he did it, too.” The Allspark had facilitated the division and regenerated Prime’s chamber immediately. It was getting faster at that, and Ratchet still didn’t know what it portended. “It’s not the prettiest chamber I’ve ever installed, but it’s bigger than your old one, and since we reprogrammed your nanocells it should function perfectly.”
Prowl’s optics flickered, almost shorting out. Hound squeezed his hand and laughed. “Aw, Prowl, don’t crash! It was everyone’s idea. We all wanted to.”
“So,” Mirage said, insinuating himself between Hound and Prowl. “Who gets to help him test it under ‘field’ conditions?”
There was a clamor of “Me!” and “I will!” and “Me too!” and “Hey, we can share!” and “Autobot-pile on Prowl!” but Prime shook his finger at them.
“Ah ah ah,” said Prime. “DIBS!”
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