Fic
Title: Borealis 72/90: Inflorescence - Part I
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): Pbots/Pbots, Metroplex, ensemble
Warnings: Gestalt smexings, voyeurism/exhibitionism, fluff
Summary: Wherein the Protectobots decide to merge, and Metroplex decants and settles into her new home.
Notes: Suggested listening for this chapter: Salvation For A Proud Nation by The Immediate; Baba Yetu, Sukla-Krsne (you can listen to all the songs on that album at that link - Sukla-Krsne is #11) and Kia Hora Te Marino by Christopher Tin.
~5300 words.
BOREALIS: Inflorescence - Part I
2036 - May
Do you think it would work? With the five of us?
We could give it a try. Do Vector's way, just maybe not bubble off a whole school like Perceptor does.
Oh definitely not. Last thing we need is a bunch of Grooves lolling about.
Or a dozen Hot Spots. No one would ever get any sleep.
Heeeey!
…
“Hi, Prime,” Groove called as they rolled and strolled into the embassy. We’re being salmon!
“Welcome home,” Prime murmured, leaning hard on Hot Spot as the gestalt held and surrounded him. We haven’t any waterfalls for you to leap, but I believe we do have several empty tanks.
Oh, Ratchet! First Aid tight-beamed. Prime is…!
I know. Ratchet came out to join the snuggle and reassure his apprentice. Prime’s fields were a wreck. Galvatron will have doubled the Decepticon numbers in five or six years at this rate. We can hope he’ll stop then. “How was Turkey?”
“Beautiful, aside from the parts flattened in the earthquake.” That’s…not making me feel better! “Groove was offered some keşkek and to be polite he ate it. Took me days to get it all out of his internals.”
“And meanwhile the chicken bits went bad,” Blades added over his shoulder as he stooped to hug Prowl. “We made him stay downwind.”
“I still think we could rig aux tanks for things like that,” Groove said. “People want us to share food with them; it’s an important cultural aspect. And Glyph agrees with me!”
“As long as you keep your denta retracted,” Smokescreen laughed as he came in with Bluestreak and Breakaway. Most Decepticons had taken to leaving their denta extended - one more thing the humans found frightening about them.
At least we can be reasonably certain Prime can’t die from this, Ratchet continued to First Aid.
Not helping! First Aid squeaked. He and the other Protectobots struggled to mask their reactions. They were genuinely happy to be back at the embassy, and excited about their purpose. It was best to focus on that. Aid burrowed into Bluestreak’s shoulder.
Going to make me a grandparent again, hm? Blue asked gently. Of Bluestreak’s handful of progeny, only Blurr had thus far kindled. A small, bright green mech named Hummer with Wheeljack, and Lightspeed with Prime. I’m glad. I worry about you. Going from disaster to disaster with so little rest. I’m sure it’s not good for your sparks. Whenever you send updates about what you’re doing, Mirage gets these little flares of moral outrage. He thinks it’s barbarous for a planet to casually and consistently murder its inhabitants. He understands it’s just how things are on a tectonically active world with a dynamic atmosphere, and that humans are fragile and they evolved here so they’re kind of used to it, but it bothers him anyway.
Aid laughed softly. One of these days he’d get Mirage alone in a corridor for that. Mmm. Blue. Last week we saved Meral Paşa, Erhan Yıldırım, Tulay Özdemir and twenty others; just in one block. We know all their names and met their families and we know what they do and a little bit about what they hope for. And we know these things about everyone we’ve helped for the past 18 years. When it gets too grim, yes, we erase the worst memories of mangled corpses. But we have this other knowledge, And that always outweighs the bad. Always. …Heheh. I am so your kid.
And Prime’s. Blue flicked a thought around the cloud mind and opened his chest a centimeter. Enough to let his corona wash through and mesh with First Aid’s. There was no rocking of waves, no swaying of tree branches or cradles or mothers’ hips in their evolutionary history, but the sharing of spark energies was a deep comfort they understood. Aid sighed and opened, too. The two stood quietly amid the laughing, jostling mass of their friends and brothers; not cabled, warming each other.
Kicking her feet off the table, Maggie sat up from her coffee break on the mezzanine with an alarmed squawk. She probably wouldn’t have spotted it from the ground-level computer nest, but up here she could see the faint reflection of sparklight. “Um. Guys?”
It’s okay, Hound broadcast on what had more or less become the human channel. Trailbreaker’s got a shield up. Hound always managed to return to the embassy when the Protectobots did. They were good mechs, and he was fond of them, but he wasn’t about to miss a chance to hang out with Groove. Beachcomber would be wandering down from Alberta tomorrow and the three of them plus Trailbreaker would find themselves a nice remote ravine and kick back in the sun and throw rocks at each other and tell lies until they couldn’t transmit for laughing.
“In that case,” Maggie said, leaning far out over the railing and making a small gimme motion with the fingers of one hand. “Who else is up for show and tell?”
“I will if you will!” Windcharger hooted. Cliffjumper bashed his shoulder and they held each other up, guffawing.
“I know,” Maggie said, rubbing her breastbone, feeling the lack not for the first time. “I can’t show you my soul.”
“That does not mean that it does not exist,” Prime said, turning toward her. By ones and threes, the gathered Autobots consulted themselves and each other and revealed small glimpses of their sparks. The mezzanine grew crowded as the human embassy staff raced up the stairways to see, starlight in the oceans of their eyes.
Trailbreaker added another layer of shielding as Prime opened last. The rising heat and radiation level inside the bubble carried with it a peculiarly neutral feeling somewhere between overclocked and a medical exam, weighted with the knowledge of an unprecedented step in interspecies relations.
“What do the colors mean?” Maggie whispered.
“We don’t know,” Ratchet said. “There has never been a trackable correlation between spectrum and forging or even reliably with personality sets. No two spectra are exactly the same, even between twins.”
As one, the robots closed themselves; some laughing, others thoughtful. The humans sighed or grinned and patted themselves to get their hair to lie flat again.
…
“My apologies,” Ratchet said, backing away from the tank he’d been about to initialize. “You’re perfectly capable of handling every part of this yourselves.” First Aid hugged him as he passed.
“We are,” Aid said, “but we appreciate your help, and we’re honored by your expertise. Just one tank, though.”
“One?” Ratchet lifted an orbital ridge. Only the five Protectobots had come with him into the growth tank chamber. He’d wondered who the lucky other five were going to be, but obviously the P-bots themselves were going to pair up and then switch after the first two merges to let the fifth have a go. That meant at least three tanks. Or ten, depending on how they had decided to arrange the pairings.
“One,” Aid assured him. “All of us together, for one.” They had asked Breakaway if he wanted to join them. Breakaway wasn’t sure yet so they’d left him in the prized company of the Aerials.
(Poor, poor Breakaway, Blades had thought, striking a dramatic pose. Streetwise had tried to shove him off balance. Hot Spot had eventually had to interfere.)
Ratchet stared at them. “…That’s…”
“Nothing in the protocols ever said it had to be only two mechs, Ratchet,” Streetwise said, grinning.
“Slag me,” Ratchet said. A large majority of sexually reproducing species - at meter-scale, anyway - utilized two sexes. Conservation of energy and structure. But not all. Ratchet could name five species with three sexes without accessing memory layers older than 20,000 years, and three with four sexes. Cybertronians might have seven basic genders but they had never had sexes. Or, looked at another way, they had as many sexes as there were individuals.
“It’ll be fiiiine,” Groove said.
“I believe you.” Ratchet smiled. “Do you want me to stay, then, to make the transfer?”
“Or do you want to stay so you can see how we do it?” Blades teased.
“Wheeljack wants in,” Streetwise said. First Aid sent the code that unlocked the door and relocked it once Wheeljack was inside.
“We won’t be using the table,” Aid said as Hot Spot knelt near the active tank.
“Oh boy,” said Jack as he hopped up onto the spurned table, pulling Ratchet after him. Lookit ‘em, he tight-beamed. All growed up.
Ratchet stared at him for a moment and squared his shoulders unnecessarily.
As he made the final adjustments to the tank, Aid could feel the bonfire of Hot Spot’s attention. Beside Spot, Blades and Streetwise had Groove between them, hands and mouths roaming their shared topography. Aid spared Ratchet and Wheeljack a final glance, amused at them sitting primly on the table, feet dangling, attentive as schoolchildren at a pyrotechnics demonstration. First Aid rolled his optics and turned to his brothers.
Hot Spot trembled slightly, knowing what Aid was going to do to him. Aid knew the best places and he had long fingers. Smiling, Aid slid himself into Hot Spot’s arms, cupping his face, lingering in the warmth before a kiss. Blades was silent, mouthing the segmented components of Groove’s flank, while Streetwise hummed softly, stroking Groove’s lips with a fingertip and inserting the first sets of cables into Blades and Hot Spot’s thoracic ports. First Aid held off cabling. He could feel the way the others were rising already, beginning the synch that would send them into the deeps, but Aid wanted to explore the surfaces for a while first. Hot Spot’s strong face and well-formed lips, sturdy body powerful enough to carry them all. Aid ran his hands along the edges and planes of him, slipping fingers into gaps made wider by Hot Spot’s arousal.
With one arm, Hot Spot pulled the other three closer against his side. Their link was making him dizzy and First Aid’s caresses and kisses and that neat, compact body pressed to his, the long legs brushing his waist and upper thighs added layers of tumult to the sensory gale.
Smiling, Aid began to play with Hot Spot’s antennae, sneaking the other hand up Blades’ back, to the juncture of his rotors. He knew how to make the normally quiet Blades shiver and gasp. Arguably, Groove made enough noise for all of them, but they liked his melodic purrs and chirps and moans. Aid leaned in to kiss Groove too, devoured as he was between Streetwise and Blades. They swayed together, armor slipping, engines running hot, kisses growing fierce, growing into bites as they held on tighter, arms making their armor creak, knees locking to keep them from falling.
(Wheeljack’s hands were on Ratchet’s body. Ratchet, intent on observing, tried to still them, but only for a moment.)
Now, First Aid purred. Cables snapped and slithered, binding each to every one, the extra pairs linking them now into a circle, the pentagram of earth and growing, living things, the five directions of spirit. They writhed on the edge of overload, charged and thrumming, but Aid held them and they opened their chests, pushing inward, lifting their chambers into mortal proximity, the colors of their sparks blending as the arcs and loops and flares reached out, mingling, coalescing, submerging them in the clear realm of possibilities. They saw and chose and one spark answered.
Five arms of a starfish, a star in the center. The power bent and bowed around them, (Ratchet and Wheeljack clutched each other, lightning dancing, shaking them into overload), Hot Spot aiming to twist it around himself even as the heat left marks on each of their bodies; but First Aid understood it, understood Hot Spot, and deftly shrugged the striking coils through his own frame instead.
Aid staggered to his feet and lifted the spark into the magnetic tube, watching as it was drawn into the tank and nestled into the coil of protomass. “Sleep tight, Spandrel,” he murmured, then fell back amid the tangle of his brothers.
(Wheeljack and Ratchet were already in recharge.)
…
You guys realize, Streetwise said, idly stroking First Aid’s helm, now that we’ve done this, we’ll soon be hip-deep in baby jets. The Aerials wouldn’t allow themselves to be outdone in anything.
Eeeeee! said Groove.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2037 - April
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah, sweetie, tomorrow would be great! We gotta get you out of that tank while you can still fit through the corridors. Heh, you waited until Ultra Magnus was back, didn't you."
"I like Ultra Magnus."
"He likes you, too. Have you told him yet? Oh, there he's pinging me, so yes you have, terrific. And Beachcomber. Nice."
"And Prime and the King and the village elders."
"Right on. And your ride....? Oh yeah, Lissi's broadcasting, there ya go. How are your little guys doing?"
Metroplex moved aside several of her main arms, which now took up much of the tank. There was very little liquid left. Clustered around her central mass, the three drones had the bodies of fully-formed mechs. One was noticeably larger than the other two and Wheeljack wondered what their final forms and alt modes would be.
…
“Clear a path!” Sideswipe waved his arms at scurrying mechs and humans alike. Not that Metroplex would squish anyone, but why make her first extra-tank excursion more difficult?
“Woooooow,” Glen whispered, not quite hiding behind Maggie on the mezzanine as the cityformer crawled past like all the Elder Gods combined in metal, light-spangled and sinuous. And immense! This was just the protoform and she was having to disarticulate herself to fit through the corridors.
In what Glen felt was a flagrant display of bravery, Ultra Magnus paced her gleaming bulk with one hand resting on a curve of alloy (limb or flank Glen couldn’t tell). Taller and bulkier than Prime, Magnus looked small and fragile next to her. She rolled as she slid through the main hangar door and a spiral arm extended for Magnus. He stepped into it and was immediately engulfed, disappearing from sight until Metroplex gained the road and the desert, sunlight bright as glass on her surface. A whirl of limbs, a leap; she drew herself up to full height and form, even with the mesa top. The hangar doorway grew crowded as humans and robots gathered to see.
She was vaguely centaur-like; four legs in front and four in back, attached to a compound trunk by a complicated armillary of joints, with fringes of secondary legs and a serried ring of main arms. Her head could rotate atop a short neck. Six optics ringed her long, flanged helm like a glowing crown, though she had a single mouth, and she could rearrange her optics onto a single facet of her face above the mouth if she wanted to.
Glen knew she carried three drones but he couldn’t distinguish them among the myriad plates of her exoskeleton and limbs. Hound had explained these wouldn’t be like Blaster’s symbionts; the drones had an internal power source which superficially resembled a spark, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, only as a lightning bug resembled lightning. They were small bodies Metroplex could “occupy” in order to facilitate self-repair and interactions with the mechs and humans who would live in her. She was keeping them offline for now, until after she’d gone through integration.
Ultra Magnus reappeared on the heavy ridge of a shoulder. Glen hoped he’d magnetized his feet or something, because that would be a bad fall. Stretching her limbs as she strode into the desert, almost dancing, Metroplex waved at the press helicopters and fielded a barrage of email, text and VOIP messages, smoothly taking up a portion of the data traffic she would handle routinely once emplaced and occupied.
She’s beautiful, Ratchet tight-beamed to Prime and Wheeljack, placing a hand on the small of Prime’s back and another on Jack’s shoulder.
So whaddya think, Ratch? Jack replied. Care to give Vector’s method a go? It was fascinating to see the kinds of mechs the new people chose to become, given the combinations of traits each new spark contained. He completely understood Perceptor’s desire to create whole schools of them.
Ratchet moved his hand across Wheeljack’s shoulders, giving him a brief, sideways hug. No, my friend, he said. Not yet.
Prime smiled.
…
That night, Metroplex watched the stars as the planet turned beneath them. Skyfire was perched on her upper back and shoulders, cephalic cables firmly seated; sharing his gravitational and high-def gamma detection senses; the songlines that guided deep-Seekers across galaxies. She folded her eight main legs and laid her trunk to the ground, still warm from the day. Skyfire rearranged himself slightly.
“When you’re ready, when you’re sure,” Skyfire murmured. She had chosen him for this because he was sturdy and smart. He would be all right if things proceeded faster than she’d planned.
“Now,” she said. Teletraan and Event Horizon gave her access to their full bandwidths. Skyfire shut down her voluntary and involuntary motor relays, leaving only her vocoder functional. She would need an outlet.
The stars hummed their eerie, ever-changing tunes; the worlds around the stars adding, altering harmonies; this world against her belly loudest of all.
Rio… Rrrriooooo, sing! Sing! I’m almost… Please help me… Sing!
At the hangar entrance, Oratorio gazed at the starlit shapes a kilometer distant. The sharp-edged wings of Skyfire and the limp, darker, sleeker, beached-whale heap of Metroplex. Rio clasped his hands tightly, both honored and distressed. He had illicit recordings of Prowl singing, but he didn’t want to trigger Metroplex the way he’d gone himself. Let it be joy, then, he thought. Like Borealis had gone. Joy and beauty to overwhelm the spark.
Rio sang. And Metroplex cried out, feeling emotion and thought intertwine, burning new maps across her mind.
…
"Ready, Plexie?"
"Yes'm!"
"All right, everyone, three, two, one!"
Seven engines roared from standby to full VTOL lift, Skyfire and Borealis peripheried to the gestalt link so they rose in precise unison, drawing taut the seven limbs Metroplex had anchored around their hulls. Slowly, slowly. This would be Metroplex's first and last plane ride. Once her city form was completed she would upgrade to a space station mode that could lift off under her own power if necessary. It wasn't done often, because the downwards thrust could damage the planet if she rose too quickly - equal and opposite reactions - and she wouldn't want to cause any earthquakes.
"And she's off!" Jazz caroled. The last trailing appendages of the vast cityformer were gathered up and coiled into the main body mass, now two, now three meters off the ground. Autobots and humans jumped up and down and whooped and hollered and a few military caps ended up in the air.
The sight of a kilotonne of Cybertronian cityformer being lifted into the sky was certainly something one didn't see every day. The robots never had either, since on Cybertron or the moons or colonies, a city was built and kindled in situ, regardless of whether it chose to move around later or not; the huge sparks transported to the site in special crucibles.
Beachcomber and Miles were already in Morocco at Ighil n’Imich - a 2862 meter high peak west of the Berber village of Tissili in the High Atlas - waiting for them with a host of Moroccan and other African dignitaries, and everyone who lived in the nearby villages whose lives would be affected by the arrival of a robot city in the neighborhood. One that would manufacture its own water, plus extra if needed, to share with them. Solar and wind generators were popular in the area, but Metroplex could share power as well.
“WHEEEEEE!” said Metroplex. Borealis and Skyfire and the Aerialbots laughed and pulled her higher, reaching their flight altitude in a few minutes.
Higher! Fireflight urged them. Higher! Skyfire and Silverbolt exchanged transmissive “glances”, then with shouts and hollers they took Metroplex up to low orbit, to give her a good long look at the planet she was pledged to protect.
...
Wedge inspected the bore holes again. Metroplex would use them as guides when sinking her own accesses to the water table and mineral layers far below the mountain. Beachcomber had given the Build Team - who were delighted to haul themselves down from Russia for such an occasion - detailed geological files on the area. Wedge had accepted them politely but privately shook his head at the…um…atypical organization. After a few days of contemplation, though, he’d discovered Beachcomber’s methods had a strangely elegant kind of sense to them. Even Hightower agreed, once Wedge had explained. Heavy Load and Longarm had laughed and said that Perceptor would think Wedge himself had a processor as wonky as Beachcomber’s.
The Build Team, the Bullet Trains and the Protectobots had also constructed a set of viewing platforms in a line along the mountain’s south-facing slope. They had brought in planks that resembled wood but were made of recycled plastic. Trees were in short supply at this altitude, and many of the native Moroccan species, like the Atlas cedar, thuya and the endemic argan, were threatened or endangered.
At 74, His Royal Majesty King Mohammed VI appeared at least fifteen years younger, as did his wife, the Princess Consort Lalla Salma. A highly educated, progressive monarch, the King had welcomed the Autobots with honest enthusiasm and a cunning eye to the advantages in both tourism and technology.
“There they are,” said Prime. He stood well back from the royal platform in case Galvatron chose to inflict another mis-kindling. While the jets and the new city were in orbit, the Autobots and their human friends and families had gotten trans-Atlantic rides on USPS C-17’s, paid for out of the Cybertronian Embassy’s general fund, though King Mohammed had offered to foot the bill. Prime projected a mist screen so the King and Princess Consort could see the approaching formation. Their children and grandchildren had augmented senses but the royal couple did not.
They lowered her as slowly as they'd lifted her, meter by meter to the mountaintop. Beachcomber waited on the adjoining ridge, hugging himself and Miles with happiness. The Build Team had arranged the stacks and skeins and bales and bundles of raw protomass for the further building they would be helping Metroplex with as she grew into her full size and configuration.
Metroplex released her hold on the jets and stood up in her protoform for the last time, extending her many limbs. The three drones, Scamper, Slammer and Six-Gun, as Metroplex informed the cloud mind, came fully online at last. Slammer and Six-Gun clung to Metroplex's body for a few moments as they looked around, surveying the stark mountains and clear air around them, as well as the gathered humans and mechs. Scamper, true to his given name, leapt down immediately, running around Metroplex's legs and out to the ridge to say hello to Beachcomber and Miles and down to say hi to Prime and Ultra Magnus and give Ultra Magnus' knees a hug.
Ultra Magnus bent to pat the drone's helm. This was too much for Slammer and Six-Gun, who bounced over for hugs and pats too.
“Lively for drones,” Ultra Magnus commented, his tone indicating he wasn’t the least surprised that Metroplex should have remarkable drones.
“It’s my understanding that Sideswipe helped with their programming,” said Prime.
Ultra Magnus went still for half a second. “…Did you say Sideswipe?”
Optimus chuckled.
Metroplex gave one prodigious stretch, massive cabled limbs uncoiling to the wire-fine, branching tips, shading those around her like some vast, gleaming tree. Then, with an anticipatory shiver, she transformed, turning three times sunwise, settling as she turned to form a spiral, scooping up materials as the Build Team assembled spheres and cubes and geodesics and icosahedra and cylinders, fitting them to her limbs. She drew on the protomass directly as well, unfurling heliconia spires and hyacinth towers and spears of iris columns. Fountained terraces lifted - step, step, step. Bridges flung themselves from building to building, linking vertical and horizontal space. Sam and Mikaela were reminded of the first holo Prime had shown them of war-torn Cybertron, but also of time-lapse films of plants bursting from the soil, growing and flowering. Wheeljack clenched his hands together as he watched Metroplex’s optics disappear, snuggling into the hollow shapes, fitting herself through them, connecting them, forming the infrastructure of her body, wiring and plumbing and airways, creating a living, breathing city.
Between her arms, on the bare, stony ground made of Paleozoic marine sediments uplifted and transformed, the Build Team, Bullet Trains and Protectobots assembled the beginnings of gardens and small parks. Humans would live here, and humans needed green things around them, but Metroplex would have to retain the ability to move. This way she could lift herself from the site and leave the fragile gardens safely behind.
“Look,” Prowl said, perched on Thundercracker’s shoulders. Thundercracker followed the line of a silver finger to the tips of the six towers lofting at the city’s center. Familiar cupolas topped the fractal, screen-shaded spires. The screens provided shade but were also wind-traps, catching moisture in their micro-architecture and channeling it down to cisterns beneath the ground-level floors. For the gardens and the human inhabitants. The cupolas, though. Thundercracker felt his spark spin faster. Those were eyries.
As evening drew blue around them, falling beneath the planet’s shadow, lights sprang in swirls and dots and lines across the city’s surfaces, multicolored, moving as though underwater. The three drones left Ultra Magnus and transformed. A little jet, a sleek car, a small but burly tank. They disappeared into the moving interior.
At last the roads leading in unrolled. Metroplex felt a city ought to have at least four roads reaching out to other cities, other roads. With thin plating specially engineered to encourage the winter snow to melt and run off in a controlled manner, she connected herself to Tissili, Ifoulou, Toufrine and Amassine, with a ramp prepared should there in future be a need for a road across the rugged mountains to the north.
Artists and dancers entered first, singing as they went, their colorful, traditional costumes shimmering in Metroplex’s light. A hundred cultures gathered at the seven stages placed around the city. Skirts and veils and double-ended torches whirled to the music.
A spotlight picked out the top of one of the six central towers. Optimus leaned out from the Seeker eyrie and loosed the highest powers of his voice, crying everyone welcome; first in Cybertronian, then in Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, then in Tashelhit, the most widely used Amazigh or Berber language in the area. Then in Classical Arabic and French and English and Swahili and Maori and Hindi and Mandarin; the Prime’s unique vocoder shifting flawlessly from language to language, cadence to cadence, atonal to tonal.
Sam and Mikaela walked hand in hand. Food vendors - present since the morning on the mountain slopes - had followed the crowds throughout the city, setting up their carts and tables at well-planned intervals. The transit systems moved humans efficiently without scaring them with the breakneck speeds used in the tubes and tunnels intended for robot traffic. There were no segregated human versus robot zones, otherwise. The living and working areas were integrated with ramps and catwalks and multiple levels for people of all sizes. Inside, the floor plans varied from riad-inspired central courtyards bounded by small rooms, to series of linked chambers denoting public to increasingly private spaces as in typical Berber village homes, to the Cybertronian penchant for the extremely vertical. There were no dark alleys or dingy urban canyons. Dani and Hot Rod had run off somewhere but her parents weren’t worried. Bumblebee had Nate, who was as easygoing and unflappable at six as Sam had been cranky and overstimulated at that age.
“Looks like they’re staying for a while,” Sam said, eyeing the ice cream cone Mikaela was taking way too long to finish. She knew clever tricks with her tongue, and while the mountain night was cool, Sam was considering taking off his coat. The scents of roses, incense and spices mingled with ozone and a hint of oil, but there wasn’t the overwhelming sense of metal that Sam had expected. Metroplex’s textures were varied and painstakingly engineered to not only channel heat and air and water, but evoke the look and feel of stone or wood or even brick in places, in addition to the iridescent, shifting colors and patterns, glyph-encrusted, of Cybertron-that-was.
“Even this is movable,” Mikaela pointed out. The refugees could evacuate again if they had to.
“Crazy, huh?” Sam said.
“Like a car that returns itself after being stolen.” Mikaela grinned and kissed him, leaving a dot of ice cream on his nose.
Prime and Wheeljack walked slowly down the streets, taking in the atmosphere, greeting friends and fellow visitors as they passed. Atrandom ran across an arm bridge to join them, taking Wheeljack's hand, beaming.
How do you feel, Metroplex? Prime asked, smiling down at Wheeljack and Wheeljack’s first progeny as they moved within his second.
Ah, it's so nice, Prime, she replied. I can feel everyone. Oh welcome, welcome to me, come in, the doors are open! A mist screen was projected ahead of them for a moment, glowing with blue surfaces and the bright silver icosahedron of the command center. Or the largest command center; Metroplex was not truly centralized, as most Cybertronian cities were not, but distributed; in power production and consumption and services and living spaces and working spaces, and most definitely in defensive and offensive devices.
Ahead of them as they walked up a wide, spiraling ramp, shimmering curtain doors irised open. Ultra Magnus was already there, his arms seated into interface jacks, a beatific smile on his handsome face. Prime stepped behind him, placing his hands on Ultra Magnus' shoulders, leaning in to rub his cheek guard on Magnus'. Magnus turned his head slightly for a quick kiss, his fields flowing like Van Allen belts, like wings as he immersed himself in Metroplex's burgeoning personality, as her self expanded to include her inhabitants. Wheeljack and Atrandom fitted themselves to other sets of jacks to share.
Down among the streets and bridges and walkways, the three drones rolled and ran and cartwheeled; learning their territories by body as well as mind, greeting people as they met them, every one by name, knowing the niches they were meant to fill, knowing there would be new niches and habits and habitats found along the way as people lived and worked here over the years.
Is it just me, Ratchet tight-beamed to Perceptor as they walked out onto a high balcony in one of the six central towers, Perceptor happily training his lenses on the local cosmic wonders - and the not so local. Or have a lot of the newforged taken on rather more compactly humanoid root modes? Scamper had transformed in a plaza below them, and was shaking the hands of the Tissili village elders, speaking Darija or Tashelhit with Metroplex's voice, with her mind and authority. He was about four meters tall, bright armor shining in smooth plates across his limbs and torso, making him appear like a kind of high tech knight in shining armor.
Oh I suppose so, Perceptor said idly. He waved a hand vaguely between Ratchet's bilaterally symmetrical form and Scamper below. The similarities are greater than the differences. We realized that soon after arriving here, did we not?
Just an observation, Ratchet said. We haven't lost our knack for adaptation, clearly.
Indeed not, Perceptor said, moving his lenses aside and putting his arms - heavy and fine - around Ratchet, nuzzling his cheek spar. I rather hope we never will. For all that many of the changes we have endured of late have been unfortunate, sorrowful ones, I believe we yet retain our, hm, our joie de vivre, as it were.
Ratchet returned the embrace, not needing any high-grade to put the joie in his vivre just then.
Part II
Table of Contents
.
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): Pbots/Pbots, Metroplex, ensemble
Warnings: Gestalt smexings, voyeurism/exhibitionism, fluff
Summary: Wherein the Protectobots decide to merge, and Metroplex decants and settles into her new home.
Notes: Suggested listening for this chapter: Salvation For A Proud Nation by The Immediate; Baba Yetu, Sukla-Krsne (you can listen to all the songs on that album at that link - Sukla-Krsne is #11) and Kia Hora Te Marino by Christopher Tin.
~5300 words.
BOREALIS: Inflorescence - Part I
2036 - May
Do you think it would work? With the five of us?
We could give it a try. Do Vector's way, just maybe not bubble off a whole school like Perceptor does.
Oh definitely not. Last thing we need is a bunch of Grooves lolling about.
Or a dozen Hot Spots. No one would ever get any sleep.
Heeeey!
…
“Hi, Prime,” Groove called as they rolled and strolled into the embassy. We’re being salmon!
“Welcome home,” Prime murmured, leaning hard on Hot Spot as the gestalt held and surrounded him. We haven’t any waterfalls for you to leap, but I believe we do have several empty tanks.
Oh, Ratchet! First Aid tight-beamed. Prime is…!
I know. Ratchet came out to join the snuggle and reassure his apprentice. Prime’s fields were a wreck. Galvatron will have doubled the Decepticon numbers in five or six years at this rate. We can hope he’ll stop then. “How was Turkey?”
“Beautiful, aside from the parts flattened in the earthquake.” That’s…not making me feel better! “Groove was offered some keşkek and to be polite he ate it. Took me days to get it all out of his internals.”
“And meanwhile the chicken bits went bad,” Blades added over his shoulder as he stooped to hug Prowl. “We made him stay downwind.”
“I still think we could rig aux tanks for things like that,” Groove said. “People want us to share food with them; it’s an important cultural aspect. And Glyph agrees with me!”
“As long as you keep your denta retracted,” Smokescreen laughed as he came in with Bluestreak and Breakaway. Most Decepticons had taken to leaving their denta extended - one more thing the humans found frightening about them.
At least we can be reasonably certain Prime can’t die from this, Ratchet continued to First Aid.
Not helping! First Aid squeaked. He and the other Protectobots struggled to mask their reactions. They were genuinely happy to be back at the embassy, and excited about their purpose. It was best to focus on that. Aid burrowed into Bluestreak’s shoulder.
Going to make me a grandparent again, hm? Blue asked gently. Of Bluestreak’s handful of progeny, only Blurr had thus far kindled. A small, bright green mech named Hummer with Wheeljack, and Lightspeed with Prime. I’m glad. I worry about you. Going from disaster to disaster with so little rest. I’m sure it’s not good for your sparks. Whenever you send updates about what you’re doing, Mirage gets these little flares of moral outrage. He thinks it’s barbarous for a planet to casually and consistently murder its inhabitants. He understands it’s just how things are on a tectonically active world with a dynamic atmosphere, and that humans are fragile and they evolved here so they’re kind of used to it, but it bothers him anyway.
Aid laughed softly. One of these days he’d get Mirage alone in a corridor for that. Mmm. Blue. Last week we saved Meral Paşa, Erhan Yıldırım, Tulay Özdemir and twenty others; just in one block. We know all their names and met their families and we know what they do and a little bit about what they hope for. And we know these things about everyone we’ve helped for the past 18 years. When it gets too grim, yes, we erase the worst memories of mangled corpses. But we have this other knowledge, And that always outweighs the bad. Always. …Heheh. I am so your kid.
And Prime’s. Blue flicked a thought around the cloud mind and opened his chest a centimeter. Enough to let his corona wash through and mesh with First Aid’s. There was no rocking of waves, no swaying of tree branches or cradles or mothers’ hips in their evolutionary history, but the sharing of spark energies was a deep comfort they understood. Aid sighed and opened, too. The two stood quietly amid the laughing, jostling mass of their friends and brothers; not cabled, warming each other.
Kicking her feet off the table, Maggie sat up from her coffee break on the mezzanine with an alarmed squawk. She probably wouldn’t have spotted it from the ground-level computer nest, but up here she could see the faint reflection of sparklight. “Um. Guys?”
It’s okay, Hound broadcast on what had more or less become the human channel. Trailbreaker’s got a shield up. Hound always managed to return to the embassy when the Protectobots did. They were good mechs, and he was fond of them, but he wasn’t about to miss a chance to hang out with Groove. Beachcomber would be wandering down from Alberta tomorrow and the three of them plus Trailbreaker would find themselves a nice remote ravine and kick back in the sun and throw rocks at each other and tell lies until they couldn’t transmit for laughing.
“In that case,” Maggie said, leaning far out over the railing and making a small gimme motion with the fingers of one hand. “Who else is up for show and tell?”
“I will if you will!” Windcharger hooted. Cliffjumper bashed his shoulder and they held each other up, guffawing.
“I know,” Maggie said, rubbing her breastbone, feeling the lack not for the first time. “I can’t show you my soul.”
“That does not mean that it does not exist,” Prime said, turning toward her. By ones and threes, the gathered Autobots consulted themselves and each other and revealed small glimpses of their sparks. The mezzanine grew crowded as the human embassy staff raced up the stairways to see, starlight in the oceans of their eyes.
Trailbreaker added another layer of shielding as Prime opened last. The rising heat and radiation level inside the bubble carried with it a peculiarly neutral feeling somewhere between overclocked and a medical exam, weighted with the knowledge of an unprecedented step in interspecies relations.
“What do the colors mean?” Maggie whispered.
“We don’t know,” Ratchet said. “There has never been a trackable correlation between spectrum and forging or even reliably with personality sets. No two spectra are exactly the same, even between twins.”
As one, the robots closed themselves; some laughing, others thoughtful. The humans sighed or grinned and patted themselves to get their hair to lie flat again.
…
“My apologies,” Ratchet said, backing away from the tank he’d been about to initialize. “You’re perfectly capable of handling every part of this yourselves.” First Aid hugged him as he passed.
“We are,” Aid said, “but we appreciate your help, and we’re honored by your expertise. Just one tank, though.”
“One?” Ratchet lifted an orbital ridge. Only the five Protectobots had come with him into the growth tank chamber. He’d wondered who the lucky other five were going to be, but obviously the P-bots themselves were going to pair up and then switch after the first two merges to let the fifth have a go. That meant at least three tanks. Or ten, depending on how they had decided to arrange the pairings.
“One,” Aid assured him. “All of us together, for one.” They had asked Breakaway if he wanted to join them. Breakaway wasn’t sure yet so they’d left him in the prized company of the Aerials.
(Poor, poor Breakaway, Blades had thought, striking a dramatic pose. Streetwise had tried to shove him off balance. Hot Spot had eventually had to interfere.)
Ratchet stared at them. “…That’s…”
“Nothing in the protocols ever said it had to be only two mechs, Ratchet,” Streetwise said, grinning.
“Slag me,” Ratchet said. A large majority of sexually reproducing species - at meter-scale, anyway - utilized two sexes. Conservation of energy and structure. But not all. Ratchet could name five species with three sexes without accessing memory layers older than 20,000 years, and three with four sexes. Cybertronians might have seven basic genders but they had never had sexes. Or, looked at another way, they had as many sexes as there were individuals.
“It’ll be fiiiine,” Groove said.
“I believe you.” Ratchet smiled. “Do you want me to stay, then, to make the transfer?”
“Or do you want to stay so you can see how we do it?” Blades teased.
“Wheeljack wants in,” Streetwise said. First Aid sent the code that unlocked the door and relocked it once Wheeljack was inside.
“We won’t be using the table,” Aid said as Hot Spot knelt near the active tank.
“Oh boy,” said Jack as he hopped up onto the spurned table, pulling Ratchet after him. Lookit ‘em, he tight-beamed. All growed up.
Ratchet stared at him for a moment and squared his shoulders unnecessarily.
As he made the final adjustments to the tank, Aid could feel the bonfire of Hot Spot’s attention. Beside Spot, Blades and Streetwise had Groove between them, hands and mouths roaming their shared topography. Aid spared Ratchet and Wheeljack a final glance, amused at them sitting primly on the table, feet dangling, attentive as schoolchildren at a pyrotechnics demonstration. First Aid rolled his optics and turned to his brothers.
Hot Spot trembled slightly, knowing what Aid was going to do to him. Aid knew the best places and he had long fingers. Smiling, Aid slid himself into Hot Spot’s arms, cupping his face, lingering in the warmth before a kiss. Blades was silent, mouthing the segmented components of Groove’s flank, while Streetwise hummed softly, stroking Groove’s lips with a fingertip and inserting the first sets of cables into Blades and Hot Spot’s thoracic ports. First Aid held off cabling. He could feel the way the others were rising already, beginning the synch that would send them into the deeps, but Aid wanted to explore the surfaces for a while first. Hot Spot’s strong face and well-formed lips, sturdy body powerful enough to carry them all. Aid ran his hands along the edges and planes of him, slipping fingers into gaps made wider by Hot Spot’s arousal.
With one arm, Hot Spot pulled the other three closer against his side. Their link was making him dizzy and First Aid’s caresses and kisses and that neat, compact body pressed to his, the long legs brushing his waist and upper thighs added layers of tumult to the sensory gale.
Smiling, Aid began to play with Hot Spot’s antennae, sneaking the other hand up Blades’ back, to the juncture of his rotors. He knew how to make the normally quiet Blades shiver and gasp. Arguably, Groove made enough noise for all of them, but they liked his melodic purrs and chirps and moans. Aid leaned in to kiss Groove too, devoured as he was between Streetwise and Blades. They swayed together, armor slipping, engines running hot, kisses growing fierce, growing into bites as they held on tighter, arms making their armor creak, knees locking to keep them from falling.
(Wheeljack’s hands were on Ratchet’s body. Ratchet, intent on observing, tried to still them, but only for a moment.)
Now, First Aid purred. Cables snapped and slithered, binding each to every one, the extra pairs linking them now into a circle, the pentagram of earth and growing, living things, the five directions of spirit. They writhed on the edge of overload, charged and thrumming, but Aid held them and they opened their chests, pushing inward, lifting their chambers into mortal proximity, the colors of their sparks blending as the arcs and loops and flares reached out, mingling, coalescing, submerging them in the clear realm of possibilities. They saw and chose and one spark answered.
Five arms of a starfish, a star in the center. The power bent and bowed around them, (Ratchet and Wheeljack clutched each other, lightning dancing, shaking them into overload), Hot Spot aiming to twist it around himself even as the heat left marks on each of their bodies; but First Aid understood it, understood Hot Spot, and deftly shrugged the striking coils through his own frame instead.
Aid staggered to his feet and lifted the spark into the magnetic tube, watching as it was drawn into the tank and nestled into the coil of protomass. “Sleep tight, Spandrel,” he murmured, then fell back amid the tangle of his brothers.
(Wheeljack and Ratchet were already in recharge.)
…
You guys realize, Streetwise said, idly stroking First Aid’s helm, now that we’ve done this, we’ll soon be hip-deep in baby jets. The Aerials wouldn’t allow themselves to be outdone in anything.
Eeeeee! said Groove.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2037 - April
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah, sweetie, tomorrow would be great! We gotta get you out of that tank while you can still fit through the corridors. Heh, you waited until Ultra Magnus was back, didn't you."
"I like Ultra Magnus."
"He likes you, too. Have you told him yet? Oh, there he's pinging me, so yes you have, terrific. And Beachcomber. Nice."
"And Prime and the King and the village elders."
"Right on. And your ride....? Oh yeah, Lissi's broadcasting, there ya go. How are your little guys doing?"
Metroplex moved aside several of her main arms, which now took up much of the tank. There was very little liquid left. Clustered around her central mass, the three drones had the bodies of fully-formed mechs. One was noticeably larger than the other two and Wheeljack wondered what their final forms and alt modes would be.
…
“Clear a path!” Sideswipe waved his arms at scurrying mechs and humans alike. Not that Metroplex would squish anyone, but why make her first extra-tank excursion more difficult?
“Woooooow,” Glen whispered, not quite hiding behind Maggie on the mezzanine as the cityformer crawled past like all the Elder Gods combined in metal, light-spangled and sinuous. And immense! This was just the protoform and she was having to disarticulate herself to fit through the corridors.
In what Glen felt was a flagrant display of bravery, Ultra Magnus paced her gleaming bulk with one hand resting on a curve of alloy (limb or flank Glen couldn’t tell). Taller and bulkier than Prime, Magnus looked small and fragile next to her. She rolled as she slid through the main hangar door and a spiral arm extended for Magnus. He stepped into it and was immediately engulfed, disappearing from sight until Metroplex gained the road and the desert, sunlight bright as glass on her surface. A whirl of limbs, a leap; she drew herself up to full height and form, even with the mesa top. The hangar doorway grew crowded as humans and robots gathered to see.
She was vaguely centaur-like; four legs in front and four in back, attached to a compound trunk by a complicated armillary of joints, with fringes of secondary legs and a serried ring of main arms. Her head could rotate atop a short neck. Six optics ringed her long, flanged helm like a glowing crown, though she had a single mouth, and she could rearrange her optics onto a single facet of her face above the mouth if she wanted to.
Glen knew she carried three drones but he couldn’t distinguish them among the myriad plates of her exoskeleton and limbs. Hound had explained these wouldn’t be like Blaster’s symbionts; the drones had an internal power source which superficially resembled a spark, but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, only as a lightning bug resembled lightning. They were small bodies Metroplex could “occupy” in order to facilitate self-repair and interactions with the mechs and humans who would live in her. She was keeping them offline for now, until after she’d gone through integration.
Ultra Magnus reappeared on the heavy ridge of a shoulder. Glen hoped he’d magnetized his feet or something, because that would be a bad fall. Stretching her limbs as she strode into the desert, almost dancing, Metroplex waved at the press helicopters and fielded a barrage of email, text and VOIP messages, smoothly taking up a portion of the data traffic she would handle routinely once emplaced and occupied.
She’s beautiful, Ratchet tight-beamed to Prime and Wheeljack, placing a hand on the small of Prime’s back and another on Jack’s shoulder.
So whaddya think, Ratch? Jack replied. Care to give Vector’s method a go? It was fascinating to see the kinds of mechs the new people chose to become, given the combinations of traits each new spark contained. He completely understood Perceptor’s desire to create whole schools of them.
Ratchet moved his hand across Wheeljack’s shoulders, giving him a brief, sideways hug. No, my friend, he said. Not yet.
Prime smiled.
…
That night, Metroplex watched the stars as the planet turned beneath them. Skyfire was perched on her upper back and shoulders, cephalic cables firmly seated; sharing his gravitational and high-def gamma detection senses; the songlines that guided deep-Seekers across galaxies. She folded her eight main legs and laid her trunk to the ground, still warm from the day. Skyfire rearranged himself slightly.
“When you’re ready, when you’re sure,” Skyfire murmured. She had chosen him for this because he was sturdy and smart. He would be all right if things proceeded faster than she’d planned.
“Now,” she said. Teletraan and Event Horizon gave her access to their full bandwidths. Skyfire shut down her voluntary and involuntary motor relays, leaving only her vocoder functional. She would need an outlet.
The stars hummed their eerie, ever-changing tunes; the worlds around the stars adding, altering harmonies; this world against her belly loudest of all.
Rio… Rrrriooooo, sing! Sing! I’m almost… Please help me… Sing!
At the hangar entrance, Oratorio gazed at the starlit shapes a kilometer distant. The sharp-edged wings of Skyfire and the limp, darker, sleeker, beached-whale heap of Metroplex. Rio clasped his hands tightly, both honored and distressed. He had illicit recordings of Prowl singing, but he didn’t want to trigger Metroplex the way he’d gone himself. Let it be joy, then, he thought. Like Borealis had gone. Joy and beauty to overwhelm the spark.
Rio sang. And Metroplex cried out, feeling emotion and thought intertwine, burning new maps across her mind.
…
"Ready, Plexie?"
"Yes'm!"
"All right, everyone, three, two, one!"
Seven engines roared from standby to full VTOL lift, Skyfire and Borealis peripheried to the gestalt link so they rose in precise unison, drawing taut the seven limbs Metroplex had anchored around their hulls. Slowly, slowly. This would be Metroplex's first and last plane ride. Once her city form was completed she would upgrade to a space station mode that could lift off under her own power if necessary. It wasn't done often, because the downwards thrust could damage the planet if she rose too quickly - equal and opposite reactions - and she wouldn't want to cause any earthquakes.
"And she's off!" Jazz caroled. The last trailing appendages of the vast cityformer were gathered up and coiled into the main body mass, now two, now three meters off the ground. Autobots and humans jumped up and down and whooped and hollered and a few military caps ended up in the air.
The sight of a kilotonne of Cybertronian cityformer being lifted into the sky was certainly something one didn't see every day. The robots never had either, since on Cybertron or the moons or colonies, a city was built and kindled in situ, regardless of whether it chose to move around later or not; the huge sparks transported to the site in special crucibles.
Beachcomber and Miles were already in Morocco at Ighil n’Imich - a 2862 meter high peak west of the Berber village of Tissili in the High Atlas - waiting for them with a host of Moroccan and other African dignitaries, and everyone who lived in the nearby villages whose lives would be affected by the arrival of a robot city in the neighborhood. One that would manufacture its own water, plus extra if needed, to share with them. Solar and wind generators were popular in the area, but Metroplex could share power as well.
“WHEEEEEE!” said Metroplex. Borealis and Skyfire and the Aerialbots laughed and pulled her higher, reaching their flight altitude in a few minutes.
Higher! Fireflight urged them. Higher! Skyfire and Silverbolt exchanged transmissive “glances”, then with shouts and hollers they took Metroplex up to low orbit, to give her a good long look at the planet she was pledged to protect.
...
Wedge inspected the bore holes again. Metroplex would use them as guides when sinking her own accesses to the water table and mineral layers far below the mountain. Beachcomber had given the Build Team - who were delighted to haul themselves down from Russia for such an occasion - detailed geological files on the area. Wedge had accepted them politely but privately shook his head at the…um…atypical organization. After a few days of contemplation, though, he’d discovered Beachcomber’s methods had a strangely elegant kind of sense to them. Even Hightower agreed, once Wedge had explained. Heavy Load and Longarm had laughed and said that Perceptor would think Wedge himself had a processor as wonky as Beachcomber’s.
The Build Team, the Bullet Trains and the Protectobots had also constructed a set of viewing platforms in a line along the mountain’s south-facing slope. They had brought in planks that resembled wood but were made of recycled plastic. Trees were in short supply at this altitude, and many of the native Moroccan species, like the Atlas cedar, thuya and the endemic argan, were threatened or endangered.
At 74, His Royal Majesty King Mohammed VI appeared at least fifteen years younger, as did his wife, the Princess Consort Lalla Salma. A highly educated, progressive monarch, the King had welcomed the Autobots with honest enthusiasm and a cunning eye to the advantages in both tourism and technology.
“There they are,” said Prime. He stood well back from the royal platform in case Galvatron chose to inflict another mis-kindling. While the jets and the new city were in orbit, the Autobots and their human friends and families had gotten trans-Atlantic rides on USPS C-17’s, paid for out of the Cybertronian Embassy’s general fund, though King Mohammed had offered to foot the bill. Prime projected a mist screen so the King and Princess Consort could see the approaching formation. Their children and grandchildren had augmented senses but the royal couple did not.
They lowered her as slowly as they'd lifted her, meter by meter to the mountaintop. Beachcomber waited on the adjoining ridge, hugging himself and Miles with happiness. The Build Team had arranged the stacks and skeins and bales and bundles of raw protomass for the further building they would be helping Metroplex with as she grew into her full size and configuration.
Metroplex released her hold on the jets and stood up in her protoform for the last time, extending her many limbs. The three drones, Scamper, Slammer and Six-Gun, as Metroplex informed the cloud mind, came fully online at last. Slammer and Six-Gun clung to Metroplex's body for a few moments as they looked around, surveying the stark mountains and clear air around them, as well as the gathered humans and mechs. Scamper, true to his given name, leapt down immediately, running around Metroplex's legs and out to the ridge to say hello to Beachcomber and Miles and down to say hi to Prime and Ultra Magnus and give Ultra Magnus' knees a hug.
Ultra Magnus bent to pat the drone's helm. This was too much for Slammer and Six-Gun, who bounced over for hugs and pats too.
“Lively for drones,” Ultra Magnus commented, his tone indicating he wasn’t the least surprised that Metroplex should have remarkable drones.
“It’s my understanding that Sideswipe helped with their programming,” said Prime.
Ultra Magnus went still for half a second. “…Did you say Sideswipe?”
Optimus chuckled.
Metroplex gave one prodigious stretch, massive cabled limbs uncoiling to the wire-fine, branching tips, shading those around her like some vast, gleaming tree. Then, with an anticipatory shiver, she transformed, turning three times sunwise, settling as she turned to form a spiral, scooping up materials as the Build Team assembled spheres and cubes and geodesics and icosahedra and cylinders, fitting them to her limbs. She drew on the protomass directly as well, unfurling heliconia spires and hyacinth towers and spears of iris columns. Fountained terraces lifted - step, step, step. Bridges flung themselves from building to building, linking vertical and horizontal space. Sam and Mikaela were reminded of the first holo Prime had shown them of war-torn Cybertron, but also of time-lapse films of plants bursting from the soil, growing and flowering. Wheeljack clenched his hands together as he watched Metroplex’s optics disappear, snuggling into the hollow shapes, fitting herself through them, connecting them, forming the infrastructure of her body, wiring and plumbing and airways, creating a living, breathing city.
Between her arms, on the bare, stony ground made of Paleozoic marine sediments uplifted and transformed, the Build Team, Bullet Trains and Protectobots assembled the beginnings of gardens and small parks. Humans would live here, and humans needed green things around them, but Metroplex would have to retain the ability to move. This way she could lift herself from the site and leave the fragile gardens safely behind.
“Look,” Prowl said, perched on Thundercracker’s shoulders. Thundercracker followed the line of a silver finger to the tips of the six towers lofting at the city’s center. Familiar cupolas topped the fractal, screen-shaded spires. The screens provided shade but were also wind-traps, catching moisture in their micro-architecture and channeling it down to cisterns beneath the ground-level floors. For the gardens and the human inhabitants. The cupolas, though. Thundercracker felt his spark spin faster. Those were eyries.
As evening drew blue around them, falling beneath the planet’s shadow, lights sprang in swirls and dots and lines across the city’s surfaces, multicolored, moving as though underwater. The three drones left Ultra Magnus and transformed. A little jet, a sleek car, a small but burly tank. They disappeared into the moving interior.
At last the roads leading in unrolled. Metroplex felt a city ought to have at least four roads reaching out to other cities, other roads. With thin plating specially engineered to encourage the winter snow to melt and run off in a controlled manner, she connected herself to Tissili, Ifoulou, Toufrine and Amassine, with a ramp prepared should there in future be a need for a road across the rugged mountains to the north.
Artists and dancers entered first, singing as they went, their colorful, traditional costumes shimmering in Metroplex’s light. A hundred cultures gathered at the seven stages placed around the city. Skirts and veils and double-ended torches whirled to the music.
A spotlight picked out the top of one of the six central towers. Optimus leaned out from the Seeker eyrie and loosed the highest powers of his voice, crying everyone welcome; first in Cybertronian, then in Darija, the Moroccan dialect of Arabic, then in Tashelhit, the most widely used Amazigh or Berber language in the area. Then in Classical Arabic and French and English and Swahili and Maori and Hindi and Mandarin; the Prime’s unique vocoder shifting flawlessly from language to language, cadence to cadence, atonal to tonal.
Sam and Mikaela walked hand in hand. Food vendors - present since the morning on the mountain slopes - had followed the crowds throughout the city, setting up their carts and tables at well-planned intervals. The transit systems moved humans efficiently without scaring them with the breakneck speeds used in the tubes and tunnels intended for robot traffic. There were no segregated human versus robot zones, otherwise. The living and working areas were integrated with ramps and catwalks and multiple levels for people of all sizes. Inside, the floor plans varied from riad-inspired central courtyards bounded by small rooms, to series of linked chambers denoting public to increasingly private spaces as in typical Berber village homes, to the Cybertronian penchant for the extremely vertical. There were no dark alleys or dingy urban canyons. Dani and Hot Rod had run off somewhere but her parents weren’t worried. Bumblebee had Nate, who was as easygoing and unflappable at six as Sam had been cranky and overstimulated at that age.
“Looks like they’re staying for a while,” Sam said, eyeing the ice cream cone Mikaela was taking way too long to finish. She knew clever tricks with her tongue, and while the mountain night was cool, Sam was considering taking off his coat. The scents of roses, incense and spices mingled with ozone and a hint of oil, but there wasn’t the overwhelming sense of metal that Sam had expected. Metroplex’s textures were varied and painstakingly engineered to not only channel heat and air and water, but evoke the look and feel of stone or wood or even brick in places, in addition to the iridescent, shifting colors and patterns, glyph-encrusted, of Cybertron-that-was.
“Even this is movable,” Mikaela pointed out. The refugees could evacuate again if they had to.
“Crazy, huh?” Sam said.
“Like a car that returns itself after being stolen.” Mikaela grinned and kissed him, leaving a dot of ice cream on his nose.
Prime and Wheeljack walked slowly down the streets, taking in the atmosphere, greeting friends and fellow visitors as they passed. Atrandom ran across an arm bridge to join them, taking Wheeljack's hand, beaming.
How do you feel, Metroplex? Prime asked, smiling down at Wheeljack and Wheeljack’s first progeny as they moved within his second.
Ah, it's so nice, Prime, she replied. I can feel everyone. Oh welcome, welcome to me, come in, the doors are open! A mist screen was projected ahead of them for a moment, glowing with blue surfaces and the bright silver icosahedron of the command center. Or the largest command center; Metroplex was not truly centralized, as most Cybertronian cities were not, but distributed; in power production and consumption and services and living spaces and working spaces, and most definitely in defensive and offensive devices.
Ahead of them as they walked up a wide, spiraling ramp, shimmering curtain doors irised open. Ultra Magnus was already there, his arms seated into interface jacks, a beatific smile on his handsome face. Prime stepped behind him, placing his hands on Ultra Magnus' shoulders, leaning in to rub his cheek guard on Magnus'. Magnus turned his head slightly for a quick kiss, his fields flowing like Van Allen belts, like wings as he immersed himself in Metroplex's burgeoning personality, as her self expanded to include her inhabitants. Wheeljack and Atrandom fitted themselves to other sets of jacks to share.
Down among the streets and bridges and walkways, the three drones rolled and ran and cartwheeled; learning their territories by body as well as mind, greeting people as they met them, every one by name, knowing the niches they were meant to fill, knowing there would be new niches and habits and habitats found along the way as people lived and worked here over the years.
Is it just me, Ratchet tight-beamed to Perceptor as they walked out onto a high balcony in one of the six central towers, Perceptor happily training his lenses on the local cosmic wonders - and the not so local. Or have a lot of the newforged taken on rather more compactly humanoid root modes? Scamper had transformed in a plaza below them, and was shaking the hands of the Tissili village elders, speaking Darija or Tashelhit with Metroplex's voice, with her mind and authority. He was about four meters tall, bright armor shining in smooth plates across his limbs and torso, making him appear like a kind of high tech knight in shining armor.
Oh I suppose so, Perceptor said idly. He waved a hand vaguely between Ratchet's bilaterally symmetrical form and Scamper below. The similarities are greater than the differences. We realized that soon after arriving here, did we not?
Just an observation, Ratchet said. We haven't lost our knack for adaptation, clearly.
Indeed not, Perceptor said, moving his lenses aside and putting his arms - heavy and fine - around Ratchet, nuzzling his cheek spar. I rather hope we never will. For all that many of the changes we have endured of late have been unfortunate, sorrowful ones, I believe we yet retain our, hm, our joie de vivre, as it were.
Ratchet returned the embrace, not needing any high-grade to put the joie in his vivre just then.
Part II
Table of Contents
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