Fic
Title: Borealis 75/92: Heartlines - pt 4
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R just in case
Characters/Pairing(s): Epps and family, Mirage, Hound, Wheeljack, ensemble; Mirage/OCs, Mirage/Hound
Warnings: Character death, angst, robot snuggles (PnP, tactile, sparks), OCs, OC death
Summary: Wherein Mirage has difficulty dealing with Epps’ passing, a new Autobot carries human memories, Mirage rakes leaves, and Hound and Mirage tell stories.
Notes: All right, there’s going to be a part 5. ^^; This section is already pretty big. Music for the flashback sequence - at least the beginning - Kingdom Come by The Civil Wars.
~16K words.
Part I
Part II
Part III
BOREALIS: Heartlines - Part IV
2075 - May
The transmission from Colorado didn’t make any sense. Bobby Epps had been taken to the hospital last night and died. He’d only been 92. Mirage blinked at the connection he’d been bolting on the new space station. It didn’t make any sense. Someone must have their wires crossed.
…
“Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s no mistake.” The nurse on the other end of the line was professionally polite. “I can’t release any other information.”
Mirage closed the connection, staring at the electronic records he’d lifted from the hospital server without thinking. Time of death: 04:37 AM. Cause of death: heart failure. Nonsense. A ridiculous finding. Hadn’t they done an autopsy?
“Mir,” said Hound. “They call it ‘natural causes’. He was old.”
“No. Not yet, it’s too soon! He wasn’t that old!” Hound put a hand on his shoulder. Mirage ignored the gesture. Not just ignored, was simply unaware of. Hound maintained the contact anyway. I thought…I thought he’d have another ten years, maybe twenty. It’s too soon! We weren’t…we weren’t done…
Mechs gathered but didn’t interfere. Wheeljack and Smokescreen; close by and watching.
“We have his mindstate,” Hound reminded him. Bobby had been good about letting them update his scans regularly.
“What does that matter?” Mirage whispered. “It’s not the same!”
“No,” Hound agreed. “No. But it’s something.” It was more than they’d ever had before, of ephemeral friends in the past. What would Seaspray or Jazz give, to ride the wake of Vector Prime’s sword and collect a scan of Alana or Talaria? Beachcomber accepted people as they were, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been sad to lose S’Teth, Glllksassaa and Reyyidh, too.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Arlington National Cemetery. Nineteen guns for a former Secretary of Defense. Another eulogy, another missing man formation. Mirage engaged his articulation locks as the casket was lowered. They were not burying his friend alive. His friend wasn’t alive. A quick scan would tell him that, but he did not want to scan what was in the coffin.
No. He did not want to search the internet. Autolysis begins almost immediately after death. The use of embalming agents had been summarily forbidden in 2037. He did not want to recall detailed biochemical information gleaned from Hound and Perceptor and Ratchet. The microorganisms in the gut… No. He would not react. He would not draw attention to himself.
Salute completed, the mourners filed away in small groups, escorted past the press lines. Optimus lingered beside Mirage, field extended around him. There had been no ripple in the Allspark. The Cube had been on this planet long enough to affect the dominant species’ evolution and development, and yet there seemed to be no deeper connection. Robert Epps had been in the Allspark chamber beneath Hoover Dam. He had seen Bumblebee call the cube to wakefulness and compress itself to a portable form. He had never once physically touched it before its ersatz destruction.
Theresa stood, supported by her daughters, and moved toward the limo waiting to take them to her daughter’s DC house, where extended family had prepared food and had the large guest list well in hand. She paused at a sound. Mirage knelt at the gravesite, his hard-edged feet and knee cutting into the lawn. He did not speak, made no further sound, but touched his chest, optics flickering. Prime and the other robots stood vigil, motionless.
She felt a momentary flare of anger. Where did this robot get off, playing at grief, flinging its motions of sorrow around like he was the only one affected. His kind didn’t even die, not really. He couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to lose someone utterly and completely. Forever.
That wasn’t true. He had seen more death than she could or wanted to imagine. The sure knowledge of pattern existence within the Allspark had only happened once Prime had put the shard in his chest. An unlooked-for boon.
Changing course, daughters in tow, she approached, smiling because with his legs folded like this he was only a little taller than she. “He was an old, old man, Mir,” she said, laying her hand on the robot’s shoulder. “A lot older than he expected to get, back when he was in Combat Control. You helped keep him safe. You gave him years he might not have had, and I thank you for that.”
Mirage met her eyes. The mechanisms in his optics whirled, the light flickered. “I am very sorry for your loss,” he whispered. The odd burr in his voice held harmonics and subharmonics she knew she couldn’t decode, but his meaning seemed clear, alien robot or no. “It has been an honor and a pleasure serving with Bobby, and protecting his family.”
Saved by polite formulae, she thought. Oh, Mirage. She lifted her hand from his shoulder to his face, touching the smooth, mobile plates as she had rarely done, marveling at the feeling of warmth, the almost imperceptible thrum beneath the careful stillness meant to prevent fragile human skin from being caught or cut by the metal. Mirage had always been more scrupulously careful than her husband.
They had discovered that the invisibility suit, if worn often or over too long a period of time consecutively or cumulatively, interfered with human nerve impulses and brain function. That project had been shelved for a long time, much to Bobby’s dismay. Bobby kept wanting to push the research further, test different models. Mirage had talked him out of it. The invisibility cloak was tricky enough on a mech. The Decepticons had never managed to duplicate the technology for good reason. Serendipity had, in a sense, been an inspired madmech.
The eldest daughter, Shareeka, the retired Congresswoman, mustered a smile. “You’ll still protect us, won’t you, Mir?” Mir’s head lifted, as she’d hoped it would.
“Of course I shall, Shari.”
The second eldest daughter, the retired professor, who often shortened her name to Shelley, after her favorite poet, added, “And our children. And our children’s children?”
“Unto the seventh generation,” Mirage agreed.
The third eldest went by her middle name, Jasmine, and liked how thereby she could go as “Jas”, moved around to Mirage’s other side and took his hand in both of hers. “I think you’re gonna need help with that. There’s only one of you, and there are almost as many great-grandkids as grandkids.”
“We will build more people to the purpose,” Prime said. He was so big it was easy to take his presence for granted, his legs just another pair of tree-trunks. “We may not be able to shadow every descendant, but perhaps they would not want that. We will, however, always keep an optic out for you and yours, for as long as any of us remain on this planet.”
The youngest, Mozambiqua, the artist, whose paintings Mirage had bought and shown around to various galleries until someone else had seen the beauty and soul in them and set her up with her first show, clicked at Mirage in the way he’d taught her when she was little, in the Cybertronian pidgin that meant I love you.
He clicked back and added the whistle-buzz endearment that meant “big as a country” which he’d concocted when she’d proudly explained her name to him.
“You’re part of our family, too, Mirage,” Theresa said. “You and Hound and Prime and the others.” She patted his arm. “Don’t be strangers. Come down to the house, at least for a little while.”
“It’ll blow Aunt Marigold’s mind,” Mozambiqua giggled, sounding like a little girl of twelve again. Her sisters rolled their eyes but they laughed too.
Mirage smiled. “Thank you.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Colorado Springs.
Theresa looked out the window and saw it wasn’t just Mirage, but Hound and Wheeljack and Cliffjumper and Arcee and Prowl. Just there. As weeks and months passed, gradually it was only two or three of them, then only one or two of them, but it was never none of them. Sometimes Countermeasure joined them, since he’d come home. She didn’t want to be involved with the decantation, she didn’t want him to wait; he wouldn’t be Bobby. He wasn’t hers.
My copy might choose whatever she chooses, that’s got nothing to do with me, Theresa thought, her eyes and hands cold as the high mountain air. I would like to believe in human souls, but right now I just don’t.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Like Lennox, Epps had had some specific ideas ahead of time regarding how he wanted his future robot-self’s body built. His choices had been less insistent, though; stating a Prowl and Prime merge would do if his first choice of pair was unwilling. (Prowl thought another merge with Prime was a lovely, tactically sound idea, even if the first pair was willing. Prime allowed that he was easily persuaded to admit that he agreed.)
“Mir, we don’t have to.”
Blue and green. They were balled together, intertwined, like the globe of a water planet, oceans and continents mapped by limbs and torsos, sparks turned innermost, a molten, dynamo core.
Mirage let glyphs flow across the cables rather than spoken comm. Cubes and spheres of poetry danced and tumbled in imagined spaces, blending colors as their arrangements and meanings shifted. Poetry of grieving, poetry celebrating the newly kindled. A small, bright sphere Mirage himself had composed the first draft of at Countermeasure’s decantation. He was still fiddling with it, and presented Hound with the latest iteration.
I’m worried, too, Hound reassured him, taking in the poetry sphere as though taking in a new spark. We’ll be putting the engrams of a soldier in with a spark from you and I.
“He wasn’t only a soldier,” Mirage said. He lifted his head, attempted a smile. “He was a father, husband, teacher, leader, friend. And a pretty good basketball player.” The wraith of a smile faded, and Mirage began to keen, resting his helm again on Hound’s shoulder. He would go along thinking he had come to terms with his friend’s death, and then suddenly…he really hadn’t. And maybe it wasn’t only Epps he was mourning. Lennox, too, and Keller, and all the lost here on Earth, and all the multitudes lost on Cybertron and everywhere else their war had taken them, raining destruction and death on anyone with the misfortune to be in the vicinity.
But you didn’t always get what you expected when you made new people. That was still true, and Mirage tried to take comfort in that. They were making new people not to continue the war, but in hopes of surviving to see the end of it at last, and rebuilding their world. The moving of Cybertron would happen soon, if all went well.
Hound rocked him gently, until long after the keening stopped.
…
Bittersweet as it was, Hound had to admit doing this with Mirage really turned him on. He kissed Mir deeply, kept kissing him, pressing him into the table, hands frantic, almost slippery with desire. Primus, he almost didn’t care if they merged now or not, any excuse to see/feel Mir’s spark would do. Any excuse to touch Mirage, to feel Mirage touching him with equal passion.
“There they go again,” Ratchet sighed.
“You don’t have a single romantic strut in your body,” Ironhide chided.
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
Optimus interposed himself between the couple on the table and the arguing friends. Not that Mirage and Hound seemed to have noticed. Prowl was on another table, fingertips pressed to the helm vent that rose between the blades of his chevron. The moment Hound and Mirage were finished, Prime and Prowl would start.
Polychrest gently pushed Ratchet and Ironhide to one side, without interrupting their tiff, and completed the preparation of both growth tanks. Of the same frame-type as Lifeline, she was the progeny of Tracks and Sunstreaker - much to everyone’s surprise, including Tracks and Sunstreaker. Decanted eight years previously, she had spent most of her time with the Protectobots, learning human medicine, but had recently decided to attach herself to Ratchet and gain more experience with the robot end of things. Grinning, she tugged at Optimus’ hand, drawing him over to the table where Prowl perched. “Go ahead,” she told them. “Chances are the ignitions will not happen simultaneously even if you were trying for that, and there are plenty of hands around for catching.” She kissed both of them and withdrew, shifting her primary focus to Mirage and Hound, who were further along now. They had done this before, though not in grief, but in hope of renewal.
Copper and pale green light flickered across the room, striking every high point, reflecting in the tank walls and on multiple planes of armor. Hound and Mirage swayed in their embrace, faces lifted to the unseen sky. They were deep now, despite Ratchet’s misgivings; their fingers were locked on each other, their cables taut, hot with the speed of the exchange. They fell deeper, wingless into the plane of choosing, surrounded by glittering gems or stars of every color. They held each other close, their coronae waving gently, beckoning between them. Who would answer? Who would choose to spring to life in care of the memories they wished to house?
A low, chuckling note rose. They turned and saw a sky-blue spark, like afternoon after a storm, pulsing strongly. They reached out, it reached out, all were caught in the spinning and the sudden rapturous collapse; and Mirage keened, but he sang, too, for the gift given and received.
With eager hands Prowl drew Optimus atop him. The one spark Prowl never hesitated to bare himself to; each joining brought another measure of healing; his mistakes and omissions were again forgiven and his pain soothed. An aching void existed within Optimus, which could not be filled, but the edges could be smoothed, his longing for a dangerous being met and matched. Their mouths devoured each other, their hands more fevered than gentle. Their chests opened before they had cables seated, Optimus pressing down over Prowl, who arched up and into him, the blinding lights of them nearly hidden by their overlapping armor. Prowl singing led their dive and, rather than one, seven stars answered, drawn by his voice, woven by his spark and Prime’s. Room was made beside Prime’s composite spark while more tanks were initialized, the seven humming and bouncing together happily so near their larger parent.
Prowl’s optics cycled wide and bright before he flickered out and offline, cradled limp and utterly trusting in Prime’s arms, his lightly-scarred chest remaining open so that his spark could provide some heat as well to keep the new ones warm.
Polychrest sent glyphs of joy and wonder blooming across the secure levels of the cloud mind. She wanted to tell everyone, everyone. How could they keep this secret from those who loved Prowl and Mirage so? It was hard to predict how the Seekers would react, but she thought Scavenger…and maybe Hook…would be delighted; and maybe they could ease their brothers into the knowledge, with the sweet enticement that their species would not slowly linger and die. They were freed from reliance on the Allspark as well. But it wasn’t her secret alone to share, and she and Ratchet had enough to do, right now, to prepare the tanks and enough protomass for eight instead of two.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2077 - March
They laid her to rest beside her husband at Arlington, but the spouse of the Chairman did not rate, per human custom, the same fanfare. No gun salute. And perhaps that was appropriate. Sarah’s business of life, her career, all the other tasks and arts and celebrations that had made up her life had not involved guns. She had been a staunch supporter of her husband and the armed forces, but she had not formally been a soldier herself. There were many other things to be, on Earth.
Ranger locked his joints, overwhelmed with conflicting feelings of grief and anticipation. Both felt right, and yet were they not mutually exclusive? Ratchet and Ironhide stood close beside him. Annabelle was at his feet, one hand pressed to the warm metal of his armor, her family around her. Was she an orphan now, or not? She had shed her tears, and there remained formalities to get through before her life could resume its course. Funny way to put that. Wasn’t death and loss as much a part of a normal life as all the other things people took for granted? Everyone had to face these things eventually, there was nothing off course about it.
Nick patted Ranger’s other shin awkwardly. She was…is a great lady, he said, double-checking to make sure he had the correct private channel. He hadn’t grown up with this kind of communication, but he did his best. Or will be again. Sorry, sorry, I…don’t know how to phrase this?
No one else does either, Ranger assured him. And thank you. She is. Was. Will be. I don’t know what she will be. It’ll be interesting.
Nick tried not to grin. The services were over. There was to be a Wake back at the farm in Nevada. All the human guests here who would be attending there would get rides on the deltas along with the robots. For most of Sarah’s extended family and Army friends this would be a unique experience. Whatever she’ll be, I bet the Autobots aren’t ready.
Heh. Ranger did smile, and gazed up at the mare’s-tail clouds.
…
The friendship between Sarah and Perceptor had been a quiet thing, little noticed by any besides the two of them. During and after Mikaela’s first pregnancy they had exchanged email steadily and extensively, as Perceptor asked hundreds of questions and Sarah shared the kind of on-the-ground insider info not found in the multitudes of childcare books and websites. Ranger had sort of known this, but he was nevertheless surprised to find out which pair of robots Sarah had asked to spark the body that would house her mindstate engrams. Sarah had used to call Perceptor “Octomom”.
It seemed kind of offhand and, well, rude that “her” body would be just one of Perceptor and Beachcomber’s latest - their seventh - batch. But this was what Sarah had wanted.
Rows and rows of translucent cylinders hummed, glowing softly. Perceptor and Beachcomber were still offline, on the nearby table. Ranger felt like an intruder, embarrassed though he hadn’t been in here for the actual kindling. Miles had let him in and now stood up on the catwalk, gazing down at the sleeping robots more than the tanks. Hers was the first from the left, at the front. Ranger touched the plex. Retaining the human reflex to reach out with hands, even when other senses would bring him a clearer knowledge. The protomass coil hid the new spark completely, and didn’t yet look like much of anything other than a cloudy, wispy yet somehow also very solid, metallic tornado-shaped column. The Tasmanian Devil in freeze-frame, Ranger thought. Only this Taz was about twelve feet tall, counting the long, droopy line of tail. No eyes looked back at him, no head, no hands reached out to complete his gesture.
Gestation unhidden inside the mother’s womb. Vulnerable, exposed, every mysterious step of development readily dissectable. Ranger extended the tips of his denta, then hastily retracted them. Vulnerable-looking maybe. Plex wasn’t glass, and the walls of the chamber were reinforced granite about a mile thick, sunk into the batholith that made up this part of the Cascade Range. Guarded by a dozen veteran warfighters, or more, and by - once he woke from his post-merge haze - Seekerbane himself, who was as fierce a mamma bear as anyone could want.
I wouldn’t want to tangle with him, even at close range, Ironhide agreed, from the embassy. Ranger chuckled. Ironhide meant to reassure his nervous progeny no doubt, but Ranger had felt Perceptor’s fields whenever anyone called him Seekerbane or praised his fighting prowess. Being one of the most feared Autobots on this or any other planet was a dubious honor Perceptor would rather do without.
End the damn war, Ranger thought, keeping it behind firewalls. End the war and Percy could go back to science full time. Ranger had never been a civilian, but he could feel the longing in many of the Autobots who had.
…
2077 - April
Warm.
Floating.
Awareness of changes in light and dark came gradually, like the awareness of self, of body. Arms and legs, head and torso. Voices, muffled but familiar. It was, he thought later, a long while before he listened hard enough to hear the actual words. For a long while the hum of voices had been enough. There were names he knew, slowly working his way around to the concept of names. Did he have a name? Maybe not yet. Fields were next, winding and looping in and out of range, overlapping each other and him. Two fields were there most often. He knew them, knew their voices, knew their names though he couldn’t think of what they were, and that didn’t bother him. He knew that he knew them and they loved him and that was the only important thing for now.
For now he had growing to do. He stretched a little, it felt good, and he slipped back into the warm dark.
…
The scale shift, once he was awake enough to notice it, was probably the weirdest thing. Looking through the warp of the curved tank wall, he had not been certain that what he saw was not a funhouse distortion. When he at last stepped down out of the tank into Mirage’s arms, feeling Mirage’s welcoming song through his whole body, it was strange to be the same height, a similar build, though he had made the decision himself.
Hound touched the glyphs on the newly hardened helm - a small line of symbols following the temporal curve, which designated Hound and Mirage’s names, enameled in green and blue - and wrapped his arms around both of them. There were things he understood about Hound and Mirage now. Things he’d talked with Smokescreen and others about once his comm systems had developed in the tank. Other things he understood now that his own chest contained the fusion core of a full-grown spark.
He’d picked an alt mode already, the latest Ferrari in glossy black, which Hound had gone out and scanned for him. The file was ready whenever he wanted it, but he found he agreed with Ratchet’s suggestion. He’d get used to his protoform body first before messing around with transforming. That had served Borealis and Ranger well enough.
As Ranger before him had noted, Prime was still a big guy. And there was a lot going on in those big fields and big voice that he didn’t completely understand even though now he could hear and feel more of them.
“Picked a name yet?” Ranger asked.
“You don’t have to,” Mirage told him softly. “Many people wait until they’ve been in the world a while.”
“Did you?” he asked. It was a thing he didn’t know about Mirage, even though the memories in the center of his memory core told him he’d known Mirage for decades.
“Yes,” Mirage said. “Fourteen voors after coming down off the kindling platform I named myself after the sound of the wind through the Towers.”
“Fourteen voors…” Ranger was doing math. “That’s almost 23 years, Mir! Jeez, what’d people call you until then? ‘Hey You’?”
Hound laughed. “Kind of. There’s a sort of ‘unchosen’ pronoun. Um, not used very much outside the Towers. A couple levels more polite than ‘Hey You’, but basically that idea.”
“I’m not gonna wait 23 years,” the newspark said. “I’m…” He was thinking. Whoa was he thinking! That was fast. “I’m Rain.”
"Rain, huh? I thought you were going to call yourself 'Left Cheek'."
Rain made a slapping motion at Ranger's head. "Ha ha."
“Noted and logged,” Optimus said, smiling, his fields embracing his people. “Be welcome, Rain!”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2077 - September
“I’m going to see Theresa, did you want to come along?”
A Ferrari and a…Mirage had cycled back to the Bugattis, though no longer a Veyron. The Volare was a fine ride if you had the money. Damn thing was practically mag-lev compatible and that was even without Mir’s Cybertronian extras.
“Sure,” Rain said, happy for the chance to go driving with his progenitor. Theresa…Theresa… Rain had not seen her since…the hospital? The floor at home? It had been two years. He was suddenly nervous.
It was a long drive, north and east, over the Rockies. They timed it so that they arrived early the next morning. Theresa had kept their house in Colorado Springs even during and after Bobby’s stint as the Secretary of Defense. She had been of no mind to rebuild her career a third time and she didn’t like DC.
“A Ferrari!” Theresa said, laughing as she came out to meet them. “You show-off. I didn’t know they came in black.” She walked around Rain, admiring as he flexed his rearview mirrors. “I thought you were going to be a jet.”
Rain giggled. And extended the small wings from beneath his car frame. “I am.”
Theresa laughed. “Like Tracks! Clever!” Rain bounced on his wheels.
Not forgetting her other visitor, Theresa walked around the Volare as well. “Hello, Mirage, that’s a lovely alt, too. You always do pick such beautiful cars. Are the seats heated?”
“For you they are.” Mirage transformed. The neighborhood was mostly retirees these days; not that Mirage minded very much being mobbed by excited children and envious teenagers. “Would you like a ride or shall we trim the trees first?”
“Oh, I suppose the trees need it worse than I need to try to sink my bum down into those low seats, heated or not.” The last two wind storms had left quite a scattering of small branches and twigs over the roof and yard, and there were several more dangling, just waiting to fall on unwary humans or cars. “Ping me when you’re done; I have the book picked out.”
“I will.” Mirage waved as she retreated into the house.
“Seriously?” Rain asked. “You drive your aft all the way up here to do yard work?”
“Oh yes,” Mirage said. The only problem was he did tend to get distracted by trying to rake the leaves into complex fractal swirls, and then a car would drive by and he’d realize he’d been raking for ten hours and he’d gone up and down the street and raked the neighbors’ leaves too. “Pick your targets.” Small laser pistols transformed out of Mirage’s forearms. Rain’s optics widened, but this game he could get into!
He stood back-to-back with Mirage, finding all the damaged ends and hanging branches in his view, queuing them up in his targeting field. He only had one laser pistol as yet but that just meant he had to try to be twice as fast.
“Ready?”
Rain nodded.
“Scanned for humans?”
“Oh.”
“And birds?”
“Um. …Yep.”
“Steady…and…fire!”
A fine scattering fan of bright blue flickered around them, followed by a deluge of wood chips and branches. Rain whooped and cackled and bounced around helping Mirage gather the debris into a pile in the back yard. Once they’d repeated the trick in the back they used their lasers again to chop the pile into fine mulch, which they piled around the roses. Theresa liked to trim those herself.
Mirage knelt by the side door to the garage and hummed at the lock, which clicked open. Reaching inside, he retrieved a pair of fan-shaped rakes. The handles were made of closet rods reinforced with fiberglass tape; longer and wider than normal, but still a bit small in the robots’ hands. Rain followed him to the front yard.
Theresa came back out with a blanket, a steaming cup of something fragrant that Rain found he could no longer identify by scent, and a scroll-shaped reader. She arranged herself comfortably on the porch swing and smiled at Mirage. “Ready?”
“We are,” Mirage said, saluting.
“The Door In the Air,” Theresa read, “by Margaret Mahy. ‘The girl on the trapeze was called Aquilina, which means “little eagle”. When she was born her mother had tossed her lightly over to her father, and her father, the trapeze master of the famous acrobat circus, caught the new baby and then held her up high, offering her back to the air…’”
Rain looked from the human, who was old and seemed frail, but whose voice carried strong and vibrant to them out in the yard, to Mirage, who was much older but felt strong to Rain’s sensors, delicately wielding a toy-sized rake, listening intently to the human’s voice. The swirly piles of leaves began to take on the flow and rhythm of the story - flying high, chasing through enchanted woods, diving through starry portals. When that story was finished, Theresa continued on to the next, and the next - they were quite short stories - until all the leaves were bundled into the compost bins or tucked around other plants as insulation for the cold weather that was coming soon.
Mirage stowed the rakes and extended a blade from his left wrist. “Penstemon,” he said, pointing at each plant that needed cutting back. “Lamb’s ears, coreopsis, achillea, agastache, hens and chicks, the sad little yucca in the corner, and the artemesias. Right?”
“Yes. I got the lavender and the columbines the other day.” Theresa crossed her arms. “And shut up about the yucca.” Mirage could keep his editorial comments to himself. Mozambiqua had planted it there and there it could stay. It was alive. It was fine. He smirked at her and she didn’t fight too hard to keep the corner of her mouth from quirking back.
Rain shook his head. Weren’t there more important things for robots like them to do? Shouldn’t they be out hunting Decepticons? Maybe, though, this was important to Mirage.
As they finished with the plants, and Theresa finished the last story in the little collection, Rain began to tremble, staring at his hands wrapped around the bundle of yucca stalks he was carrying to the compost.
“These ain’t my hands.” He was shaking hard, and it felt like his fuel was on fire in his lines. “These ain’t my feet!”
“Oh no,” Theresa whispered, leaping to her feet, letting the blanket fall to the flagstone porch floor.
“There we go,” Mirage said in gentle satisfaction as he gathered Rain into his arms. “Five or six months after decantation seems to be the usual time when integration begins.” He ignored Ratchet’s yelling and I-told-you-sos.
“And you dragged him out here when he was due? Mirage!”
Mirage had the feeling she would have called him by his full name if she’d been able to make the sounds, and smacked him with a dishtowel. Her hands were on her hips. Blades was on his way to save both of them. “He will be fine,” Mirage said, hanging on tight and trying to soothe Rain’s fields with his own. They never kept new people bottled up just because they might go into integration; that would defeat the purpose and the process. Yes, one did not interface, but that was more about the safety of the interface partner or partners than an attempt to prevent integration altogether.
“He doesn’t look fine! I’m calling Prime.”
“Oh dear…”
The sound of chopper blades became audible, coming closer.
“That had better be Blades,” Theresa growled. It was. And First Aid, who plugged into Rain the moment he jumped down from his brother’s skid. Rain subsided into a quiet, woozy state that would help keep him safe and stable for the flight back to the embassy.
“Mir, stop fretting,” Aid said, patting him. “Hello, Theresa, how are you?”
“Never mind how I am, you get him home and safe!” The Cons could show up at any time and Rain would be too easy a target. What were those Bots thinking?
“They were not unaccompanied,” said a smallish, angular mech, stepping from around next-door’s garage. Six more joined her. Theresa wobbled, surprised and relieved at once. These must be the seven Prowl and Prime had kindled, that Borealis and Azimuth had dubbed the Pleiades. They were all je, like Arcee; black, silver, and white armored - and they had completed integration a month earlier. Their names came up on Theresa’s contact lenses: Midwife, Amber, Keryn, Kingfisher, Eclipse, Stareyed, Turnaway. Theresa wasn’t sure whether to take the translations as clever or cheeky. Probably they’d meant them to be both.
Mirage and Aid bundled Rain into Blades, waving as they took off. Six of the Pleiades melted back into their hiding places, but Keryn scooped up the scattered yucca stalks and placed them in the compost pile with a pat.
…
They took Rain down to the mossary, to the closest thing they had to a garden inside the embassy, under hundreds of feet of stone. They held him warm and safe and told him stories; told him, particularly, the story of their meeting, which was a story of the early days of the war. Not a story of the great commanders, but of confusion and fear, and how a small handful of them had survived to be the ones telling new sparks their stories.
Others came and went, joining voices and memories, holding Rain when Hound or Mirage needed rest, bringing energon in the tall aluminum glasses Rio had been making lately. Trying to recapture some shadow of the former ways of their people.
…
3.008 million years ago
“Beauteous morning, Serendipity,” Susurrus said, giving her a four-square of greeting-poetry glyphs suitable to a first-level acquaintance encountered unexpectedly but pleasantly with a crafted thread of subharmonics indicating Susurrus was particularly pleased to see her. Not only because he liked her and found her attractive - not all Towers mechs did - but because he had something specific he’d been wanting to speak with her about and wished to do so in the metal rather than by comms.
Serendipity looked out the arched windows, as if she hadn’t noticed whether it was a nice morning or not yet. They were two of only a few mechs up and about in the Towers after last night’s party. “Heya, Surr. What’s up?”
Pleased again by the informality, Susurrus smiled at her. “I have a project in mind, a present for Pellucid, who commissioned my creation, requiring your unique sensibilities and creativity. I admired the work you did for the Pan-Canyon Garden very much. The juxtaposition of such vivid blue and orange crystals was strikingly lovely. I know it’s a simple direct complementary pair, but the gradations and texture contrast added-”
“Hang on, Surr. Uh, you’ve got a flight mode, don’t you?” Something about her tone and harmonics was jarringly off. Susurrus was trying to process what it was exactly when she grabbed him. Tucking him under her arm, she ran.
“Forgive me, Serendipity, but…?”
“Explain later; hold still!” Serendipity pounded up the largely ceremonial spiral ramp that led to Iridium Tower’s peak. She ran faster. Three stories from the top, she veered off onto the southern balcony, facing the canyon that separated the Towers from the Universities. The first explosions bloomed far below and to the east.
“What…oh, no!” Susurrus murmured, watching in horror, feeling the fear and cries and panic rising in the cloud mind. Something must have gone very wrong at Hydrogen University. There seemed to be a chain reaction of explosions. People…oh no…people were dying! How could this be happening? The loss of Altihex had been horrible enough - and Susurrus firmly believed it was some terrorist remnant from the Penstirachtatoriafelexians, not, as some were claiming, a renegade shard of the Cybertronian military - but now this! What a dreadful voor it was turning out to be.
Serendipity was inexplicably emptying her caches. Susurrus was distracted from his inner thoughts by the striking amount and variety of the objects she was dumping on the mosaic floor.
“You have a flight mode,” she said, looking intently at him. “Little theta class Seeker-type, yeah?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with…oh good the rescue coalitions are arriving already.” He read the growing list of the deactivated on the public site in the cloud. “That can’t be right. Oh no, not Telearc, she was such a dear when Panorama had her up for a lecture on pan-dimensional hyperflexions last vorn!”
“Surr! Listen to me!” Evidently having completed her mysterious purge, Serendipity grabbed Susurrus’ shoulders and shook him, bending low to stare into his optics. “Pay attention! They’re bombing the Towers and the Universities! It’s not an accident; we’re under attack!”
“Impossible…”
She shook him harder and spoke very quickly. “It’s happening! Empty your caches! I’m sorry I’m so heavy, but I’ve calculated you should be able to carry me for short distances. We’re going to launch from here and make for a cavern I found on the far side of the canyon, below and east of the Universities. Hurry!”
She looked so upset and so earnest, Susurrus began to almost believe her. He opened his largest cache and removed the decorative vials of vintage high-grade, setting them carefully on the floor.
“Faster, Surr!”
Another boom sounded, shaking Iridium Tower itself. Susurrus began emptying his caches as quickly as Serendipity had, hesitating over the moon-flower gem Pellucid had given him on his kindling day. He had always meant to have it set into his exoskeleton, but could never decide on the perfect placement and design.
“Surr!”
He dropped the gem in the pile, staring up at Serendipity with wide optics, feeling hollowed out and cold. He swayed as the Tower shook again.
“Transform!”
He obeyed, moving to the balcony edge that lacked a railing, meant for landings and take-offs. Serendipity climbed onto his dorsal hull, gripping hard with hands and feet and an accessory pair of mid-trunk limbs he hadn’t known she had.
“Steady, Surr,” she whispered. “Wait…wait…”
After all her rushing and running and chivvying, this was incomprehensible piled on confusing. Susurrus shifted his mass forward, staring almost numbly at the gold and orange and red and black of the explosions and fires consuming the Universities. Chunks of architecture and people with flailing limbs were falling into the canyon. He closed his connection to the cloud mind, closed off the screams of the dying. Something inside him was breaking. He gripped the edge of the balcony with his landing gear.
“NOW!” Serendipity shouted.
He flung himself into the air, engines laboring. They dropped like the flailing scientists into the canyon. His body jerked as Serendipity did something with her armor, lifting and spreading the largest plates to give them more lift. He channeled more power from his spark to his engines as she cabled to him and chirped him the coordinates. He could see it now, as they continued to drop, almost missing the cavern entrance entirely. He clawed for more speed, just a little more altitude.
They were nearly across, but still too low.
I’m sorry, Surr, Serendipity whispered. Her grip on his frame loosened.
Don’t! Don’t leave me! Susurrus cried, cutting power to secondary systems and overriding safeties. Serendipity hesitated, then clamped down again as they slammed into the far side of the canyon four spans below the lip of the cavern entrance. In the instant before they began to fall, she let go with her pectoral limbs, grabbing at the compressed rock with her hands while still clinging to Susurrus with her feet and accessory claspers. Hand over hand she pulled them up and into the cavern mouth.
Susurrus collapsed into bipedal mode, losing consciousness as his spark contracted and the power routing safeties reset themselves.
…
Darkness. The faint thrum of another’s spark beneath the armor beneath his cheek plate. Warm arms around him. Cold air heavy with particulates and oxidative products. Pain warnings from joints and transformation seams and parts of him he only used in flight mode. What had happened?
He lit his optics, shifting through spectra until he found one that enabled him to see. He couldn’t feel any radiation except what he and Serendipity were putting out, and that was minimal. He couldn’t hear the stars. How far under the surface were they? His gravitational sensors weren’t that good; he couldn’t tell from the feel of the mass above them or the slight decrease in gravity as one drew nearer the planet’s core by however small a span.
There you are, Serendipity tight-beamed. I was beginning to worry.
Susurrus let his head fall back onto her chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so tired. He could tell he was deliberately avoiding certain thought cascades. He’d partitioned his recent memory. He decided not to delve into that yet. “Where are we?”
“Old tunnels,” she told him. “Three or four layers down, depending. I guess speaking aloud is better than comms at that. No one’s likely to come down here hunting us. Hm. Unless a lot of other people head down here to escape, too.”
“Do you have any energon?” he asked faintly. Things were shutting down again. He should have stayed in recharge longer. He needed to defrag and dump static but couldn’t muster the energy to think of which set of interface request glyphs would be most suitable.
“No. I’m sorry. I should have let you keep that fancy stuff you had in your cache. We could have used that. Slag.”
“Ah. Yes.” He fell back into recharge.
…
Darkness. Motion, vibration, the soft hum of a highly efficient engine being run as silently as possible. He was being carried in someone’s - oh, Serendipity - vehicle mode. His spark felt better, spinning regular and steady, adding energy to the energon in his lines now instead of pulling it in to keep itself going. Why had it been doing that? “Se…ren…di…” His vocoder was mis-timing. She stopped and transformed, lifting him in her arms as he tried again. “Serendipity?”
“How’re you feeling?”
“I…need to…” There were so many ways to ask. The static fritzing through his head wouldn’t let him think properly. He couldn’t choose the right request. Something of his wishes must have gotten through, however. Serendipity whirred contemplatively, striding a further distance before sitting down and settling Susurrus onto her lap.
She stroked his helm and the small of his back, the gimbals of his shoulders and hips, seeking tender places, rubbing quickly to build charge hot and fast. He had never felt the need for overload as so starkly a physical thing before. His body convulsed, joints grinding, and overload slammed through him, knocking him offline. He rebooted quickly.
“Thank you,” he said, at something of a loss. “Do you…?”
“No, I defragged and grounded earlier. Can you roll? If we can get another couple of millidegrees farther east I think there’s an old tunnel that might still run clear through to Iacon.”
Susurrus transformed to his ground mode and followed as Serendipity took off. He would have liked to at least enjoy each other’s heat for a few breems, but she seemed to be in a hurry. Why are we going to Iacon?
Prime’s there, she replied, as if that explained everything. We’re at war, Surr. This is for real. Transformer against Transformer. In all of Cybertron’s long history, they had never taken to slaughtering each other in large numbers. There had never been a civil war before now. Many people might have thought that Serendipity only paid attention to the arts and sciences within whose spheres she was most active. But she had been paying attention in a quiet way to the political disarray the last Penstirachtatoriafelexian war had left them in, and the responses of Lord Protector and Prime and Council. She had friends in high places, or at least acquaintances. She’d been watching and drawing her own conclusions. It wasn’t fair to compare theirs to other civilizations, but some things seemed more common than others. Cybertron had just taken a lot longer to get around to the more self-destructive ones.
Yes, but…if everything is…if we’re at war, wouldn’t it be safer to take shelter with the military until things settle down?
Surr, it was the military who bombed the Towers and Universities. And I’m betting it was the military who killed Altihex, too. I know it’s a terrible thought, but something’s wrong with the Lord Protector. Maybe something’s been wrong for a long time, I don’t know.
No, no, that was pirates. Or the remnants of the Penstir fleet. Serendipity, there’s never been a civil war on Cybertron. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re all too connected.
…All right. But either way, we’re more likely to find safety in Iacon, and it’s closer than Kaon or Praxus. She wished she thought they could make it to Praxus. If anywhere would remain a bastion of reason and considered action it would be there.
You’re right. Susurrus felt uneasy but it was better to stick together until they could find out what was really going on. If you’re thinking about the tunnel I think you are, though, we should turn left here. The access further on collapsed about a voor ago.
Serendipity chuckled. Left it is. I’m sorry, Surr, I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t know your way around down here. Towers mechs never stay in the Towers, right?
Correct!
…
Second half
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R just in case
Characters/Pairing(s): Epps and family, Mirage, Hound, Wheeljack, ensemble; Mirage/OCs, Mirage/Hound
Warnings: Character death, angst, robot snuggles (PnP, tactile, sparks), OCs, OC death
Summary: Wherein Mirage has difficulty dealing with Epps’ passing, a new Autobot carries human memories, Mirage rakes leaves, and Hound and Mirage tell stories.
Notes: All right, there’s going to be a part 5. ^^; This section is already pretty big. Music for the flashback sequence - at least the beginning - Kingdom Come by The Civil Wars.
~16K words.
Part I
Part II
Part III
BOREALIS: Heartlines - Part IV
2075 - May
The transmission from Colorado didn’t make any sense. Bobby Epps had been taken to the hospital last night and died. He’d only been 92. Mirage blinked at the connection he’d been bolting on the new space station. It didn’t make any sense. Someone must have their wires crossed.
…
“Sir, I’m sorry, but there’s no mistake.” The nurse on the other end of the line was professionally polite. “I can’t release any other information.”
Mirage closed the connection, staring at the electronic records he’d lifted from the hospital server without thinking. Time of death: 04:37 AM. Cause of death: heart failure. Nonsense. A ridiculous finding. Hadn’t they done an autopsy?
“Mir,” said Hound. “They call it ‘natural causes’. He was old.”
“No. Not yet, it’s too soon! He wasn’t that old!” Hound put a hand on his shoulder. Mirage ignored the gesture. Not just ignored, was simply unaware of. Hound maintained the contact anyway. I thought…I thought he’d have another ten years, maybe twenty. It’s too soon! We weren’t…we weren’t done…
Mechs gathered but didn’t interfere. Wheeljack and Smokescreen; close by and watching.
“We have his mindstate,” Hound reminded him. Bobby had been good about letting them update his scans regularly.
“What does that matter?” Mirage whispered. “It’s not the same!”
“No,” Hound agreed. “No. But it’s something.” It was more than they’d ever had before, of ephemeral friends in the past. What would Seaspray or Jazz give, to ride the wake of Vector Prime’s sword and collect a scan of Alana or Talaria? Beachcomber accepted people as they were, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been sad to lose S’Teth, Glllksassaa and Reyyidh, too.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Arlington National Cemetery. Nineteen guns for a former Secretary of Defense. Another eulogy, another missing man formation. Mirage engaged his articulation locks as the casket was lowered. They were not burying his friend alive. His friend wasn’t alive. A quick scan would tell him that, but he did not want to scan what was in the coffin.
No. He did not want to search the internet. Autolysis begins almost immediately after death. The use of embalming agents had been summarily forbidden in 2037. He did not want to recall detailed biochemical information gleaned from Hound and Perceptor and Ratchet. The microorganisms in the gut… No. He would not react. He would not draw attention to himself.
Salute completed, the mourners filed away in small groups, escorted past the press lines. Optimus lingered beside Mirage, field extended around him. There had been no ripple in the Allspark. The Cube had been on this planet long enough to affect the dominant species’ evolution and development, and yet there seemed to be no deeper connection. Robert Epps had been in the Allspark chamber beneath Hoover Dam. He had seen Bumblebee call the cube to wakefulness and compress itself to a portable form. He had never once physically touched it before its ersatz destruction.
Theresa stood, supported by her daughters, and moved toward the limo waiting to take them to her daughter’s DC house, where extended family had prepared food and had the large guest list well in hand. She paused at a sound. Mirage knelt at the gravesite, his hard-edged feet and knee cutting into the lawn. He did not speak, made no further sound, but touched his chest, optics flickering. Prime and the other robots stood vigil, motionless.
She felt a momentary flare of anger. Where did this robot get off, playing at grief, flinging its motions of sorrow around like he was the only one affected. His kind didn’t even die, not really. He couldn’t possibly understand what it was like to lose someone utterly and completely. Forever.
That wasn’t true. He had seen more death than she could or wanted to imagine. The sure knowledge of pattern existence within the Allspark had only happened once Prime had put the shard in his chest. An unlooked-for boon.
Changing course, daughters in tow, she approached, smiling because with his legs folded like this he was only a little taller than she. “He was an old, old man, Mir,” she said, laying her hand on the robot’s shoulder. “A lot older than he expected to get, back when he was in Combat Control. You helped keep him safe. You gave him years he might not have had, and I thank you for that.”
Mirage met her eyes. The mechanisms in his optics whirled, the light flickered. “I am very sorry for your loss,” he whispered. The odd burr in his voice held harmonics and subharmonics she knew she couldn’t decode, but his meaning seemed clear, alien robot or no. “It has been an honor and a pleasure serving with Bobby, and protecting his family.”
Saved by polite formulae, she thought. Oh, Mirage. She lifted her hand from his shoulder to his face, touching the smooth, mobile plates as she had rarely done, marveling at the feeling of warmth, the almost imperceptible thrum beneath the careful stillness meant to prevent fragile human skin from being caught or cut by the metal. Mirage had always been more scrupulously careful than her husband.
They had discovered that the invisibility suit, if worn often or over too long a period of time consecutively or cumulatively, interfered with human nerve impulses and brain function. That project had been shelved for a long time, much to Bobby’s dismay. Bobby kept wanting to push the research further, test different models. Mirage had talked him out of it. The invisibility cloak was tricky enough on a mech. The Decepticons had never managed to duplicate the technology for good reason. Serendipity had, in a sense, been an inspired madmech.
The eldest daughter, Shareeka, the retired Congresswoman, mustered a smile. “You’ll still protect us, won’t you, Mir?” Mir’s head lifted, as she’d hoped it would.
“Of course I shall, Shari.”
The second eldest daughter, the retired professor, who often shortened her name to Shelley, after her favorite poet, added, “And our children. And our children’s children?”
“Unto the seventh generation,” Mirage agreed.
The third eldest went by her middle name, Jasmine, and liked how thereby she could go as “Jas”, moved around to Mirage’s other side and took his hand in both of hers. “I think you’re gonna need help with that. There’s only one of you, and there are almost as many great-grandkids as grandkids.”
“We will build more people to the purpose,” Prime said. He was so big it was easy to take his presence for granted, his legs just another pair of tree-trunks. “We may not be able to shadow every descendant, but perhaps they would not want that. We will, however, always keep an optic out for you and yours, for as long as any of us remain on this planet.”
The youngest, Mozambiqua, the artist, whose paintings Mirage had bought and shown around to various galleries until someone else had seen the beauty and soul in them and set her up with her first show, clicked at Mirage in the way he’d taught her when she was little, in the Cybertronian pidgin that meant I love you.
He clicked back and added the whistle-buzz endearment that meant “big as a country” which he’d concocted when she’d proudly explained her name to him.
“You’re part of our family, too, Mirage,” Theresa said. “You and Hound and Prime and the others.” She patted his arm. “Don’t be strangers. Come down to the house, at least for a little while.”
“It’ll blow Aunt Marigold’s mind,” Mozambiqua giggled, sounding like a little girl of twelve again. Her sisters rolled their eyes but they laughed too.
Mirage smiled. “Thank you.”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Colorado Springs.
Theresa looked out the window and saw it wasn’t just Mirage, but Hound and Wheeljack and Cliffjumper and Arcee and Prowl. Just there. As weeks and months passed, gradually it was only two or three of them, then only one or two of them, but it was never none of them. Sometimes Countermeasure joined them, since he’d come home. She didn’t want to be involved with the decantation, she didn’t want him to wait; he wouldn’t be Bobby. He wasn’t hers.
My copy might choose whatever she chooses, that’s got nothing to do with me, Theresa thought, her eyes and hands cold as the high mountain air. I would like to believe in human souls, but right now I just don’t.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Like Lennox, Epps had had some specific ideas ahead of time regarding how he wanted his future robot-self’s body built. His choices had been less insistent, though; stating a Prowl and Prime merge would do if his first choice of pair was unwilling. (Prowl thought another merge with Prime was a lovely, tactically sound idea, even if the first pair was willing. Prime allowed that he was easily persuaded to admit that he agreed.)
“Mir, we don’t have to.”
Blue and green. They were balled together, intertwined, like the globe of a water planet, oceans and continents mapped by limbs and torsos, sparks turned innermost, a molten, dynamo core.
Mirage let glyphs flow across the cables rather than spoken comm. Cubes and spheres of poetry danced and tumbled in imagined spaces, blending colors as their arrangements and meanings shifted. Poetry of grieving, poetry celebrating the newly kindled. A small, bright sphere Mirage himself had composed the first draft of at Countermeasure’s decantation. He was still fiddling with it, and presented Hound with the latest iteration.
I’m worried, too, Hound reassured him, taking in the poetry sphere as though taking in a new spark. We’ll be putting the engrams of a soldier in with a spark from you and I.
“He wasn’t only a soldier,” Mirage said. He lifted his head, attempted a smile. “He was a father, husband, teacher, leader, friend. And a pretty good basketball player.” The wraith of a smile faded, and Mirage began to keen, resting his helm again on Hound’s shoulder. He would go along thinking he had come to terms with his friend’s death, and then suddenly…he really hadn’t. And maybe it wasn’t only Epps he was mourning. Lennox, too, and Keller, and all the lost here on Earth, and all the multitudes lost on Cybertron and everywhere else their war had taken them, raining destruction and death on anyone with the misfortune to be in the vicinity.
But you didn’t always get what you expected when you made new people. That was still true, and Mirage tried to take comfort in that. They were making new people not to continue the war, but in hopes of surviving to see the end of it at last, and rebuilding their world. The moving of Cybertron would happen soon, if all went well.
Hound rocked him gently, until long after the keening stopped.
…
Bittersweet as it was, Hound had to admit doing this with Mirage really turned him on. He kissed Mir deeply, kept kissing him, pressing him into the table, hands frantic, almost slippery with desire. Primus, he almost didn’t care if they merged now or not, any excuse to see/feel Mir’s spark would do. Any excuse to touch Mirage, to feel Mirage touching him with equal passion.
“There they go again,” Ratchet sighed.
“You don’t have a single romantic strut in your body,” Ironhide chided.
“You’re a fine one to talk.”
Optimus interposed himself between the couple on the table and the arguing friends. Not that Mirage and Hound seemed to have noticed. Prowl was on another table, fingertips pressed to the helm vent that rose between the blades of his chevron. The moment Hound and Mirage were finished, Prime and Prowl would start.
Polychrest gently pushed Ratchet and Ironhide to one side, without interrupting their tiff, and completed the preparation of both growth tanks. Of the same frame-type as Lifeline, she was the progeny of Tracks and Sunstreaker - much to everyone’s surprise, including Tracks and Sunstreaker. Decanted eight years previously, she had spent most of her time with the Protectobots, learning human medicine, but had recently decided to attach herself to Ratchet and gain more experience with the robot end of things. Grinning, she tugged at Optimus’ hand, drawing him over to the table where Prowl perched. “Go ahead,” she told them. “Chances are the ignitions will not happen simultaneously even if you were trying for that, and there are plenty of hands around for catching.” She kissed both of them and withdrew, shifting her primary focus to Mirage and Hound, who were further along now. They had done this before, though not in grief, but in hope of renewal.
Copper and pale green light flickered across the room, striking every high point, reflecting in the tank walls and on multiple planes of armor. Hound and Mirage swayed in their embrace, faces lifted to the unseen sky. They were deep now, despite Ratchet’s misgivings; their fingers were locked on each other, their cables taut, hot with the speed of the exchange. They fell deeper, wingless into the plane of choosing, surrounded by glittering gems or stars of every color. They held each other close, their coronae waving gently, beckoning between them. Who would answer? Who would choose to spring to life in care of the memories they wished to house?
A low, chuckling note rose. They turned and saw a sky-blue spark, like afternoon after a storm, pulsing strongly. They reached out, it reached out, all were caught in the spinning and the sudden rapturous collapse; and Mirage keened, but he sang, too, for the gift given and received.
With eager hands Prowl drew Optimus atop him. The one spark Prowl never hesitated to bare himself to; each joining brought another measure of healing; his mistakes and omissions were again forgiven and his pain soothed. An aching void existed within Optimus, which could not be filled, but the edges could be smoothed, his longing for a dangerous being met and matched. Their mouths devoured each other, their hands more fevered than gentle. Their chests opened before they had cables seated, Optimus pressing down over Prowl, who arched up and into him, the blinding lights of them nearly hidden by their overlapping armor. Prowl singing led their dive and, rather than one, seven stars answered, drawn by his voice, woven by his spark and Prime’s. Room was made beside Prime’s composite spark while more tanks were initialized, the seven humming and bouncing together happily so near their larger parent.
Prowl’s optics cycled wide and bright before he flickered out and offline, cradled limp and utterly trusting in Prime’s arms, his lightly-scarred chest remaining open so that his spark could provide some heat as well to keep the new ones warm.
Polychrest sent glyphs of joy and wonder blooming across the secure levels of the cloud mind. She wanted to tell everyone, everyone. How could they keep this secret from those who loved Prowl and Mirage so? It was hard to predict how the Seekers would react, but she thought Scavenger…and maybe Hook…would be delighted; and maybe they could ease their brothers into the knowledge, with the sweet enticement that their species would not slowly linger and die. They were freed from reliance on the Allspark as well. But it wasn’t her secret alone to share, and she and Ratchet had enough to do, right now, to prepare the tanks and enough protomass for eight instead of two.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2077 - March
They laid her to rest beside her husband at Arlington, but the spouse of the Chairman did not rate, per human custom, the same fanfare. No gun salute. And perhaps that was appropriate. Sarah’s business of life, her career, all the other tasks and arts and celebrations that had made up her life had not involved guns. She had been a staunch supporter of her husband and the armed forces, but she had not formally been a soldier herself. There were many other things to be, on Earth.
Ranger locked his joints, overwhelmed with conflicting feelings of grief and anticipation. Both felt right, and yet were they not mutually exclusive? Ratchet and Ironhide stood close beside him. Annabelle was at his feet, one hand pressed to the warm metal of his armor, her family around her. Was she an orphan now, or not? She had shed her tears, and there remained formalities to get through before her life could resume its course. Funny way to put that. Wasn’t death and loss as much a part of a normal life as all the other things people took for granted? Everyone had to face these things eventually, there was nothing off course about it.
Nick patted Ranger’s other shin awkwardly. She was…is a great lady, he said, double-checking to make sure he had the correct private channel. He hadn’t grown up with this kind of communication, but he did his best. Or will be again. Sorry, sorry, I…don’t know how to phrase this?
No one else does either, Ranger assured him. And thank you. She is. Was. Will be. I don’t know what she will be. It’ll be interesting.
Nick tried not to grin. The services were over. There was to be a Wake back at the farm in Nevada. All the human guests here who would be attending there would get rides on the deltas along with the robots. For most of Sarah’s extended family and Army friends this would be a unique experience. Whatever she’ll be, I bet the Autobots aren’t ready.
Heh. Ranger did smile, and gazed up at the mare’s-tail clouds.
…
The friendship between Sarah and Perceptor had been a quiet thing, little noticed by any besides the two of them. During and after Mikaela’s first pregnancy they had exchanged email steadily and extensively, as Perceptor asked hundreds of questions and Sarah shared the kind of on-the-ground insider info not found in the multitudes of childcare books and websites. Ranger had sort of known this, but he was nevertheless surprised to find out which pair of robots Sarah had asked to spark the body that would house her mindstate engrams. Sarah had used to call Perceptor “Octomom”.
It seemed kind of offhand and, well, rude that “her” body would be just one of Perceptor and Beachcomber’s latest - their seventh - batch. But this was what Sarah had wanted.
Rows and rows of translucent cylinders hummed, glowing softly. Perceptor and Beachcomber were still offline, on the nearby table. Ranger felt like an intruder, embarrassed though he hadn’t been in here for the actual kindling. Miles had let him in and now stood up on the catwalk, gazing down at the sleeping robots more than the tanks. Hers was the first from the left, at the front. Ranger touched the plex. Retaining the human reflex to reach out with hands, even when other senses would bring him a clearer knowledge. The protomass coil hid the new spark completely, and didn’t yet look like much of anything other than a cloudy, wispy yet somehow also very solid, metallic tornado-shaped column. The Tasmanian Devil in freeze-frame, Ranger thought. Only this Taz was about twelve feet tall, counting the long, droopy line of tail. No eyes looked back at him, no head, no hands reached out to complete his gesture.
Gestation unhidden inside the mother’s womb. Vulnerable, exposed, every mysterious step of development readily dissectable. Ranger extended the tips of his denta, then hastily retracted them. Vulnerable-looking maybe. Plex wasn’t glass, and the walls of the chamber were reinforced granite about a mile thick, sunk into the batholith that made up this part of the Cascade Range. Guarded by a dozen veteran warfighters, or more, and by - once he woke from his post-merge haze - Seekerbane himself, who was as fierce a mamma bear as anyone could want.
I wouldn’t want to tangle with him, even at close range, Ironhide agreed, from the embassy. Ranger chuckled. Ironhide meant to reassure his nervous progeny no doubt, but Ranger had felt Perceptor’s fields whenever anyone called him Seekerbane or praised his fighting prowess. Being one of the most feared Autobots on this or any other planet was a dubious honor Perceptor would rather do without.
End the damn war, Ranger thought, keeping it behind firewalls. End the war and Percy could go back to science full time. Ranger had never been a civilian, but he could feel the longing in many of the Autobots who had.
…
2077 - April
Warm.
Floating.
Awareness of changes in light and dark came gradually, like the awareness of self, of body. Arms and legs, head and torso. Voices, muffled but familiar. It was, he thought later, a long while before he listened hard enough to hear the actual words. For a long while the hum of voices had been enough. There were names he knew, slowly working his way around to the concept of names. Did he have a name? Maybe not yet. Fields were next, winding and looping in and out of range, overlapping each other and him. Two fields were there most often. He knew them, knew their voices, knew their names though he couldn’t think of what they were, and that didn’t bother him. He knew that he knew them and they loved him and that was the only important thing for now.
For now he had growing to do. He stretched a little, it felt good, and he slipped back into the warm dark.
…
The scale shift, once he was awake enough to notice it, was probably the weirdest thing. Looking through the warp of the curved tank wall, he had not been certain that what he saw was not a funhouse distortion. When he at last stepped down out of the tank into Mirage’s arms, feeling Mirage’s welcoming song through his whole body, it was strange to be the same height, a similar build, though he had made the decision himself.
Hound touched the glyphs on the newly hardened helm - a small line of symbols following the temporal curve, which designated Hound and Mirage’s names, enameled in green and blue - and wrapped his arms around both of them. There were things he understood about Hound and Mirage now. Things he’d talked with Smokescreen and others about once his comm systems had developed in the tank. Other things he understood now that his own chest contained the fusion core of a full-grown spark.
He’d picked an alt mode already, the latest Ferrari in glossy black, which Hound had gone out and scanned for him. The file was ready whenever he wanted it, but he found he agreed with Ratchet’s suggestion. He’d get used to his protoform body first before messing around with transforming. That had served Borealis and Ranger well enough.
As Ranger before him had noted, Prime was still a big guy. And there was a lot going on in those big fields and big voice that he didn’t completely understand even though now he could hear and feel more of them.
“Picked a name yet?” Ranger asked.
“You don’t have to,” Mirage told him softly. “Many people wait until they’ve been in the world a while.”
“Did you?” he asked. It was a thing he didn’t know about Mirage, even though the memories in the center of his memory core told him he’d known Mirage for decades.
“Yes,” Mirage said. “Fourteen voors after coming down off the kindling platform I named myself after the sound of the wind through the Towers.”
“Fourteen voors…” Ranger was doing math. “That’s almost 23 years, Mir! Jeez, what’d people call you until then? ‘Hey You’?”
Hound laughed. “Kind of. There’s a sort of ‘unchosen’ pronoun. Um, not used very much outside the Towers. A couple levels more polite than ‘Hey You’, but basically that idea.”
“I’m not gonna wait 23 years,” the newspark said. “I’m…” He was thinking. Whoa was he thinking! That was fast. “I’m Rain.”
"Rain, huh? I thought you were going to call yourself 'Left Cheek'."
Rain made a slapping motion at Ranger's head. "Ha ha."
“Noted and logged,” Optimus said, smiling, his fields embracing his people. “Be welcome, Rain!”
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
2077 - September
“I’m going to see Theresa, did you want to come along?”
A Ferrari and a…Mirage had cycled back to the Bugattis, though no longer a Veyron. The Volare was a fine ride if you had the money. Damn thing was practically mag-lev compatible and that was even without Mir’s Cybertronian extras.
“Sure,” Rain said, happy for the chance to go driving with his progenitor. Theresa…Theresa… Rain had not seen her since…the hospital? The floor at home? It had been two years. He was suddenly nervous.
It was a long drive, north and east, over the Rockies. They timed it so that they arrived early the next morning. Theresa had kept their house in Colorado Springs even during and after Bobby’s stint as the Secretary of Defense. She had been of no mind to rebuild her career a third time and she didn’t like DC.
“A Ferrari!” Theresa said, laughing as she came out to meet them. “You show-off. I didn’t know they came in black.” She walked around Rain, admiring as he flexed his rearview mirrors. “I thought you were going to be a jet.”
Rain giggled. And extended the small wings from beneath his car frame. “I am.”
Theresa laughed. “Like Tracks! Clever!” Rain bounced on his wheels.
Not forgetting her other visitor, Theresa walked around the Volare as well. “Hello, Mirage, that’s a lovely alt, too. You always do pick such beautiful cars. Are the seats heated?”
“For you they are.” Mirage transformed. The neighborhood was mostly retirees these days; not that Mirage minded very much being mobbed by excited children and envious teenagers. “Would you like a ride or shall we trim the trees first?”
“Oh, I suppose the trees need it worse than I need to try to sink my bum down into those low seats, heated or not.” The last two wind storms had left quite a scattering of small branches and twigs over the roof and yard, and there were several more dangling, just waiting to fall on unwary humans or cars. “Ping me when you’re done; I have the book picked out.”
“I will.” Mirage waved as she retreated into the house.
“Seriously?” Rain asked. “You drive your aft all the way up here to do yard work?”
“Oh yes,” Mirage said. The only problem was he did tend to get distracted by trying to rake the leaves into complex fractal swirls, and then a car would drive by and he’d realize he’d been raking for ten hours and he’d gone up and down the street and raked the neighbors’ leaves too. “Pick your targets.” Small laser pistols transformed out of Mirage’s forearms. Rain’s optics widened, but this game he could get into!
He stood back-to-back with Mirage, finding all the damaged ends and hanging branches in his view, queuing them up in his targeting field. He only had one laser pistol as yet but that just meant he had to try to be twice as fast.
“Ready?”
Rain nodded.
“Scanned for humans?”
“Oh.”
“And birds?”
“Um. …Yep.”
“Steady…and…fire!”
A fine scattering fan of bright blue flickered around them, followed by a deluge of wood chips and branches. Rain whooped and cackled and bounced around helping Mirage gather the debris into a pile in the back yard. Once they’d repeated the trick in the back they used their lasers again to chop the pile into fine mulch, which they piled around the roses. Theresa liked to trim those herself.
Mirage knelt by the side door to the garage and hummed at the lock, which clicked open. Reaching inside, he retrieved a pair of fan-shaped rakes. The handles were made of closet rods reinforced with fiberglass tape; longer and wider than normal, but still a bit small in the robots’ hands. Rain followed him to the front yard.
Theresa came back out with a blanket, a steaming cup of something fragrant that Rain found he could no longer identify by scent, and a scroll-shaped reader. She arranged herself comfortably on the porch swing and smiled at Mirage. “Ready?”
“We are,” Mirage said, saluting.
“The Door In the Air,” Theresa read, “by Margaret Mahy. ‘The girl on the trapeze was called Aquilina, which means “little eagle”. When she was born her mother had tossed her lightly over to her father, and her father, the trapeze master of the famous acrobat circus, caught the new baby and then held her up high, offering her back to the air…’”
Rain looked from the human, who was old and seemed frail, but whose voice carried strong and vibrant to them out in the yard, to Mirage, who was much older but felt strong to Rain’s sensors, delicately wielding a toy-sized rake, listening intently to the human’s voice. The swirly piles of leaves began to take on the flow and rhythm of the story - flying high, chasing through enchanted woods, diving through starry portals. When that story was finished, Theresa continued on to the next, and the next - they were quite short stories - until all the leaves were bundled into the compost bins or tucked around other plants as insulation for the cold weather that was coming soon.
Mirage stowed the rakes and extended a blade from his left wrist. “Penstemon,” he said, pointing at each plant that needed cutting back. “Lamb’s ears, coreopsis, achillea, agastache, hens and chicks, the sad little yucca in the corner, and the artemesias. Right?”
“Yes. I got the lavender and the columbines the other day.” Theresa crossed her arms. “And shut up about the yucca.” Mirage could keep his editorial comments to himself. Mozambiqua had planted it there and there it could stay. It was alive. It was fine. He smirked at her and she didn’t fight too hard to keep the corner of her mouth from quirking back.
Rain shook his head. Weren’t there more important things for robots like them to do? Shouldn’t they be out hunting Decepticons? Maybe, though, this was important to Mirage.
As they finished with the plants, and Theresa finished the last story in the little collection, Rain began to tremble, staring at his hands wrapped around the bundle of yucca stalks he was carrying to the compost.
“These ain’t my hands.” He was shaking hard, and it felt like his fuel was on fire in his lines. “These ain’t my feet!”
“Oh no,” Theresa whispered, leaping to her feet, letting the blanket fall to the flagstone porch floor.
“There we go,” Mirage said in gentle satisfaction as he gathered Rain into his arms. “Five or six months after decantation seems to be the usual time when integration begins.” He ignored Ratchet’s yelling and I-told-you-sos.
“And you dragged him out here when he was due? Mirage!”
Mirage had the feeling she would have called him by his full name if she’d been able to make the sounds, and smacked him with a dishtowel. Her hands were on her hips. Blades was on his way to save both of them. “He will be fine,” Mirage said, hanging on tight and trying to soothe Rain’s fields with his own. They never kept new people bottled up just because they might go into integration; that would defeat the purpose and the process. Yes, one did not interface, but that was more about the safety of the interface partner or partners than an attempt to prevent integration altogether.
“He doesn’t look fine! I’m calling Prime.”
“Oh dear…”
The sound of chopper blades became audible, coming closer.
“That had better be Blades,” Theresa growled. It was. And First Aid, who plugged into Rain the moment he jumped down from his brother’s skid. Rain subsided into a quiet, woozy state that would help keep him safe and stable for the flight back to the embassy.
“Mir, stop fretting,” Aid said, patting him. “Hello, Theresa, how are you?”
“Never mind how I am, you get him home and safe!” The Cons could show up at any time and Rain would be too easy a target. What were those Bots thinking?
“They were not unaccompanied,” said a smallish, angular mech, stepping from around next-door’s garage. Six more joined her. Theresa wobbled, surprised and relieved at once. These must be the seven Prowl and Prime had kindled, that Borealis and Azimuth had dubbed the Pleiades. They were all je, like Arcee; black, silver, and white armored - and they had completed integration a month earlier. Their names came up on Theresa’s contact lenses: Midwife, Amber, Keryn, Kingfisher, Eclipse, Stareyed, Turnaway. Theresa wasn’t sure whether to take the translations as clever or cheeky. Probably they’d meant them to be both.
Mirage and Aid bundled Rain into Blades, waving as they took off. Six of the Pleiades melted back into their hiding places, but Keryn scooped up the scattered yucca stalks and placed them in the compost pile with a pat.
…
They took Rain down to the mossary, to the closest thing they had to a garden inside the embassy, under hundreds of feet of stone. They held him warm and safe and told him stories; told him, particularly, the story of their meeting, which was a story of the early days of the war. Not a story of the great commanders, but of confusion and fear, and how a small handful of them had survived to be the ones telling new sparks their stories.
Others came and went, joining voices and memories, holding Rain when Hound or Mirage needed rest, bringing energon in the tall aluminum glasses Rio had been making lately. Trying to recapture some shadow of the former ways of their people.
…
3.008 million years ago
“Beauteous morning, Serendipity,” Susurrus said, giving her a four-square of greeting-poetry glyphs suitable to a first-level acquaintance encountered unexpectedly but pleasantly with a crafted thread of subharmonics indicating Susurrus was particularly pleased to see her. Not only because he liked her and found her attractive - not all Towers mechs did - but because he had something specific he’d been wanting to speak with her about and wished to do so in the metal rather than by comms.
Serendipity looked out the arched windows, as if she hadn’t noticed whether it was a nice morning or not yet. They were two of only a few mechs up and about in the Towers after last night’s party. “Heya, Surr. What’s up?”
Pleased again by the informality, Susurrus smiled at her. “I have a project in mind, a present for Pellucid, who commissioned my creation, requiring your unique sensibilities and creativity. I admired the work you did for the Pan-Canyon Garden very much. The juxtaposition of such vivid blue and orange crystals was strikingly lovely. I know it’s a simple direct complementary pair, but the gradations and texture contrast added-”
“Hang on, Surr. Uh, you’ve got a flight mode, don’t you?” Something about her tone and harmonics was jarringly off. Susurrus was trying to process what it was exactly when she grabbed him. Tucking him under her arm, she ran.
“Forgive me, Serendipity, but…?”
“Explain later; hold still!” Serendipity pounded up the largely ceremonial spiral ramp that led to Iridium Tower’s peak. She ran faster. Three stories from the top, she veered off onto the southern balcony, facing the canyon that separated the Towers from the Universities. The first explosions bloomed far below and to the east.
“What…oh, no!” Susurrus murmured, watching in horror, feeling the fear and cries and panic rising in the cloud mind. Something must have gone very wrong at Hydrogen University. There seemed to be a chain reaction of explosions. People…oh no…people were dying! How could this be happening? The loss of Altihex had been horrible enough - and Susurrus firmly believed it was some terrorist remnant from the Penstirachtatoriafelexians, not, as some were claiming, a renegade shard of the Cybertronian military - but now this! What a dreadful voor it was turning out to be.
Serendipity was inexplicably emptying her caches. Susurrus was distracted from his inner thoughts by the striking amount and variety of the objects she was dumping on the mosaic floor.
“You have a flight mode,” she said, looking intently at him. “Little theta class Seeker-type, yeah?”
“Yes, but what does that have to do with…oh good the rescue coalitions are arriving already.” He read the growing list of the deactivated on the public site in the cloud. “That can’t be right. Oh no, not Telearc, she was such a dear when Panorama had her up for a lecture on pan-dimensional hyperflexions last vorn!”
“Surr! Listen to me!” Evidently having completed her mysterious purge, Serendipity grabbed Susurrus’ shoulders and shook him, bending low to stare into his optics. “Pay attention! They’re bombing the Towers and the Universities! It’s not an accident; we’re under attack!”
“Impossible…”
She shook him harder and spoke very quickly. “It’s happening! Empty your caches! I’m sorry I’m so heavy, but I’ve calculated you should be able to carry me for short distances. We’re going to launch from here and make for a cavern I found on the far side of the canyon, below and east of the Universities. Hurry!”
She looked so upset and so earnest, Susurrus began to almost believe her. He opened his largest cache and removed the decorative vials of vintage high-grade, setting them carefully on the floor.
“Faster, Surr!”
Another boom sounded, shaking Iridium Tower itself. Susurrus began emptying his caches as quickly as Serendipity had, hesitating over the moon-flower gem Pellucid had given him on his kindling day. He had always meant to have it set into his exoskeleton, but could never decide on the perfect placement and design.
“Surr!”
He dropped the gem in the pile, staring up at Serendipity with wide optics, feeling hollowed out and cold. He swayed as the Tower shook again.
“Transform!”
He obeyed, moving to the balcony edge that lacked a railing, meant for landings and take-offs. Serendipity climbed onto his dorsal hull, gripping hard with hands and feet and an accessory pair of mid-trunk limbs he hadn’t known she had.
“Steady, Surr,” she whispered. “Wait…wait…”
After all her rushing and running and chivvying, this was incomprehensible piled on confusing. Susurrus shifted his mass forward, staring almost numbly at the gold and orange and red and black of the explosions and fires consuming the Universities. Chunks of architecture and people with flailing limbs were falling into the canyon. He closed his connection to the cloud mind, closed off the screams of the dying. Something inside him was breaking. He gripped the edge of the balcony with his landing gear.
“NOW!” Serendipity shouted.
He flung himself into the air, engines laboring. They dropped like the flailing scientists into the canyon. His body jerked as Serendipity did something with her armor, lifting and spreading the largest plates to give them more lift. He channeled more power from his spark to his engines as she cabled to him and chirped him the coordinates. He could see it now, as they continued to drop, almost missing the cavern entrance entirely. He clawed for more speed, just a little more altitude.
They were nearly across, but still too low.
I’m sorry, Surr, Serendipity whispered. Her grip on his frame loosened.
Don’t! Don’t leave me! Susurrus cried, cutting power to secondary systems and overriding safeties. Serendipity hesitated, then clamped down again as they slammed into the far side of the canyon four spans below the lip of the cavern entrance. In the instant before they began to fall, she let go with her pectoral limbs, grabbing at the compressed rock with her hands while still clinging to Susurrus with her feet and accessory claspers. Hand over hand she pulled them up and into the cavern mouth.
Susurrus collapsed into bipedal mode, losing consciousness as his spark contracted and the power routing safeties reset themselves.
…
Darkness. The faint thrum of another’s spark beneath the armor beneath his cheek plate. Warm arms around him. Cold air heavy with particulates and oxidative products. Pain warnings from joints and transformation seams and parts of him he only used in flight mode. What had happened?
He lit his optics, shifting through spectra until he found one that enabled him to see. He couldn’t feel any radiation except what he and Serendipity were putting out, and that was minimal. He couldn’t hear the stars. How far under the surface were they? His gravitational sensors weren’t that good; he couldn’t tell from the feel of the mass above them or the slight decrease in gravity as one drew nearer the planet’s core by however small a span.
There you are, Serendipity tight-beamed. I was beginning to worry.
Susurrus let his head fall back onto her chest. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so tired. He could tell he was deliberately avoiding certain thought cascades. He’d partitioned his recent memory. He decided not to delve into that yet. “Where are we?”
“Old tunnels,” she told him. “Three or four layers down, depending. I guess speaking aloud is better than comms at that. No one’s likely to come down here hunting us. Hm. Unless a lot of other people head down here to escape, too.”
“Do you have any energon?” he asked faintly. Things were shutting down again. He should have stayed in recharge longer. He needed to defrag and dump static but couldn’t muster the energy to think of which set of interface request glyphs would be most suitable.
“No. I’m sorry. I should have let you keep that fancy stuff you had in your cache. We could have used that. Slag.”
“Ah. Yes.” He fell back into recharge.
…
Darkness. Motion, vibration, the soft hum of a highly efficient engine being run as silently as possible. He was being carried in someone’s - oh, Serendipity - vehicle mode. His spark felt better, spinning regular and steady, adding energy to the energon in his lines now instead of pulling it in to keep itself going. Why had it been doing that? “Se…ren…di…” His vocoder was mis-timing. She stopped and transformed, lifting him in her arms as he tried again. “Serendipity?”
“How’re you feeling?”
“I…need to…” There were so many ways to ask. The static fritzing through his head wouldn’t let him think properly. He couldn’t choose the right request. Something of his wishes must have gotten through, however. Serendipity whirred contemplatively, striding a further distance before sitting down and settling Susurrus onto her lap.
She stroked his helm and the small of his back, the gimbals of his shoulders and hips, seeking tender places, rubbing quickly to build charge hot and fast. He had never felt the need for overload as so starkly a physical thing before. His body convulsed, joints grinding, and overload slammed through him, knocking him offline. He rebooted quickly.
“Thank you,” he said, at something of a loss. “Do you…?”
“No, I defragged and grounded earlier. Can you roll? If we can get another couple of millidegrees farther east I think there’s an old tunnel that might still run clear through to Iacon.”
Susurrus transformed to his ground mode and followed as Serendipity took off. He would have liked to at least enjoy each other’s heat for a few breems, but she seemed to be in a hurry. Why are we going to Iacon?
Prime’s there, she replied, as if that explained everything. We’re at war, Surr. This is for real. Transformer against Transformer. In all of Cybertron’s long history, they had never taken to slaughtering each other in large numbers. There had never been a civil war before now. Many people might have thought that Serendipity only paid attention to the arts and sciences within whose spheres she was most active. But she had been paying attention in a quiet way to the political disarray the last Penstirachtatoriafelexian war had left them in, and the responses of Lord Protector and Prime and Council. She had friends in high places, or at least acquaintances. She’d been watching and drawing her own conclusions. It wasn’t fair to compare theirs to other civilizations, but some things seemed more common than others. Cybertron had just taken a lot longer to get around to the more self-destructive ones.
Yes, but…if everything is…if we’re at war, wouldn’t it be safer to take shelter with the military until things settle down?
Surr, it was the military who bombed the Towers and Universities. And I’m betting it was the military who killed Altihex, too. I know it’s a terrible thought, but something’s wrong with the Lord Protector. Maybe something’s been wrong for a long time, I don’t know.
No, no, that was pirates. Or the remnants of the Penstir fleet. Serendipity, there’s never been a civil war on Cybertron. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re all too connected.
…All right. But either way, we’re more likely to find safety in Iacon, and it’s closer than Kaon or Praxus. She wished she thought they could make it to Praxus. If anywhere would remain a bastion of reason and considered action it would be there.
You’re right. Susurrus felt uneasy but it was better to stick together until they could find out what was really going on. If you’re thinking about the tunnel I think you are, though, we should turn left here. The access further on collapsed about a voor ago.
Serendipity chuckled. Left it is. I’m sorry, Surr, I don’t know why I thought you wouldn’t know your way around down here. Towers mechs never stay in the Towers, right?
Correct!
…
Second half