[Fic] Seven Days -- Part 6a/7: (Saturday Evening) Safety Dance
Title: Seven Days -- Part 6a/7: (Saturday Evening) Safety Dance
Author: Lyricality (lyricality)
Rating: M/NC-17 overall for graphic sparksex. This part, PG-13 or so.
Pairings: Eventual Bee/everyone. No real pairings in this part. ...Yet.
Disclaimer: Hasbro owns it. Along with my SOUL. All characters are of legal age.
Note/Summary: Blame the kink meme. FULFILL REQUESTS HERE! Please? This part is shorter than usual, because another mini-part of at least the same length is coming soon. For this entire fic, you can blame nemi_chan and her marvelous prompt o' doom, in which Bumblebee is the resident pleasurebot of the Autobots. Slightly milder level of the Special Hell?
Part 1/7: (Monday) Prime Time can be found here.
Part 2/7: (Tuesday) Iron Ride can be found here.
Part 3/7: (Wednesday) Doctor Love can be found here.
Part 4/7: (Thursday) Horizontal Jazz can be found here.
Part 5/7: (Friday) Scream Queen can be found here.
Part 5a/7: (Friday Evening) Special Handling can be found here.
Part 6/7: (Saturday) Human Touch can be found here.
“How long since Starscream attacked Bumblebee?” Mirage asked.
He spoke softly, though he and Prime were alone, together in the hall outside the medical bay. Under Ratchet’s strict orders, Bumblebee had returned to recharge in his own quarters, taking the human boy with him. Strong attachment, probably dangerous, but Mirage kept his opinions to himself. Ratchet had sentenced Jazz to isolation in the recovery room, as well-probably to eliminate him as a distraction, but considering the ordeal the lieutenant had reputedly suffered, he could use the rest. Prime had adjourned to the hall, and with nowhere else to go, Mirage had followed him.
“Yesterday,” Optimus replied, then paused, as if startled that so little time had passed.
With a nod, Mirage fell silent again, shuttering his optics, letting the back of his head come to rest against the wall behind him.
The silence felt natural. He let it stretch between them for cycles upon cycles, until Prime stirred from his musings again. “Forgive me,” Optimus said, and Mirage had an instant to reflect on the irony of those words before he continued. “If you need somewhere to recharge...you are welcome to my own quarters, until we can construct more space. Jazz offered his quarters, as well, at least until he is out of recovery.”
“Thank you.” Mirage shook his head, otherwise unmoving. “But no.”
Another pause, and then Optimus sighed, grating metal in the sound. “What do you need, Mirage?”
Mirage let go a sound of unsteady amusement. “What do I need? I don’t know.” He unshuttered his optics and glanced sideways at Prime, thinking of Wheeljack, of Soundwave and Shockwave and of the Sigma. Of the surrealism of all of this, suddenly among allies instead of enemies, mechs that spoke to him instead of around him or through him. Safety wasn’t familiar, anymore. Neither was identity. He curved his mouth. “I need enough high grade to put me out for an orn.”
For a long moment, Optimus regarded him in silence, and try as he might, Mirage couldn’t find disapproval in those optics.
Understanding dawned. “You have high grade?”
“Don’t let your hopes rise too high.” The edges of Optimus’ mouth quirked upwards. “We had a few comforts left on the Ark, but I wouldn’t call the grade high.” He straightened up, his head just short of touching the ceiling. A lack of materials on this planet meant no unnecessary space. “Come along.”
Mirage followed. Now this felt familiar, scarily so, trailing a step behind the Prime and instinctively scanning the corridor around them both. He dismissed his processors’ attempts at regression with a shake of his head. To the right, the double doors gave the only indication of Optimus’ rank. Once they slid open, Mirage could find more signs of recognition, in two rooms instead of the single likely given to the others. Prime had a desk, and someone had attached a plain metal bench along all the walls of the front room.
“Sit,” Optimus invited. Mirage arranged himself in one of the two rough chairs in front of the desk, while Optimus sat behind it and keyed a frequency into a security panel set into the wall. It opened, and he drew out four medium canisters, passing one to Mirage and keeping another for himself. Their fingers brushed when Mirage reached out, and he hesitated for a moment over the strangeness of accidental touch.
Optimus had told him the truth. The grade wasn’t exactly high, but it was still better than anything he’d had since abandoning Cybertron, and he had to suppress a murmur of appreciation.
Leaning back in his own chair, Optimus sipped from his canister and let out another sigh. “Tell me about the Vermilion.”
Back to business. “I have the schematics,” Mirage said after a moment or two, wondering what exactly Optimus wanted to hear. “If you’re asking about Wheeljack...I only know what I saw for myself, and that can’t be all of what Soundwave did to him. One time, at least, he tried to break through all Wheeljack’s firewalls with frequency force.” He had to consciously unclench his fingers, strain aching in the joints. “When he wasn’t successful at that, he and Rumble tried disassembling him.”
“Separation shock,” Optimus murmured, his voice hoarse.
Mirage nodded. “It didn’t work. You know how stubborn Wheeljack can be.”
“Intimately,” Optimus replied, the shift of his mouth more a grimace than a smile.
“I’m not sure what they thought he knew.” Mirage leaned forward, resting his elbows against the desk, his head lowered. “It could have been anything. He’s always worked on one sort of weaponry or another. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t give it up.” Running his fingertip around the edge of his canister, Mirage shook his head. “He was awake, sometimes, when I spoke to him. But I wouldn’t say he was lucid, before we left.”
Optimus nodded once, a heavy acceptance. “Ratchet will need to know all of this.”
“I’ll make him a file.” Mirage spun his canister lightly back and forth between his hands, before finally lifting his gaze to Prime’s again. “Soundwave and Shockwave have agreed on a course of action, at least. They want to reactivate Megatron. Is that possible?”
Optimus shuttered his optics before speaking. “I like to believe that it is not.”
Mirage marveled at his ability to answer while avoiding the real question, but he made no comment on that particular bit of evasiveness. Instead, he went quiet again for a cycle or so, shaking his head at last. “However slim their chances might be, they’re on their way.”
“How long do we have?” Prime asked. Straight to the point.
Mirage spread his hands. “Maybe two orns. Maybe a...month, in this planet’s vernacular. Maybe much less. I would say an orn at the very least.”
“You seem certain.”
Draining his canister, Mirage set it on the desk with a smile. “After Wheeljack and I made good our departure, the Vermilion would have found itself carrying less fuel than expected. Definitely not enough to reach Earth without calling for help, or stopping to gather and convert energy deposits.”
Optimus paused, then shook his head and chuckled low, a pleasant sound Mirage had nearly forgotten. He pulled out a second canister and pushed it across the desk. “You never fail to impress me.”
Oh, but that wasn’t true.
Mirage caught the canister, but didn’t open it. Though he did his best to disguise his thoughts, his expression must have revealed some shred of his emotions, to judge by Optimus’ narrowing optics. “Some of my failures have been just so impressive,” Mirage said, choosing his words with care. He opened the canister and drank-the best maneuver he could find for evading anything Prime might ask.
No good. Prime asked him nothing, but the single word he spoke was edged with reprimand. “Mirage.”
Discomfort coiled just beneath his chestplates. “Who would you rather have sitting in front of you?” he asked, leaning forward just enough to stress his point. “Me? Or her.”
Silence crackled between them, charging the atmosphere.
Then Optimus leaned in close, too close, definitely into his personal space, and Mirage fought hard to keep from edging away. Those optics held extraordinary power, of course. They could lock him in place more effectively than any mere electromagnet. But the true power lay in that voice.
“Mirage,” he said, so gentle but so unyielding. “Do you honestly believe that I would ever pay one life for another? No matter the life in question, I would not.”
He couldn’t hold Optimus’ gaze. “That’s easier to say than to believe.”
“I don’t tell you lies,” Optimus sighed, such sorrow in his tone that Mirage thought he shouldn’t be able to bear it.
He gave Optimus a rather sad smile in return. “No. But you can’t ask me to believe you wouldn’t give your life for another.”
“Mm.” Prime paused, and then lifted his canister in reluctant salute. “That point to you, I think.”
Smile widening, Mirage settled back into his seat, putting space between them again. “I still know you,” he said. “You don’t change, Optimus.” Strange, how much he wanted to find that frightening instead of reassuring. This war should have fundamentally altered every one of them after so many millennia, but Prime remained steadfast and true.
“Some would call that a flaw.”
Mirage raised both optic ridges. “Do you think of yourself as flawed?” He meant the question rhetorically; he had never thought of consistency as a negative trait.
“I try not to think of myself at all,” Optimus replied. His mouth curved, but Mirage sensed pain encoded into the edges of that expression. He would rather not question it. After all, he’d spent time enough on his own disappearing act. Being invisible from himself remained elusive.
“I see.”
Optimus spoke again after an awkward cycle. “How did you escape the Vermilion?”
Mirage’s shoulder moved in half a shrug-the arm currently unattached to a canister of good grade. “We went out with the trash. A cliché, but an effective one.” He sighed. “Wheeljack lasted until we broke orbit, but he locked in cometary form. Shock, I think. It was a narrow fit in the shuttle, but we endured it until I could uncloak the ship and reformat it into passenger mode. I left it up there.” He jerked his head upward toward the ceiling, toward the sky far above it. “Docked with the Ark. Cloaked again.”
Optimus shook his head, amusement in his voice. “I have missed your common sense.”
“That’s a lie.” He grinned despite himself. “You’ve been blessed with Ratchet’s...practicality.”
Prime chuckled. Then he sobered, if gradually, and his next words came as an unwanted surprise. “I was terribly disappointed when you would not accompany us on the Ark.”
Something about his expression twisted in Mirage’s fundamental connections, Prime’s optics reflecting too much pained sorrow and what he refused to believe was self-doubt. “Six was too many on a squad. You said so yourself.”
Optimus regarded him with frank regret. For the past, for his own willingness to set aside regulations... Mirage had no idea. “I would have made that exception,” he said, then forestalled any objection by continuing. "I know your value. You made excellent use of your skills on the Vermilion. No one else could have succeeded.”
Pausing, he drank from his canister, one thumb rubbing absently along the rim.
“There was a time when I might have given up that advantage,” he admitted. “You and I were close, once. I missed it a great deal.”
Troubled, Mirage let his gaze drop. That Prime might make so unwisely emotional a decision alarmed him, even with so many vorns in retrospect between that moment and this one. “That’s...pity, or guilt. I...” Words failed him even without the distraction of Optimus’ demanding optics. “I don’t understand your...eagerness to profess forgiveness.”
“I can’t change what you choose to think.” Optimus set the canister aside with a hollow sound, and then reached out with that hand and rested his fingers over Mirage’s wrist. Those fingers could have clenched and held him, could have crushed him in their grip, but they only touched. It was a powerful demonstration of gentleness. Despite his wariness, Mirage felt drawn, willing to reach back emotionally, if not physically, when Optimus spoke again in a voice like grating steel. “I miss her.” That voice hurt to hear. “But I have never blamed you for her choices.”
Too close to believing, Mirage noted a full cycle before he could gather enough will to pull back his hand.
Optimus let him go, fingers skimming over fingers, metal grazing metal too carefully to scratch paint. “Remember that,” he murmured. “If nothing else.”
Silent, Mirage held his gaze, dipping his head once in acquiescence.
“I have no qualms about demonstrating it,” Optimus said. “Choose a way. I will accommodate you.”
Mirage felt his intakes stutter. So dangerous, to think of demonstration with the tingling electricity of Optimus’ touch still running through his fingertips. Most likely his reaction had little to do with Optimus at all, and he could blame his increasingly lonely existence of late. Too long since he’d been touched.
“I believe you,” he said only, soft agreement to derail further argument.
Optimus regarded him with an expression that Mirage tried not to understand, a sort of bittersweet and longing joy that echoed deep in his spark. “I am so glad,” he said, “that you are here.”
A moment passed, and then Mirage reached out of his own accord. His hand caught Optimus’, a squeeze so brief that he drew back again as soon as they touched, and he rose from the seat. “Instead of a recharge, I would rather take a drive,” he said, ignoring the low catch in his voice. Optimus made no offer to accompany him, only stood as well with a single nod of permission, and Mirage appreciated the implied understanding of his need for solitude.
“Remember also that you may call for assistance, now. Whenever you want it.” For a cycle more, they stared at each other in silence, until Optimus lowered his eyes at last, and Mirage felt the tension ease.
He could promise that, however unexpected the realization that once again, he was among friends. “I will.”
Leaving Optimus to gather up the empty evidence of their indulgences, Mirage slipped out the double doors, then activated all his cloaking arrays in a shivering rush, a pseudo-spike of heat and cold that had nothing to do with physical sensation. Rendered invisible-and unusually grateful for the ability-he fled the confines of the base, pausing just outside the exterior structures to transform. This planet had a heavy atmosphere, and its single moon gleamed dimly through strips of cloud. Wind trailed along his exoskeletal armor, a phantom touch. How strange to experience weather again.
He pressed his wheels into the unsteady gravel of this strangely breathing world, and then roared back toward the highway, seeking open road for now.
*****
Author: Lyricality (lyricality)
Rating: M/NC-17 overall for graphic sparksex. This part, PG-13 or so.
Pairings: Eventual Bee/everyone. No real pairings in this part. ...Yet.
Disclaimer: Hasbro owns it. Along with my SOUL. All characters are of legal age.
Note/Summary: Blame the kink meme. FULFILL REQUESTS HERE! Please? This part is shorter than usual, because another mini-part of at least the same length is coming soon. For this entire fic, you can blame nemi_chan and her marvelous prompt o' doom, in which Bumblebee is the resident pleasurebot of the Autobots. Slightly milder level of the Special Hell?
Part 1/7: (Monday) Prime Time can be found here.
Part 2/7: (Tuesday) Iron Ride can be found here.
Part 3/7: (Wednesday) Doctor Love can be found here.
Part 4/7: (Thursday) Horizontal Jazz can be found here.
Part 5/7: (Friday) Scream Queen can be found here.
Part 5a/7: (Friday Evening) Special Handling can be found here.
Part 6/7: (Saturday) Human Touch can be found here.
“How long since Starscream attacked Bumblebee?” Mirage asked.
He spoke softly, though he and Prime were alone, together in the hall outside the medical bay. Under Ratchet’s strict orders, Bumblebee had returned to recharge in his own quarters, taking the human boy with him. Strong attachment, probably dangerous, but Mirage kept his opinions to himself. Ratchet had sentenced Jazz to isolation in the recovery room, as well-probably to eliminate him as a distraction, but considering the ordeal the lieutenant had reputedly suffered, he could use the rest. Prime had adjourned to the hall, and with nowhere else to go, Mirage had followed him.
“Yesterday,” Optimus replied, then paused, as if startled that so little time had passed.
With a nod, Mirage fell silent again, shuttering his optics, letting the back of his head come to rest against the wall behind him.
The silence felt natural. He let it stretch between them for cycles upon cycles, until Prime stirred from his musings again. “Forgive me,” Optimus said, and Mirage had an instant to reflect on the irony of those words before he continued. “If you need somewhere to recharge...you are welcome to my own quarters, until we can construct more space. Jazz offered his quarters, as well, at least until he is out of recovery.”
“Thank you.” Mirage shook his head, otherwise unmoving. “But no.”
Another pause, and then Optimus sighed, grating metal in the sound. “What do you need, Mirage?”
Mirage let go a sound of unsteady amusement. “What do I need? I don’t know.” He unshuttered his optics and glanced sideways at Prime, thinking of Wheeljack, of Soundwave and Shockwave and of the Sigma. Of the surrealism of all of this, suddenly among allies instead of enemies, mechs that spoke to him instead of around him or through him. Safety wasn’t familiar, anymore. Neither was identity. He curved his mouth. “I need enough high grade to put me out for an orn.”
For a long moment, Optimus regarded him in silence, and try as he might, Mirage couldn’t find disapproval in those optics.
Understanding dawned. “You have high grade?”
“Don’t let your hopes rise too high.” The edges of Optimus’ mouth quirked upwards. “We had a few comforts left on the Ark, but I wouldn’t call the grade high.” He straightened up, his head just short of touching the ceiling. A lack of materials on this planet meant no unnecessary space. “Come along.”
Mirage followed. Now this felt familiar, scarily so, trailing a step behind the Prime and instinctively scanning the corridor around them both. He dismissed his processors’ attempts at regression with a shake of his head. To the right, the double doors gave the only indication of Optimus’ rank. Once they slid open, Mirage could find more signs of recognition, in two rooms instead of the single likely given to the others. Prime had a desk, and someone had attached a plain metal bench along all the walls of the front room.
“Sit,” Optimus invited. Mirage arranged himself in one of the two rough chairs in front of the desk, while Optimus sat behind it and keyed a frequency into a security panel set into the wall. It opened, and he drew out four medium canisters, passing one to Mirage and keeping another for himself. Their fingers brushed when Mirage reached out, and he hesitated for a moment over the strangeness of accidental touch.
Optimus had told him the truth. The grade wasn’t exactly high, but it was still better than anything he’d had since abandoning Cybertron, and he had to suppress a murmur of appreciation.
Leaning back in his own chair, Optimus sipped from his canister and let out another sigh. “Tell me about the Vermilion.”
Back to business. “I have the schematics,” Mirage said after a moment or two, wondering what exactly Optimus wanted to hear. “If you’re asking about Wheeljack...I only know what I saw for myself, and that can’t be all of what Soundwave did to him. One time, at least, he tried to break through all Wheeljack’s firewalls with frequency force.” He had to consciously unclench his fingers, strain aching in the joints. “When he wasn’t successful at that, he and Rumble tried disassembling him.”
“Separation shock,” Optimus murmured, his voice hoarse.
Mirage nodded. “It didn’t work. You know how stubborn Wheeljack can be.”
“Intimately,” Optimus replied, the shift of his mouth more a grimace than a smile.
“I’m not sure what they thought he knew.” Mirage leaned forward, resting his elbows against the desk, his head lowered. “It could have been anything. He’s always worked on one sort of weaponry or another. Whatever it was, he wouldn’t give it up.” Running his fingertip around the edge of his canister, Mirage shook his head. “He was awake, sometimes, when I spoke to him. But I wouldn’t say he was lucid, before we left.”
Optimus nodded once, a heavy acceptance. “Ratchet will need to know all of this.”
“I’ll make him a file.” Mirage spun his canister lightly back and forth between his hands, before finally lifting his gaze to Prime’s again. “Soundwave and Shockwave have agreed on a course of action, at least. They want to reactivate Megatron. Is that possible?”
Optimus shuttered his optics before speaking. “I like to believe that it is not.”
Mirage marveled at his ability to answer while avoiding the real question, but he made no comment on that particular bit of evasiveness. Instead, he went quiet again for a cycle or so, shaking his head at last. “However slim their chances might be, they’re on their way.”
“How long do we have?” Prime asked. Straight to the point.
Mirage spread his hands. “Maybe two orns. Maybe a...month, in this planet’s vernacular. Maybe much less. I would say an orn at the very least.”
“You seem certain.”
Draining his canister, Mirage set it on the desk with a smile. “After Wheeljack and I made good our departure, the Vermilion would have found itself carrying less fuel than expected. Definitely not enough to reach Earth without calling for help, or stopping to gather and convert energy deposits.”
Optimus paused, then shook his head and chuckled low, a pleasant sound Mirage had nearly forgotten. He pulled out a second canister and pushed it across the desk. “You never fail to impress me.”
Oh, but that wasn’t true.
Mirage caught the canister, but didn’t open it. Though he did his best to disguise his thoughts, his expression must have revealed some shred of his emotions, to judge by Optimus’ narrowing optics. “Some of my failures have been just so impressive,” Mirage said, choosing his words with care. He opened the canister and drank-the best maneuver he could find for evading anything Prime might ask.
No good. Prime asked him nothing, but the single word he spoke was edged with reprimand. “Mirage.”
Discomfort coiled just beneath his chestplates. “Who would you rather have sitting in front of you?” he asked, leaning forward just enough to stress his point. “Me? Or her.”
Silence crackled between them, charging the atmosphere.
Then Optimus leaned in close, too close, definitely into his personal space, and Mirage fought hard to keep from edging away. Those optics held extraordinary power, of course. They could lock him in place more effectively than any mere electromagnet. But the true power lay in that voice.
“Mirage,” he said, so gentle but so unyielding. “Do you honestly believe that I would ever pay one life for another? No matter the life in question, I would not.”
He couldn’t hold Optimus’ gaze. “That’s easier to say than to believe.”
“I don’t tell you lies,” Optimus sighed, such sorrow in his tone that Mirage thought he shouldn’t be able to bear it.
He gave Optimus a rather sad smile in return. “No. But you can’t ask me to believe you wouldn’t give your life for another.”
“Mm.” Prime paused, and then lifted his canister in reluctant salute. “That point to you, I think.”
Smile widening, Mirage settled back into his seat, putting space between them again. “I still know you,” he said. “You don’t change, Optimus.” Strange, how much he wanted to find that frightening instead of reassuring. This war should have fundamentally altered every one of them after so many millennia, but Prime remained steadfast and true.
“Some would call that a flaw.”
Mirage raised both optic ridges. “Do you think of yourself as flawed?” He meant the question rhetorically; he had never thought of consistency as a negative trait.
“I try not to think of myself at all,” Optimus replied. His mouth curved, but Mirage sensed pain encoded into the edges of that expression. He would rather not question it. After all, he’d spent time enough on his own disappearing act. Being invisible from himself remained elusive.
“I see.”
Optimus spoke again after an awkward cycle. “How did you escape the Vermilion?”
Mirage’s shoulder moved in half a shrug-the arm currently unattached to a canister of good grade. “We went out with the trash. A cliché, but an effective one.” He sighed. “Wheeljack lasted until we broke orbit, but he locked in cometary form. Shock, I think. It was a narrow fit in the shuttle, but we endured it until I could uncloak the ship and reformat it into passenger mode. I left it up there.” He jerked his head upward toward the ceiling, toward the sky far above it. “Docked with the Ark. Cloaked again.”
Optimus shook his head, amusement in his voice. “I have missed your common sense.”
“That’s a lie.” He grinned despite himself. “You’ve been blessed with Ratchet’s...practicality.”
Prime chuckled. Then he sobered, if gradually, and his next words came as an unwanted surprise. “I was terribly disappointed when you would not accompany us on the Ark.”
Something about his expression twisted in Mirage’s fundamental connections, Prime’s optics reflecting too much pained sorrow and what he refused to believe was self-doubt. “Six was too many on a squad. You said so yourself.”
Optimus regarded him with frank regret. For the past, for his own willingness to set aside regulations... Mirage had no idea. “I would have made that exception,” he said, then forestalled any objection by continuing. "I know your value. You made excellent use of your skills on the Vermilion. No one else could have succeeded.”
Pausing, he drank from his canister, one thumb rubbing absently along the rim.
“There was a time when I might have given up that advantage,” he admitted. “You and I were close, once. I missed it a great deal.”
Troubled, Mirage let his gaze drop. That Prime might make so unwisely emotional a decision alarmed him, even with so many vorns in retrospect between that moment and this one. “That’s...pity, or guilt. I...” Words failed him even without the distraction of Optimus’ demanding optics. “I don’t understand your...eagerness to profess forgiveness.”
“I can’t change what you choose to think.” Optimus set the canister aside with a hollow sound, and then reached out with that hand and rested his fingers over Mirage’s wrist. Those fingers could have clenched and held him, could have crushed him in their grip, but they only touched. It was a powerful demonstration of gentleness. Despite his wariness, Mirage felt drawn, willing to reach back emotionally, if not physically, when Optimus spoke again in a voice like grating steel. “I miss her.” That voice hurt to hear. “But I have never blamed you for her choices.”
Too close to believing, Mirage noted a full cycle before he could gather enough will to pull back his hand.
Optimus let him go, fingers skimming over fingers, metal grazing metal too carefully to scratch paint. “Remember that,” he murmured. “If nothing else.”
Silent, Mirage held his gaze, dipping his head once in acquiescence.
“I have no qualms about demonstrating it,” Optimus said. “Choose a way. I will accommodate you.”
Mirage felt his intakes stutter. So dangerous, to think of demonstration with the tingling electricity of Optimus’ touch still running through his fingertips. Most likely his reaction had little to do with Optimus at all, and he could blame his increasingly lonely existence of late. Too long since he’d been touched.
“I believe you,” he said only, soft agreement to derail further argument.
Optimus regarded him with an expression that Mirage tried not to understand, a sort of bittersweet and longing joy that echoed deep in his spark. “I am so glad,” he said, “that you are here.”
A moment passed, and then Mirage reached out of his own accord. His hand caught Optimus’, a squeeze so brief that he drew back again as soon as they touched, and he rose from the seat. “Instead of a recharge, I would rather take a drive,” he said, ignoring the low catch in his voice. Optimus made no offer to accompany him, only stood as well with a single nod of permission, and Mirage appreciated the implied understanding of his need for solitude.
“Remember also that you may call for assistance, now. Whenever you want it.” For a cycle more, they stared at each other in silence, until Optimus lowered his eyes at last, and Mirage felt the tension ease.
He could promise that, however unexpected the realization that once again, he was among friends. “I will.”
Leaving Optimus to gather up the empty evidence of their indulgences, Mirage slipped out the double doors, then activated all his cloaking arrays in a shivering rush, a pseudo-spike of heat and cold that had nothing to do with physical sensation. Rendered invisible-and unusually grateful for the ability-he fled the confines of the base, pausing just outside the exterior structures to transform. This planet had a heavy atmosphere, and its single moon gleamed dimly through strips of cloud. Wind trailed along his exoskeletal armor, a phantom touch. How strange to experience weather again.
He pressed his wheels into the unsteady gravel of this strangely breathing world, and then roared back toward the highway, seeking open road for now.
*****