(Untitled)

[prob_japanese]

One of the more interesting side effects of the Bar's subspace compression field, so far as Bumblebee is concerned, is the way it shunts most of his mass off to someplace else entirely while he's there. He doesn't weigh a whole lot more than a large, heavyset human despite being made of metal. While this would cramp his style during a fight, if a

Comments

[there_is_a_me]

You'd be amazed, really, at the number of people Spoon knows who tend to do that. Enough that he's breaking the monkey habit of not looking up on a regular basis.

Usually Spoon's girls are on the other side of the rafters. Or hanging by their feet. (Mostly that's just Christine.)

[prob_japanese]

"That must be some infection," says Bumblebee slowly. "I had heard that some infections can change a victim's behavior, but not like that."

[there_is_a_me]

"It's a curse." Spoon says, "I'm a werewolf. I've got an addiction to human flesh, and thanks to a certain and specific collection of humans it's worse for me than anyone else I know."

[prob_japanese]

Bumblebee considers this.

You can hear his long holler from away 'cross the moor
That's the holler of a werewolf when he's feelin' poor

He goes out in the evenin' when the bats 're on the wing
An' he's killed some young maiden before the birds sing

For the werewolf, for the werewolf
Have sympathy
'Cause the werewolf he is someone
Just like you an' me...

Oh, come on. Everybody goes straight to Warren Zevon. And then they go to Michael Jackson. THERE ARE OTHER SONGS, YOU KNOW.

[there_is_a_me]

"No, no, no." Spoon says in horror, "I've never killed a girl. Just doctors, guards, raiders, and rapists."

[prob_japanese]

"Eep! Sorry," says Bumblebee, reflexively pulling his head back into his shoulders. "For some reason it seems like all the songs about werewolves give them female victims..."

[there_is_a_me]

Spoon's immediate reaction is, "I'd break me teeth on you." followed with a shrug, "You don't hurt women. It's...unless she was trying to hurt me, I wouldn't. You don't do that. Rhene was there the entire time I was completely fuckin' mad, and I never so much as touched her."

[prob_japanese]

"That's something I don't think I understand," says Bumblebee, seizing on an opportunity. "My race doesn't have genders. Most others do. There don't seem to be very many differences between human females who aren't gravid or nursing and human males of the same size and mass. Why is it so important to treat females differently from males?"

[there_is_a_me]

Spoon blinks, and rattles his beads while thinking, "Because you can't have kids without women. You need both male and female, yeah, but one man can impregnate as many women as are around. To keep the species growing you need more women than men. Back before modern medicine women died, a lot, in childbirth. They needed to be protected. Now it's cultural."

[prob_japanese]

"So it's more acceptable for males to die?"

[there_is_a_me]

"Yeah." Spoon says, "It is. At least to me. Males, females, then kids." Pause, "No. Never acceptable for kids to die. I would slaughter fuckin' armies for kids."

[prob_japanese]

Bumblebee nods a little, filing this datum away. It matches with what he's seen of the American army, at least.

"I think most of us would- my people, I mean, for the children we know," he says. "Although they aren't very many."

[there_is_a_me]

"New life is precious." Spoon agrees, "Scared to death that I'll mess up Cora, somehow. She probably deserves a better da' than me, but I'll be damned if I trust anyone else with her either."

[prob_japanese]

"Cora is a child, right?" says Bumblebee hesitantly; as he said, the number of children he knows is pretty dang low- and considering that two of them have driver's licenses, it's even lower than that.

[there_is_a_me]

"She's me girl, yeah." More flipping, and there are pictures of Cora, surrounded by puppies. "She's six."

[prob_japanese]

"That's very young. Are all her motor functions online yet? Has she acquired language?"

We will now pause for the terrifying realization that, thanks to his determination not to let Annabelle Lennox turn out like Mary Lennox, Ironhide has become the Autobot most familiar with children, their development, and their upbringing.