Warnings: Unbeta'd, weirdness, mentions of experimentation, hinting at torture, did I mention the oddness of this?
Notes: I believe I can blame this all on the various bunnies and stories involving some Autobots either being flightless kin to Seekers, or actually Seekers who willingly reformatted for their own safety.
Disclaimer: If I owned I would be rich and older then what I am. This is all for fun and no money is being made from this.
There was a widely spread misconception that all Seeker builds were inherently Decepticon. The idea gaining credibility with many at the sight of the air force that was held within the Decepticon ranks, and the few flyers within the Autobots being mostly of the triple changer variety. It made any talk of possible Autobot seekers hard to get past the stance that a seeker would never be an Autobot.
It was why Prowl had given up slowly introducing such an idea when Sentinel Prime still held the Matrix of power.
Even when Ratchet started in on him and several others as they went in for check ups and various glitch related concerns. The tactician having vorns of practice in ignoring the now familiar lecture on the longer they remained as they were, the less likely their 'annoying but manageable' glitches would remain such. The affects of such being more noticeable in the ones who did not want anyone to even think they had a connection to Seeker society, namely the ones who declined a Praxian like build when being reformatted.
"And what the frag are all of you going to do if that Trine protocol acts up at the wrong time or with the wrong mech?"
Most of them had been too young to have worried about such when they were asked, and so just shrugged it off. Now they just became careful in interactions, some going to the extreme of avoiding any known trine mates to keep the charade that much longer. Stressful, but necessary when the protocol acted around a mech that one normally did not associate with in a manner outside of their missions and duties. Much in the same way that a few had even had their designations changed or main program changed to throw off any suspicion. Some becoming a completely different mech then they had been when they were found in that holding cell.
It was reckless and slowly edging towards dangerous in terms of their health, as Ratchet was wont to remind the small group. Yet, it was an unspoken agreement to keep up the charade for the war effort. Many set and determine to keep their original formatting a secret until the war was over, if they lived to the end of the war, and the consequences of such actions ignored.
Though, deep down they knew it was mostly out of the fear of the fallout if it was ever known there were Seekers amongst those who sported the red brand.