This little oneshot is all about the most underappreciated lot in the TFP universe: the Vehicons. There's not too much plot or conflict here; it's more slice of life and character development than anything else. But it's about these precious lil bastards, so I think it's kinda fun :D Also, if I have my way, this will not be the last of the Vehicons' adventures aboard the Nemesis.

Thanks very much to my friend 'Scobble for helping me with Wendy and his linguistics talk! It was very helpful!

Also, I encourage you to take a peek at my Handy Dandy Vehicon Organization Headcanon Post (link in my profile) to familiarize yourself with the system used here… It's not super necessary but it might make it more enjoyable. That's all- enjoy!

Thoughts and criticisms are encouraged and appreciated

It was always too loud in the canteens.

ST-03 hated that about break time. He didn't dislike it entirely- the interruption from the mindless work down in the mines was nice. But did everyone really have to go on break at the same time? It always got so crowded with everyone packed in that tiny room… well. Obviously it wasn't everyone. It was entirely impossible to fit all 6000 of them into that little cafeteria. They wouldn't even get them all in there if they outfitted all the Ones with subspace pockets and stuffed their units inside. That's how small the canteen was.

That mental image was pretty funny though, and ST-03 chuckled quietly to himself as he shuffled his way over to the energon dispensers. After waiting in line a minute, he stepped up and quickly filled two cubes. Taking one in each servo, he carefully nudged through the crowd of miners and Vehicons, weaving delicately between tables and benches and back over to the entrance.

"ST-03!"

He paused and looked around. Another miner was waving at him from across the room. Before ST-03 could respond, the other had stood up from his own crowded table and made a beeline towards him with his own cube.

"Hi, RD-10"

"Hi yourself." the 'Con replied, then gestured down to the two cubes, "What? You on double rations or something?"

"No, I was going to bring WY-05 his down in the med bay. WY-01 put him on watch for Soundwave. He can't leave, not even for break."

"That's such scrap-" RD-10 paused to take a large gulp of his own energon, then continued as he wiped at his mouth, "If you ask me the One of the unit should have to do the grunt work, not the lower guys."

ST-03 gave a sheepish shrug. Being a Three he couldn't really offer much to that. "Yeah well... bringing him his ration is a good excuse to be outta here, so I'm gonna head down-"

"I'll come with you!" RD-10 shouted excitedly, "We oughta hang out with WY-05 more anyway. Slag, it's been almost a week since I've even laid optics on 'im!"

"Huh... yeah, I suppose it might be nice with just the three of us."

"Oh wait- hang on!" RD-10 whirled around and quickly shoved his way through the crowd back towards his table. He picked up his mask, which he had removed to drink his energon, then he shoved his way right back and forcefully hooked arms with his friend. "Alright, now we can go!"

RD-10 continued on, pushing through the other Vehicons and dragging ST-03 along behind. Finally, the two made it out into the hallway and proceeded down towards the elevator. It got much quieter as they left the canteen behind, and ST-03 let out a short vent of relief.

"Frag, I can't stand it in there..." he mumbled.

"It's not so bad."RD-10 replied, "I kinda like getting to see all my friends in one place." then he paused a moment to think, "Though, it does get pretty crowded- S'hard to find a spot with all of 'em sometimes... Maybe, AA-00 really shouldn't schedule so many units with a break at the same time."

"Hmm. Yeah. Maybe." ST-03 grumbled in response as they stepped into the lift. "But I'm sure they have a good reason for the way they schedules things... even if it's a stupid way."

The lift began to descend. "HA! Well, maybe next time we see 'ol double A we should tell 'em what we think of their dumb schedule."

ST-03 let out a short laugh, "Heh- yeah right! I'd love to see that."

They continued in silence until they finally reached the medical bay. The doors slid open by themselves as they approached, and the two stepped inside to where a solitary Vehicon was standing somewhat hunched over by a computer console and reading something quite intently on one of the smaller monitors.

As the door slid shut behind them he turned to see who had come in, and upon spotting them his whole body seemed to perk up. "ST-03! RD-10!" he cried happily. "What are you doing down here?"

"Well I know you're not supposed to leave Soundwave, so we brought your ration for you." ST-03 offered out the extra energon cube in his servo and WY-05 graciously took it.

"Aww that's so nice of you to think of me!" he said. Reaching up with his other servo, he removed his mask to take a sip from the cube.

RD-10 stepped further into the room and approached one of the empty medical berths to sit down, "Yeah well we haven't seen or heard from you for almost a week now! We miss ya up there, buddy."

WY-05's shoulders dipped slightly as he cradled his cube in his servos, "I know... I wish I could be up in the break room with the rest of you, but-"

"Yeah so, what gives with this anyway?" RD-10 interrupted, "Does Soundwave really need someone around to hold his servo all the slaggin' time?"

"Well no." WY-05 admitted. He placed his cube and mask down on an instrument table next to a berth and stepped to the back of the room. There Soundwave was lying motionless, hooked up to multiple life support cables. WY-05 tapped a few buttons on the monitor next to the berth displaying the 'Con's vital signs. "-but WY-01 is very concerned that since he lost Laserbeak... well... he wasn't handling it very well. So AA-00 instructed we keep him in stasis until he's recovered and can deal with it properly."

ST-03 nodded as he made to sit next to RD-10, "Poor Soundwave." he mumbled to himself, "I can't imagine what it's like to lose a symbiote."

"So wait- if he's in stasis... how come you gotta be here?" RD-10 said through a mouthful of energon.

"WY-01 wants to be especially careful with him... if something were to go wrong he's the one who'd have to answer to Lord Megatron."

"Hrmm. Well maybe he oughta work through his own break time then..."

"Uhh- So what have you been doing down here?" ST-03 was quick to change the subject, "Seems like Soundwave doesn't take up too much of your time.. and I can't imagine there's much to do down here by yourself. Heh, unless you've been reading medical files or something."

"Oh no!" WY-05 said with a slight shudder, "I can't stand going through those files... I hate how coldly they're written- like they're not even about actual Cybertronians... It's too sad."

"So what have you been up to then?"

"Well actually... do you want to see what I've been researching?" WY-05 asked, trotting back over to the computer console excitedly.

"Sure, why not?" ST-03 moved closer to the console and got comfortable. WY-05 had a tendency to get overly invested in the most ordinary things. There was a possibility they would be there awhile.

WY-05 began typing commands into the keypad and the projection on the small screen he'd been reading switched over to the large center screen. "Well, ever since AA-00 switched us over to an Earth language, I've been wanting to learn more about the humans' culture. I've just never had enough free time." He smiled up at the screen, wringing his digits together.

"Ugh. Why would you even bother?" RD-10 groaned, splaying himself across the berth, "Humans are so fraggin' primitive- I can't imagine anything they do would be the slightest bit interesting…"

WY-05's smile wavered slightly as he glanced back at RD-10. "Primitive doesn't mean stupid." he mumbled shifting his weight between his pedes, "And it certainly doesn't mean boring either..."

"Don't mind him." ST-03 said, giving a reassuring pat on his shoulder plate, "Keep going; I'm interested."

"Ughh are we really gonna spend our whole break talking about humans?" RD-10 groaned, but the others weren't listening.

WY-05's smile returned as he looked back up to the screen. "Well-" he began, "I started with learning about the humans' language. I mean, we've been using their alphabet and number system for squad organization for awhile now, so I wanted to learn more than just basic communication… and- hopefully- learn some of their other languages too."

"Other languages?" ST-03 asked. "So they have more than one?"

"Of course they do!" WY-05 looked back, "They're not as simple as you think. They have a lot of different languages and cultures, just like Cybertronians."

"Oh come on- you can't compare us to them." RD-10 chimed in from behind, "What could our race possibly have in common with a bunch of squishy organics?"

"You'd be surprised." WY-05 began typing on the console and a list of 26 Cybertronian characters came up on the screen. "Haven't you thought about why it was so easy to adapt to their language? Well it's because this one we use- English it's called- is very similar to Kaonian." Another graphic appeared on the screen with 26 more characters- the English alphabet. "See? They even have the same number of letters as we do."

"Hrrmm." RD-10 looked away again, a slight pout on his face, and grumbled "Yeah whatever. That doesn't make them smart or anything. It's just a coincidence."

"Well that's not the only similarity." WY-05 continued, "We structure our sentences in very much the same way- subject then verb... also they place their adjectives before their verbs too- OH! And they use ablauts to conjugate just like in Kaonian! And they attach a separate verb to express negatives! And-"

ST-03 held up his servos to stop him, "Whoa, hang on... Okay, uh... you've lost me."

WY-05 shrank back a little, "O-oh. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to- I just get excited is all..." he mumbled, shifting his weight between his pedes.

"No no, don't apologize. It's fine." ST-03 lowered his servos, "So uh... What were you saying? Something about... ablauts? What's that?"

"Oh, that's a grammatical term. It means when we change letters in a word depending on their conjugation... I'll show you. WY-05 began typing out Cybertronian words the console. "Here's an example: in Kaonian it's vol, völ, and vôl... and in English that's swim, swam, and swum." He looked back at ST-03 with a smile, "Isn't that neat?"

"Yeah, I suppose it is." ST-03 said looking up at the words on the screen. "...and it's a pretty big coincidence that they're so similar. Is it just this one language that's like ours?"

"No! That's another interesting thing!" WY-05 seemed to be getting even more worked up now, "They have a whole bunch of other languages that have different words and grammar structures... and actually I've found some of them are similar to Iaconian and Vosian!"

RD-10 picked his helm up off the berth at this, "Wait, you can speak Iaconian and Vosian?" he asked, "Since when?"

"Um well no. I'm not fluent or anything..." WY-05 replied meekly, "I've just spent a little free time studying them in the past... so I know how they're structured."

"I don't know any Iaconian or Vosian-" ST-03 said, shrugging his shoulders slightly, "So I don't think I'd really get what you'd be saying if you did try to explain it... sorry."

"Yeah I didn't think so. I don't know too much more about them besides the structural similarities anyway." WY-05 said with a nod, "And I haven't been looking into it because... well their other languages have a lot of noun articles and conjugations based on gender and... I don't really care much for human genders. It's confusing... I mean I understand it just fine with Kaonian using Cybertronian gender, but... well, it doesn't matter- English doesn't have any of that, thankfully."

ST-03 looked back up at the screen, "So you've just been down here learning about human grammar day in and out, huh? Is that what you were reading about before?" he pointed up, indicating the window behind the graphics WY-05 had pulled up. It contained paragraphs on paragraphs of english text.

"No, I was uh..." he paused, "Well, I had been learning about their language's culture and their naming traditions. It's pretty interesting, actually- where we usually use existing words describing actions or aspirations, he human names are based on interpretations or words from their older languages or, more commonly, they use names of characters from their myths and stories." WY-05 wrung his digits, shifting his weight happily back and forth, "I actually really like the way they name themselves... tying your identity to a character from the past- it's got this bit of romanticism to it, doesn't it?"

"Romantic? More like dumb." RD-10 mumbled, "Everyone will just remember your namesake and not you. Who'd want that?"

ST-03 turned and glared back at RD-10 "Excuse me? Do I really have to remind you that Lord Megatron named himself after one of the original Primes?"

RD-10 started slightly, as though he really had forgotten- then shrugged his shoulder plates giving a small nod, "Hmm. Good point... I guess it's... not so dumb." Finally it seemed like he wasn't totally dismissive of the conversation.

"So WY-05 was right, then. We might have more in common with the humans than we thought, don't you think?" ST-03 said, trying to goad more positive responses from his friend.

RD-10 only grumbled a reluctant agreement as he took one last swig and emptied his energon cube. It was enough to please WY-05 though, as his smile brightened from the acknowledgement. ST-03 then looked back up at the screen.

"This thing you're reading now- it's about names?" he asked, "What does it say?"

"Oh. No, it's actually a human story." WY-05 said, pulling the window up in front of the other graphics. "After I learned they use a lot of character names, I wanted to read the stories they were in. I was reading some of their more ancient texts but... well they were kind of long and dry." he admitted with a shrug, "The humans took awhile to get a handle on good story structure, I think. Their literature from the recent centuries is pretty fun though."

"So what's this story about then?"

"It's called Peter Pan!" WY-05 said excitedly, "It's about a little human named Peter who never grows older, and he makes friends with another human and brings her to a magical world so she won't ever age either, and... Well the story's named after Peter, but really it's about the friend he makes: Wendy." WY-05 tipped back on his heels, a shy smile on his face, "I like her character a lot- she's grounded and imaginative and really caring..."

"Hmm." ST-03 leaned in closer to get a better look at the text, "This word says 'Wendy' right?" he asked, tapping his digit to the screen.

"Mm-hmm." WY-05 hummed an affirmation.

"Oh. That's interesting- this name has both the letters W and Y just like your squaddesignation." ST-03 leaned away again, still looking up at the screen. "In the human's fashion we might've named you after this character, huh?"

He glanced back over at WY-05 to find the mech was staring at him with optics practically sparkling in delight and his digits wrung together in front of his chassis. "Oh... oh yes." he squeaked out quietly, very clearly trying to contain his excitement. "That would be... I would love that!"

ST-03 tilted his helm curiously, "Wait, really?" he had only been making an observation, but WY-05 seemed legitimately enthused by the idea. "You want to use a human name?"

WY-05 nodded very quickly, "Yes! Yes, I'd be so happy to share a name with Wendy!"

ST-03 cracked a smile behind his mask. WY-05 really did get overly invested in these things. Though he supposed using a name like Wendy, however silly of a name it was, was a bit more personal than the letter and number designations they were assigned on the Nemesis. And if it would make WY-05 happy... So he gave a short nod in response.

"Alright then, WY-05." he said, "Starting now, I'll just call you Wendy."

As ST-03 said this, Wendy's face was absolutely beaming with happiness. He opened his mouth to express gratitude for his new name, but before he could, he found a servo on his helm shaking it gently.

"HEY! What about me?" RD-10 had gotten up from the berth and was nudging at Wendy, "I want a name too!"

ST-03 folded his arms across his chassis, "You want a human name?" he asked, actually surprised.

"Yeah well..." RD-10 released Wendy's helm, "I mean, the human names are kinda stupid... but using 'em around the Nemesis sounds like fun. It'd be kinda like a code or something."

"Alright. Well, do you know any names that have R, D, or 10?" ST-03 asked, looking at Wendy.

Wendy thought briefly then shrugged his shoulders, "Well no. Not off the top of my processor." he admitted, "But we can always find one." he turned to the console and pulled up a new window, this one displaying big colorful letters in the middle.

"What the frag is a 'Google?'"

"It's what they call a 'search engine.'" Wendy explained, "Humans store all their information in it and open it for public access. So we can use it to look up databases of common names and pick one that contains your squad letters." He then proceeded to type out 'human names,' click the Google search button, and open the first result.

"Scrap- what's with all the colors?" RD-10 shuttered his optics as it loaded: it was brightly colored with a green background and pink and blue lettered graphics covering the main page.

"Humans are very visual creatures." Wendy said simply, moving the pointer over some of the links. "Hmm let's see… ah here we go- browse names by letter!"

"Bring up some of their names that start with R and D." RD-10 said, prodding Wendy's forearm.

"Well actually, R and D wouldn't be placed together at the beginning of a word." Wendy began, looking back at RD-10. "See, in order to use an 'rd' sound they'd need a vowel to come before them, so that letter combination is typically at the end of-"

"Primus! Whatever! Just bring up a list 'er something, Wendy."

He seemed a little put down as RD-10 interrupted him, but when he used his new name his face brightened again. He looked back to the screen, bringing up a page with a short list of names starting with R.

"We can probably find a few names that have an R and D somewhere in them." He continued scrolling down through the list, finally pausing as the list got to- "Ah. Here's a few: Roddy, Roderick, Rodney, Rodolf, Rodrigo, Rodwell-"

"Ooh! That one! That one you said just before!"

"Rodwell?"

"No! Before that- Rodrigo. Yeah. That one. I like that one." RD-10 said with a definite nod.

"Rodrigo..." ST-03 said, "Huh. Well it's... something. I suppose."

"I think it's nice." Wendy said with a smile, "It suits you somehow."

"Yeah, scraphead. It suits me." RD-10, or rather Rodrigo repeated, folding his arms across his chassis and smirking over at ST-03. "You're just jealous ya don't have a cool new name like mine."

"Oh, so human names are cool now?"

"They are when they're Rodrigo."

"Did you want us to find youa name too, ST-03?" Wendy suddenly chimed in.

ST-03 tilted his helm away uncertainly, "Uhh... I dunno you guys." he mumbled, "I mean not that it doesn't seem fun and all, but I'd feel weird not using my official designation-"

"Oh come on!" Rodrigo interrupted, "It's not like we're gonna hack into the mainframe and change the name on your file! This is just for fun."

"Yeah. And if you want, we could just keep it between the three of us." Wendy added, "Nobody else has to know... it'll be like a little inside joke."

ST-03 let out a heavy vent as he looked at his friends. He hadn't expected them to be so excited about the idea of picking their own non-numbered names... Though thinking about it, he probably should have seen how they would revel in the personal touch of a new name. And he would feel bad spoiling their fun... What harm could it do if it was just between the three of them?

"Alright." he finally conceded, "Let's pick a name for me too."

"Ooh!" Wendy shouted, turning to the console, "I know the perfect name for you!" He pulled up a file, but this one didn't consist of just words; there were pictures. Pictures of humans in fantastically colored clothing fighting and jumping around throughout the page.

"What're these?" Rodrigo asked.

"They're called 'comics.'" Wendy explained, "They're just like other human literature except they're told with pictures too... It seemed like it was popular with the humans so I looked into it a few days ago. Well anyway, see this human?" Wendy pointed to a human in bright blue with a star on his chest, "His name is Steve Rogers. He's the hero of the comic. He's loyal and brave and strong..." Wendy smiled and looked back at ST-03 to see his reaction, "And his name starts with ST."

They couldn't tell because ST-03 was still wearing his mask, but he was trying very hard to keep a sheepish smile off his face. Using the name of a powerful, brave, hero seemed to be more in the Cybertronian fashion of names describing aspirations... but Wendy seemed to think it was fitting at least.

"Well... how about just Steve." He offered, "Just the one word is a bit easier."

"Alright! It's settled then!" Rodrigo put his arm around his friend, "So from now you'll be Steve- it's not as cool as Rodrigo or anything, but it'll do."

"He hee- This is really fun!" Wendy said, practically chirping with joy and wringing his digits again, "I like our new names."

"Ha... yeah. But we should still just keep this between the three of us." Steve said, untangling himself from Rodrigo's grip around his shoulders, "I mean, it's fun and all- but just in case. I don't think AA-00 would be very amused by it-"

"Amused by what, precisely?"

Startled by this new voice, the three 'Cons at the computer whirled around to see the polished silver frame of AA-00 standing in the open door of the med bay. Scrap! They hadn't even heard the door open! After the initial surprise wore off, Steve, Wendy, and Rodrigo quickly fell into line and stood at attention.

With their helm held high as they glared through the optical slit of their black visor, AA-00 entered the bay and approached the trio. "I wonder..." they began, circling around the three 'Cons, "If you think I'm amused that there are two miners down in the med bay-" they lifted one of their servos holding a datapad and glanced down at it, "-when according to this schedule here, their break was over four kliks ago." They paused to lower the pad and glared at Steve and Rodrigo accusingly, "Is that what you think is fun?"

"No, sir." both 'Cons replied quickly.

"Good." AA-00 stated flatly. Then after a short glance up at the computer screen, they pushed through the 'Cons to get to the computer and brought their servo down on the controls. All the windows Wendy had opened disappeared one by one. Once the screen was blank they looked back to the miners. "Back to work, you two." they commanded, then abruptly turned to Wendy.

Steve and Rodrigo hurried towards the door as they heard AA-00 start tearing into Wendy: "I thought I already made it clear that you are to stop wasting space on our servers for your ridiculous fascination with humans!"

"I-I'm very sorry, sir." Wendy managed to stammer out. As he did Steve stopped in the doorway and looked back. "But monitoring Soundwave d-doesn't take very much-"

"I'm not interested in your excuses! If you have this much free time on your hands then it's apparent you are not being utilized efficiently." AA-00 pulled up their datapad and began typing onto it. "I'll just have to assign you more clerical tasks to occupy you. There's scores of medical files that Knockout left unsorted-"

"Excuse me, sir."

AA-00 slowly turned back to look at Steve. "What are you still doing here?"

Rodrigo stepped forward and grabbed Steve's arm, trying to pull him away. "Yeah what are we still doing here?" he murmered, "Come on, can'tcha see how mad double-A is?"

"I'm very sorry to interrupt, sir." Steve continued, ignoring Rodrigo. "-but I wanted to bring an issue with our schedule to your attention."

"Frag! Do you have a screw loose?!" Rodrigo whispered urgently. He was pulling harder at his arm, but Steve yanked it out of his grip only to have Rodrigo reclaim it and pull more.

AA-00 turned around fully to face the miner. "Do you have a problem with the way I set up your shifts?"

"Not the shifts, sir- the organization of our unit's break."

"I hardly think you're in a position to be asking for an adjustment to your break when you're-"

"Actually-" Steve interrupted rather forcefully, "I don't mean to make excuses, but it was the overcrowding in the canteens that drove us to come to the med-bay during our break. Had there been more room for us upstairs we wouldn't have overstayed and missed the start of our shift."

AA-00 didn't respond for a long, tense moment... Finally they spoke again, "Overcrowding, you say?" they mumbled, lifting the datapad up again and pulling up one of their schedules, "Well there are several more units in this time slot than is typical..." Then with a short shake of their helm they looked back up, "Well, I'm afraid you'll just have to tolerate it." they said more loudly, "I have more important things to do than reorganizing schedules right now."

"If I might make a suggestion?" Steve began again, "Wen- er... WY-05 has enough spare time to give you a hand. Rather than sifting through old files, you could actually put him to some good use."

AA-00 glanced back at Wendy, who had a faint smile on his face. "Hmm..." after a moment they looked back to Steve, their voice was calm but there was definitely a bite to it. "I'll take your comments under consideration. But for now you are still late for your shift."

"Yes sir!" Steve finally allowed Rodrigo to pull him away and the two hurried out the door, not willing to test their superior any further. Steve glanced back as the door was sliding shut and noticed AA-00 handing off their datapad to Wendy.

Rodrigo dragged Steve down several corridors before finally stopping and turning to face him. He released his grip and sagged down, feigning exhaustion, "Steve-" he began, "You are... so... WOW! That was AMAZING! I don't think I've ever seen anyone stand up to AA-00 like that." Rodrigo let out a loud bark of a laugh, "HA! And by the end they were practically apologizing to you! No wonder Wendy thinks you deserve the brave hero's name."

Steve let out a quiet laugh and lifted a servo to calm his friend and found it was shaking. In fact he was shaking quite a bit. He hadn't realized how nervous he was... AA-00 was pretty intimidating. In fact, Steve was kind of surprised that they had listened to any extent.

He ventilated deeply trying to calm himself, and looked back at Rodrigo. "We really are late for our shift, though." he said, starting down the hallway again.

"Oh yeah." Rodrigo followed after him. "Hmm. Y'know, I think during our next break we should go check on Wendy again..."

"Good idea. We can bring him his ratio-" he suddenly stopped in his tracks and brought a servo to his helm, "Aww scrap." he continued in a grumble, "I didn't even refuel... and I left my cube back in the med bay!"

"Ohh..." Rodrigo looked back down the hallway where they'd come. "Think you'll be okay? ...We could uh... go back and-"

"And chance running into AA-00 again?" Steve asked, "After all that? FRAG no. I'm not that brave."

Now read the sequel: Vehicons Unmasked 2