Disclaimer: I don't own them.
A/N Written for the Gestalt_Love "First Snow January Challenge" on Live Journal; part of the Protectobot Beginnings AU.
"Wake up," Perceptor said softly, tapping on Hot Spot's shoulder. "Online your optics, Hot Spot."
Hot Spot didn't stir from where he was nestled around First Aid and Blades in a comfortable sprawl, with Groove and Streetwise draped over his back. All of them gleamed softly in the dim light from the hallway, paint new and shiny, all crisp edges and bright color.
"You're going to mess up their recharge pattern," Wheeljack warned from the doorway, fretting slightly. Newly constructed mechs like the Protectobots needed short, frequent recharge and refueling for their first several vorns, and Wheeljack was generally strict about keeping them on a regular schedule even though it involved some adjustment on the part of their adult caretakers. Most conveniently, the natural rotation cycle of the planet corresponded roughly to sparkling recharge intervals, giving them an easy way to make sure the youngsters got enough rest (especially given that this lot didn't seem to know the meaning of the word 'quit.')
"Oh fiddlesticks," Perceptor waved an arm in Wheeljack's direction. "Nevermind what the venerable Dr. Sprocket says, a single interrupted recharge isn't going to afflict them with a sudden case of circuit vapors or timer malfunctions. Besides," Perceptor smiled, tilting his big scope to the side to look back at Wheeljack, "would you really wish them to forego this opportunity? By my calculations it will be 1.428 vorns before we experience a concurrence of the necessary conditions again."
"Well, when you put it like that…" Wheeljack chuckled, vocal indicators flashing.
"Concurrence?" came a sleepy voice from the Protectobot pile. Perceptor turned back to see First Aid blinking up at him, lifting his helm from where it had been resting on Hot Spot's chestplates, blue optics brightening slowly as he cycled out of recharge.
"Ah ha! We have one awake, at any rate. Now let us endeavor to awaken the rest of your slumbering counterparts, shall we?"
Wheeljack suppressed a chuckle at First Aid's expression of fascinated, if somewhat bleary-opticed, concentration. It was the same face all of the Protectobots made whenever Perceptor talked to them, as their sparkling vocabulary databases worked double time to keep up.
Streetwise and Groove onlined quickly, with a little nudging from their brother. Blades squirmed and tried to burrow back down underneath Hot Spot, until Streetwise, giggling, wormed his hand into his rotor mechanism.
"Bwah!" Blades contorted and surged up suddenly, grabbing Streetwise's hand away from his back and rolling to pin him on the floor.
"Good morning," Streetwise said cheerily, lifting his head to bump their noseplates together. Blades blinked down at his brother.
"Morning?" he mumbled.
"Middle of the night cycle, actually," First Aid said, scooting over to peer at them, smiling with quiet excitement. "Perceptor wants to show us something."
"Mmph." Blades let himself collapse on top of Streetwise for a moment, drawing some deep intakes as he finished waking up while Streetwise squirmed and laughed, and then rolled them both over to watch Perceptor and Groove try to get Hot Spot up. They weren't having much success.
"Spot, wake up," Groove said as he traced a hand down his larger brother's faceplates. Hot Spot smiled a little and his optics unshuttered a fraction, letting out a thin gleam of red light. He stretched and then reached out both arms, wrapping them around Groove and Perceptor.
"Oh dear." The microscope let out a muffled laugh as Hot Spot pulled him in and snuggled him close to his chestplates. "Hot Spot," he said, trying to push himself back up, but Hot Spot only sighed contentedly and shuttered his optics, cycling back into deep recharge. "A little assistance would be appreciated," Perceptor said into Hot Spot's chest.
Wheeljack only chuckled, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. "What do you mean? Looks like you're doing great there, Perce."
Blades shook his head. "That's never going to work you guys," he said, heaving himself to his feet with a sigh. "Come on, let's get him up." First Aid and Streetwise followed, and, without any audible discussion of the matter, they all positioned themselves around Hot Spot and began levering him to his feet, Groove and Perceptor included. Wheeljack watched in mild amazement as they managed to keep their balance and not drop anyone, working together seamlessly until Hot Spot was upright, his helm drooping forward and Groove and Perceptor each still tucked under an arm.
In unison, Blades, Streetwise, and First Aid let go of the other three. Hot Spot swayed for a moment, and then his servos whirred softly as he caught his balance and lifted his helm.
"Hello," he said pleasantly, looking around at everyone and blinking his optic shutters sleepily. His brow furrowed a little in confusion. "I'm standing up?"
"Perceptor wants to show us something," Groove told him. Hot Spot looked down at his brother and then at Perceptor under his other arm, his optic ridges rising in surprise to see the scientist.
"Yes, Hot Spot, if you will be so kind as to return me to terra firma," Perceptor patted Hot Spot on the arm with the hand not squashed against his side, "we'll commence with the investigation."
With a slightly bemused expression, as if wondering why Perceptor had been taken with the sudden urge to climb into his arms, Hot Spot carefully set the microscope down. Groove he slung over onto his back.
"Onward ho," Groove said, poking his head up over Hot Spot's shoulder and grinning down at them.
"Is it raining?" Streetwise asked Wheeljack hopefully as they all tromped down the corridor after Perceptor to the big doors that opened to the outside. Wheeljack chuckled. One of the major drawbacks to this planet as a location for a secret base was its extreme moisture content. Oceans covered most of the surface, and drenching rain storms occurred at least once an orn, and sometimes lasted for several of the planet's day-night cycles. The Protectobots had taken to the soggy planet like fish to the Rust Sea, greeting every downpour with greatest delight. It was a wonder none of them had developed rust infections.
"You guys and your rain," Wheeljack laughed, shaking his head. "No, it's not raining. This is better."
"Better…" Streetwise repeated, tilting his head curiously. What could possibly be better than rain?
Perceptor had halted their procession just in front of the door.
"Now, as you will recall from our lesson three orns ago, molecules of dihydrogen monoxide undergo a phase change from liquid to solid under particular conditions of temperature and pressure. It just so happens that 2.6 joors ago, the conditions necessary to accomplish this phase change were achieved."
"Freezing!" Streetwise crowed excitedly. "The water's freezing outside!"
"Precisely," Perceptor tapped Streetwise on the helm once in approval and nodded. "And what is unique about the solid state of dihydrogen monoxide?"
"Less dense!" said Groove.
"It floats," added First Aid. "The water freezes from the top down."
"Exactly! Several of the lesser puddles should be quite solid by now, although I recommend caution in the vicinity of the deeper sections unless you are prepared to take an icy plunge."
"No icy plunging, please," Wheeljack added, as the Protectobots were looking rather intrigued by the idea.
"Yer all completely glitched," Ironhide grumbled to Wheeljack later, watching as the Protectobots and Perceptor slid gleefully across frozen sections of water, Perceptor yelling something about "observing the reduced friction rates" as he careened past them with a giggling Blades in tow.
"Glitched out of your processors," Ironhide muttered again, revving his engine in an attempt to stay warm.
"You can go back inside," Wheeljack said, with some sympathy for Ironhide's no doubt aching hydraulics. "If they haven't found us yet, they're not likely to. You don't have to stand guard all the time we go outside. Go back inside and catch up on your recharge."
Ironhide gave him a flat stare to convey exactly what he thought of that idea. "Prime said keep them safe, and safe they're going to be," he stated emphatically, crossing his arms and shivering as he revved his engine again, and then chuckling despite himself as Hot Spot slid by on his aft.
"We're doing research, Ironhide," Hot Spot called, waving excitedly as he finally twirled to a stop. "I'm heaviest so I should slide the furthest!" Groove whizzed by, arms outstretched and lying flat on his ventral plates. "Only I think Groove just defied the laws of physics!"
"More power to ya, kid," Ironhide waved back. "Don't even think about it," he added to Wheeljack, eyeing him suspiciously as the engineer gave him a contemplative look, as if calculating how far Ironhide might slide. "I'm not gonna be part of any 'research,' so just scoot your aft a few paces that way."
"Oh come on, Ironhide," Wheeljack pleaded, laughing. "For science?"
Ironhide's answer was lost as he was distracted by something cold and wet hitting him in one optic.
"Gah!" he exclaimed, swatting at it and trying to back away. Excited shouts came from the Protectobots. Ironhide batted frantically at the sudden swarm of cold white objects that seemed to come out of nowhere.
"Easy, Ironhide," Wheeljack grabbed his arm, laughing. "It's just snow."
"Snow."
"Frozen water, precipitating. Completely harmless, I promise. And right on time, too," Wheeljack said, looking up at the sky in satisfaction.
"What the slag did you blow up to make this big of a mess?" Ironhide gave Wheeljack a wary look, blinking his optic shutters against the onslaught of frozen water molecules.
"Come and see!" Streetwise was there, grabbing their arms excitedly. "The water's gotten all crystallized!"
Perceptor had several of the crystallized flakes under his small scope, when Streetwise arrived dragging Ironhide and Wheeljack along with him. Perceptor switched to projector mode so they could all see. "Note the six-sided structure," Perceptor was saying, "resulting from the very structure of the dihydrogen monoxide molecules themselves. Each crystal has been uniquely crafted by the combination of atmospheric conditions it encountered as it traveled from its formative cloud to the ground, and being as there are more than ten to the hundred and fifty eighth power possible arrangements of complex crystals such as these, the chances of finding two such crystals completely alike in the history of the universe is indistinguishable from zero."
"No two alike, not ever," Hot Spot murmured, lifting his arm to peer at the tiny white specks as they landed and rapidly melted into droplets on his armor.
"Under colder dryer conditions, the crystals form as flat plates," Perceptor said, capturing another blob of white on his microscope stage, "but the stellar formation we have here allows the individual crystals to interlock arms and clump together into larger flakes."
"Just like us," Streetwise said, laughing. "We're supposed to interlock, too, right? And Hot Spot's our condensation nucleus."
"Not for a long time yet," Wheeljack said, giving Streetwise a fond pat on the helm. "But someday, yes."
"It's all like snowflakes," Groove murmured, later, after Wheeljack and Perceptor finally got the thoroughly overexcited Protectobots dried off after their excursion outside, and they had quieted down enough to start drifting back into their interrupted recharge cycle.
"What's that, Groove?" Wheeljack asked, and Groove stretched and snuggled in a little closer to Blades and First Aid, his optics glowing faint, sleepy gold.
"None of us alike, and I love you different than my brothers, or Perceptor, or Ironhide, and you and Ironhide love each other different than you and us, but it's all the same and all different at the same time…." Groove's voice was half-dreaming. "All like snowflakes…little stars that touch...." Groove's optics shuttered and his voice trailed off into silence as he cycled into recharge.
"Some poetry in his programming?" Perceptor asked, coming up behind Wheeljack in time to hear.
"I certainly didn't include it in the parameters, but who knows what the Allspark decided to throw in there. Love like snowflakes." Wheeljack chuckled, and then sighed. There were no snowflakes on Cybertron. Nor poets, or poetry, not for a long time.
"Such unique individuals, already," Perceptor mused, looking at the five recharging Protectobots. "I wonder what they'll become."
Wheeljack shook off his moment of sorrow. Cybertron was not for many more vorns yet, and his charges were safe, healthy and happy, and learning by leaps and bounds. He would worry about everything else tomorrow. For tonight, he would enjoy the snow.