This is a companion fic to my story, The Young Teacher. You don't have to read it to understand this piece, however. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own TFP.

Arcee walked along at Master Yoketron's side. She did not like this. It was highly unusual for him to step out of the training room in the first place. She didn't even know where exactly they were going. She would have very much liked to have gathered up her trailing brother, Prowl, and to run, but Master Yoketron was a hundred times faster and stronger. He would catch her before Bluestreak could complete a round on the race track. So she walked on meekly behind him.

Prowl had begun to get slower and slower. He was bored. He didn't want to walk. Suddenly, he stopped. Arcee turned around and glared at him. "Move." She said irritably. He stood there, tiny servos crossed in defiance. "Na." She tugged at his servos several times, to no avail. Finally, Master Yoketron turned around to see what was taking them so long. A look from him was enough to get Prowl moving again.

Arcee sighed and increased her pace as she dragged a very reluctant Prowl along in order to walk at her Master's side. His stride was huge and she had to take two for every one of his. Poor Prowl had to take four. Yet, neither she nor her brother dared ask for quarter again.

The femme looked around. They were a short way a way from the Thanix (Law Enforcement) quarters of Iacon, where she and her brother had been residing for the past groon or so. Now they were in the Dnanix area, or the home of the engineering caste. She had been here twice before. Both times, it had been here for energon thievery. The first time, she had been with S-42. The second time, D-16 had been dying and S-42 had been trying for energon elsewhere, just as desperately as she had been. She shuddered. Done was done. No good could come out of thinking about it now.

She remembered the conversation that had preceded her arrival here. She hadn't meant to listen in – it had just happened.

Master Yoketron : You cannot continue keeping them here. The training room is not an appropriate place to keep them.

Redblade : Then where, sir? There is no other place. We cannot give them up to be adopted by any one family. The prejudice against their lowly origins is too great to risk that. (They were talking about her and Prowl for sure now. That sentence had confirmed it.)

Master Yoketron : I will have to give it some thought. But I believe I know a place. The mech is not as biased as other Cybertronians against lower castes. And he is of the engineering caste, so his fellow caste members will not know where Arcee and Prowl came from. I could even give him a special authorization to adopt them, though they will remain in this caste. I am on the advisory board of the Guilds, after all.

Redblade : With all due respect, sir, it will still be highly risky.

Master Yoketron : Then we must take that risk.

Then she heard no more, as the sounds of conversation drifted away. That very afternoon, she and Prowl had been hauled out of the training room and made to move. They carried nothing, for the simple reason that they owned nothing. The only thing that Prowl had in his subspace was an old, broken down toy that Arcee had found lying about and had given to her brother.

They were now in Dnanix proper. Arcee could see mechs and femmes of various sizes moving around. Dnanix was a focal point for many castes, not just the engineers. There were labourers, construction workers, servants and a wide variety of lesser technicians. One would think that this might serve to lessen the divide between castes, but it was not so. In fact, the gap was wider here than at many places.

They walked on until they reached the residential sector. It was quieter there. There was no throb and thrum of machinery like there had been earlier, nor were there so many bots on the street. They stopped in front of Area no. 4, Plan-51P2-3, House no. 80023. It looked the absolute same as all the other buildings on the street. The only variable was the sign.

Master Yoketron knocked. The wind sighed and made Arcee cold. It was still Retan season, after all, and Hadeen, Cybertron's sun, had begun to set. Prowl hugged her pede and she scooped him up in order to share the warmth from her spark with him.

The door opened. A large, well built mech stepped out. His yellow and orange paintjob was a bit scratched in places. "Master Yoketron?" He asked in surprise. He bowed down low. The Master nodded. He commanded a good amount of respect from all in Iacon. He was, after all, one of the oldest bots in the city.

"I have brought them, as we discussed earlier."

"Indeed." The mech peered at them. Arcee shrank slightly. She disliked that searching gaze. The mech gave a low whistle. "Low castes, huh?" He wondered in a confidential tone. "Never would have guessed." Then he smiled at the two younger bots. "I'm Sift. Come in, you must be cold." Arcee did not move. A nudge from her Master. She stayed stock still. "Go." He commanded.

She'd always been moving from one thing to another. First her formers died, leaving her and Prowl alone. Orphans in the lower castes were always sent to mining. To avoid that fate, they ran. For a few vorns, she stayed with D-16 and S-42. Then they had been found. Law Enforcement had taken her and Prowl away (illegally) and had sent D-16 and S-42 to the Pits to die, in order to hide their existence from the Council. She had stayed a while with Master Yoketron. And now this. She merely clutched Prowl tightly. He squirmed a little before settling down.

Finally the Master took her digits in his and pulled her towards the house. She tripped on the stairs, but did not resist too much otherwise. It was not a good idea.

Inside the house, the warmth immediately hit her. It felt good. Arcee found herself in a small living room. It was brightly painted in sky blue. There was a decorative bench on her right and another smaller one resting against the wall opposite. In the middle, there was a small table and a large viewing screen was on the wall to her right. It was cozy, not at all like the drab old house she had been living in with D-16 and S-42. She let Prowl down as Sift closed the door. "Well, you're Arcee, aren't you?" She nodded. Prowl edged close to her, sensing her discomfort. He glared at Sift. "And this must be little Prowl. Come, I'll show you your quarters."

They walked along to the narrow staircase on her left and climbed up. On the landing, there were two doors. Sift walked towards the second. He opened it up. Arcee peeked in and Prowl did the same, albeit from behind her.

The room was a dead mess. There was two berths, one each against two opposite walls. One was clean, the other had plenty of datapads strewn across it. The walls had holographs of Bluestreak, the racer; the Iacon Predacons, the lobbing team (which, by the way, was mostly pulverized by the other teams) and of The Tomes of Rhuin, a famous epic. A desk was against the wall in front of her. That, too was covered with various types of datapads. A small window was above it. The remnants of weak, watery sunlight came met their optics as Hadeen finally slipped beneath the horizon. She looked at Sift questioningly. "We have only two berthrooms. My own youngling also recharges here. I told him to clean it up a bit, but he didn't, apparently." He glanced at her apologetically. "I could find only one berth for you two. We'll have to wait a bit to give Prowl his own."

What's his name, she wanted to ask, but her voice box wasn't co-operating. "Wha-Wa-"

The doorbell rang. "Ah, there he is." Said Sift. "Come down to meet him." He went down the stairs quickly and opened the door. Arcee and Prowl followed uncertainly.

An orange and white mech stepped in. "Hello, Appa." He said pleasantly to his sire. No, why is it him, he hates me! Sift smiled and nodded in turn. "Remember what I told you about the two law-enforcement bots?" He gestured towards Arcee and Prowl. "Here they are." The femme shrunk slightly. The youngling looked at them. His optics narrowed. "You're the femme who's always hanging around Orion Pax like a cyber-pup." It was a statement, not a question. "Ratchet, be nice." Sift said, a little pensively.

The truth was, Arcee didn't have any friends other than Orion Pax. All the other younglings of her caste disliked her because of her low caste origins. The others disliked her because she was shunned by her own caste. Orion Pax had been the one to teach and guide her before. Now she had a different, stricter teacher, who occasionally became mean and exasperated with her lack of factual knowledge compared to the other younglings of her age. There was no constant in her life except for him – and maybe Prowl – and she felt drawn to him occasionally for comfort, because he was the only one who knew of her unique situation. For that, she had been willing to tolerate the mildly irritated raised optic ridges of Orion's other friends. Until she realized that she would be living with one of them.

The fact that Ratchet seemed to dislike her somewhat more than the others didn't help matters.

"This is Arcee." Sift was saying, "And this is Prowl, Arcee's brother."

Ratchet looked at Prowl, gave Arcee a hard glare and went up the stairs. She looked down and away, refusing to be affected. She felt a gentle servo on her shoulder pads. She looked up at Sift. "He, well, he doesn't like changes very much. He'll get used to you in a while; don't worry about it. I'll talk to him, if you like."

She nodded, but not very enthusiastically. She didn't feel up to speaking. Sift patted her and gestured towards the staircase. "Go. Ask him if he'll lend you a datapad for you to mess around with. And if he refuses, then tell me." He told her kindly.

She went up as directed, dragging Prowl with her. She wondered when she had become so complacent, so closed up. It was twice as bad as it had ever been before. It was her defense mechanism. Just close up and do what you're told, and you won't get hurt. D-16 and S-42 had managed to draw her out, for a while. Now it had returned in full force. She briefly considered trying to break it, but what was the point?

She stopped before the closed door of Ratchet's room. Prowl looked at her impatiently. She quickly decided that she would not ask for a datapad. She had her self respect. Prowl reached out, irritated, and pushed the door open. They both stepped in.

"Ever heard of knocking?" Ratchet grumbled. He was sitting on his own berth, swinging his pedes and staring into a pad as though he was too busy to look up at her. Arcee mumbled a listless apology and sat on her berth. Her brother raised his servos up to ask her to pick him up – he was still too short to get onto the berth on his own. Arcee didn't pay any attention, lost in her own thoughts. He glared up at her, then toddled up to Ratchet. "Please... da-datapad?" He asked, fumbling with the harder, second word.

Ratchet looked at him. Prowl's expression was just about as innocent and polite as it could get. "No."

"Please?"

"I told you no. Don't you have your own?"

Prowl thought about it. He looked at Arcee for support, but she wasn't looking at him. "Um... No?"

"Then you can't have mine."

Prowl scowled. "Tell on you." He threatened. "Go ahead, scraplet." said Ratchet arrogantly. "Why can't you be polite for once?"Arcee interfered on her brother's behalf. "It's my datapad. I can give it to whoever I like. And that doesn't include you two, by the way." Ratchet answered, still not bothering to look at her.

That got her gears in a grind. "And who gave you the right to call my brother a scraplet? You should look in the mirror." Her angry tone made Ratchet annoyed. He got up. "Look who's talking." He snorted.

Now Arcee got up, too. "You definitely have the personality of a one. Or is civility not in your circuits, scrapper?" Now, when Arcee was in the lower castes, swearing was a common, once an astrosecond kind of thing, but, as she'd quickly learned from Orion, it wasn't acceptable to higher castes. Swearwords still occasionally slipped out, however. Ratchet looked outraged. "Why do you care, you-you-" He couldn't find an appropriate curse. He didn't know too many. Arcee snickered.

"So what if it isn't? What're you going to do about it?" He exploded. Arcee opened her mouth to give a befitting reply, when Sift's voice traveled up the staircase and into the room. "What's going on up there? What's with all the noise?" Arcee opened her mouth yet again, but Ratchet quickly clamped his bulky digits over her faceplate. The femme gave him a furious look. But Ratchet had forgotten Prowl. "Arg-arg-arg-arguing!" The sparkling sang gleefully. There was silence for a nanoclick. "I'm coming up." Sift announced as Arcee finally managed to push Ratchet's digits off and glare at him properly.

Ratchet, however, wasn't paying attention. He snatched up a pad at random and shoved it into Arcee's servos. Prowl made a noise in triumph. Then Ratchet promptly sat on his own berth as though nothing had happened. "What the-?"

Sift sprung in from the door. "Is everything alright?" Arcee blinked at him. He sighed in relief. "Okay, looks like it is. Listen, all three of you, it's getting late. You should recharge. Both of you younglings have school tomorrow, don't you? And Prowl has to be taken to the law enforcement quarters for the solar cycle. Right. Well, I'm going to recharge now, anyway. Good night!" And he left with a little wave.

Prowl reached up for the datapad. 'I want to! I want to!" Arcee held it out of reach. "No." She said firmly. "We have to recharge now, didn't you hear what Sift said?" The sparkling made a sulky face as she put the pad down on the desk and helped him onto their shared berth. Ratchet also put his away and cleared the remaining datapads off his berth. He laid down. "Arcee," He said tiredly, "Could you switch off the lights?"

"Oh, so now you're being nice."

"Oh, shut up."

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