I'm starting a holiday-based story about Mariposa Prime and her first year on Earth. Mariposa in this story is the daughter of Optimus Prime and Elita One, and the baby sister to Bumblebee. I have merged the young, happy, excited version of the character from Youngling with the more angst-y version of Mari from The Life of a Techno-Organic Prime. Mariposa is 5 vorns, but she lived a life of abuse and neglect in another world before returning to her normal dimension as a two-year-old.

Lullaby is Daughter of the Moon, by Adriana Figueroa.

I only own my oc's.

Miko's Discovery

Miko flops onto the couch. With the bots out fighting yet another battle with the cons and the two boys unable to come—Jack's at work, while Raf's helping his family decorate their house for the holiday season—and Mariposa taking a nap in her creators' berth, Miko's bored stiff. "Ratchet?"

The old medic scoffs. "Find something to do by yourself, Miko! Can't you see I'm trying to work?"

The teen huffs before looking around the room from her flopped position on the couch, quickly noticing that, while there's very little personal touches in the base normally, there's not a single decoration, and it's almost four in the afternoon on Black Friday! She sits up before turning to the medic. "Ratchet?" The medic turns to her, about to snap at her for interrupting him yet again, only for her to continue before he has the chance. "Has Mari ever celebrated a holiday?"

Ratchet sighs softly. "Of course she has, back on Cybertron! Why do you ask?"

"There's no decorations up."

"We don't celebrate your holidays, Miko. Now kindly leave me to my work."

"What's she mean when she says "Old Earth", then? Were you guys on Earth before?"

Ratchet gets a far-away look in his eyes as he remembers a time three vorns ago, when they first found the young princess.

Flashback

A woman about twenty-five years old is outside with her little brother and his wife. The former two are sparing with powers, simply having fun as they wait for the inevitable chaos to strike, while the latter is making sure the two-year-old fraternal twins are behaving themselves, and otherwise monitoring the sparing session.

The twenty-five year old suddenly freezes and lays a hand on her chest at a sharp stabbing pain, allowing her brother to get a good strike on her sensitive back. She quickly goes into overdrive, and starts striking and kicking as if her very life depends on taking down the attacker—because it just might the next time she leaves her back open. She trips him up, causing him to fall, then holds up an arm to signify she's won this round. The pain in her chest only grows stronger as she reaches down to help him up. It's a familiar pain, by this point it time, and she has more important things to worry about than the pain.

A semi-familiar ship lands in the field a few feet away, behind some pine trees so the occupants can't be seen coming off. The woman, however, turns with a gasp, and pulls her hand out of her brothers, causing him to fall face-first into the grass as she starts to run toward the field. "SORRY!"

Her brother stands and dusts himself off before turning to his wife and kids. "What was that all about?"

The twenty-two year old stands from the toddlers. "They're here."

"Who's here?"

"Shut up!" She steps away from the Dodge Spirit beside her and herds the twin toddlers toward their father without a second to spare. "Stay with your Dad."

The silver Spirit suddenly transforms before running after the woman who is, by now, almost to the tree line. "Mari!"

The twenty-five-year-old whirls at the name to find a large mech running at her, but she doesn't cower. Rather, she turns to run at him, causing the other humans around to cringe in fear, and her brother to cover the twins' eyes, just in case. Thankfully, the silver mech stops as soon as he sees her run at him. "Blue! Blue! It's really you!"

He kneels to her. "Of course it's me! Who were you expecting? The King of England?"

She crosses her arms. "They have a queen, not a king, goofball." She giggles, sounding like a young child, rather than the adult she appears to be. "And I thought you were supposed to be hiding!"

"Not when you could be in danger, Little One." He steps around the trees, and I hear him talking to someone before he steps out with several more robots, at least three of them with doorwings—a black and white mech with a red chevron, a yellow and black mech, and a pink femme—while three others have either little winglets—a blue femme—or nothing at all—a red and blue mech, and a red and white mech—on their backs.

All seven of the robots step out from behind the trees, and the woman gasps before tackling a red and blue mech and crying into his leg. "Daddy! Oh, Primus! Daddy! You're here! You're really here!"

She repeats the same action with the pink femme—only with the word Mommy—then the yellow winged mech—calling him Bumbee and Bubby—before turning her attention to the red and white mech as he kneels to her.

"R-Ratchet?"

"Yes. How did you know of us, Princess?"

"Cartoons… Someone made cartoons… I watched them all the time…"

A few months later, the eight start back for the ship—having concealed it from the humans upon their arrival—and help the now-sparkling framed femmeling into the ship. She puts up a fight when they try to put her into her own seat, so she winds up on her mother's lap. It's essential they restore their creator bonds as quickly as possible, and closeness is the best way to do so. Once they're in the proper dimension and out of Earth's atmosphere, the red and white bot—their medic—steps over and starts to examine the sparkling femme to ensure she's healthy and happy.

"Can'y?"

"What did you say, Little One?"

"I has can'y?" The pink femme nudges her. "P'ease?"

The white medic holds out an energon chew. "That's what I thought you said."

The femmeling looks up to the medic questioningly. "Cyb'twon has C'istmas?"

"What, Sweetspark?"

"Does Cyb'twon has C'istmas? It hol'day."

He sighs and shakes his head, not even knowing what the femmeling said, except for the words "Cybertron" and "Holiday". "No, Sweetspark."

"Ratchet?"

The old Medic starts before turning back to the teenager with a sigh. "She was sent to another dimension, to protect her from those wanting to harm her. We retrieved her a few vorn ago, and she asked about some holiday from this planet, but she was too young for us to understand her at the time. With the start of our war, we haven't even been able to keep up with our own holidays, let alone Earth's."

Miko grins. "Then I'll just have to teach you, so Mari won't have to go without them another year!" She smiles before shooting off texts to both Jack and Raf, then slips the phone back into her pocket.

"Ratchet, we need a bridge to my coordinates, now!"

The medic runs back to the computers. "It'll have to be later, Miko!" He sets the coordinates and opens the ground bridge before turning to watch the open portal anxiously. Bumblebee staggers in, leaning on Bluestreak, followed by Bulkhead and Arcee, and finally, Optimus carrying an unconscious Elita One. The femme doesn't look too badly hurt, but it's not too hard to tell what caused her condition—a large dent on her helm.

A few minutes after Elita One regains consciousness on the medical berth, Mariposa wakes up and toddles into the main room before following her spark bonds to the medical bay. Upon seeing her Carrier on the medical berth, she turns to her Sire with a worried look. "Cawiew huwt?"

Optimus reaches down and runs a hand over the femmeling's helm lightly. "Yes, she is, but she'll be fine, Princess."

She looks up at the large berth to where Elita's hand is resting on the edge. "I see?"

Elita turns to look up at her bondmate. "Orion? Please?"

Optimus nods and lifts the small femmeling onto the berth beside her Carrier, then steps back to let the femmeling healer have a special moment with her Carrier.

"You needs be cawefuler, Cawier…"

Elita laughs softly. "I guess I do, Sweetspark."

The femmeling takes a few more moments to look over her Carrier before curling up beside her and resting her head on her Carrier's chest. "Momma…"

Elita strokes the femmeling's helm gently as she starts to sing a lullaby she'd heard their first few days on "Old Earth".

Silver light
She turned her face up to the starlit sky
And on this night began to wonder why
She knew that soon the day would come

Born to be
An heir of beauty and serenity
Into this world she entered quietly
To her surprise she was the one