The next morning, Blurr was awakened by the sunlight streaming in through the window. For

a few minutes, he stayed where he was, just watching Windblade recharge. In the faint morning light, which left the colors of everything muted, her Cityspeaker markings almost seemed to merge with the rest of her facial plating; usually her eyes brought their color out more sharply, but the blue of her optic glass was nowhere near as bright without the light of her eyes behind it. Blurr reached up to touch her face, running the tip of one finger along the edge of an optic socket.

Then the shrill sound of an incoming comm call pierced the air. Windblade pushed herself back, falling off the berth and shoving Blurr into the wall, and landed with a yelp.

"Hi, Chromia," she began. "Yes, I'm fine. No, you just startled me. I'm fine, really." iSorry,/i she mouthed at Blurr.

"It's okay," he whispered back.

"I'm still here, yes. I'll be over at Metroplex in a few minutes. Thank you. Bye!" Windblade spoke faster as the call progressed, ending at a speed that would have been nearly incomprehensible for anyone except Blurr.

"I take it you need to leave, then?" Blurr asked, twisting to face her.

"Yeah. Apparently Starscream wants to talk about something to do with Metroplex iright now/i. I'm sorry," she said, noticeably slower than before but still fast.

"It's okay," he said. "Are you going to be back tonight?"

"I'll try, but I can't promise anything. Starscream sounds like he's pretty unhappy. I'll try to comm you if I can't make it, though." She left with a smile.

"So how was last night?" Chromia asked lightly as Windblade walked into Metroplex's head module.

Windblade smiled. "It was nice," she said quietly, walking over to the console and beginning to prepare everything for the day's work.

Chromia smiled before switching to a more serious expression. "You're not going to get to see him for at least a few days, with the way the schedule's looking. You have a meeting with Starscream in two hours, and according to Rattrap he's not happy about this, although it does sound like he knows it's not your fault."

Windblade sighed. "That's better than it could have been. Thank you, Chromia."

"You're welcome, Cityspeaker," Chromia said as a dark blue Seeker Windblade recognized as part of Metroplex's maintenance team walked in.

"Can I talk to you, Cityspeaker?" the maintenance bot asked shyly. "Alone?" he added after a moment.

"Of course," Windblade said, standing up. "There's a meeting room down the hall that should be empty for the next few hours - I'll be back before the meeting, Chromia."

Chromia looked like she was going to object briefly, then sighed. "Okay. Scream if anything happens."

"What did you want to talk to me about?" Windblade asked the maintenance bot as she closed the door. "Also, if you don't mind me asking, what's your name? Of course I understand if you don't want to tell me, but I promise I'll do the best I can to keep anyone from finding out."

"My name is Pulsar," he said, staring down at the table. "I help maintain Metroplex, mostly getting up into the sections that it's hard for grounders to reach." He looked up at her suddenly. "I think I saw something that might be related to the problems Metroplex has been having a few weeks ago," he blurted out quickly.

Windblade blinked once, then nodded calmly. "Okay. Thank you for coming to tell me."

"I was leaving work a bit later than I usually do," Pulsar said. "It was already starting to get dark outside, so I'm not entirely certain about some of the details, but I know I saw a bot holding what looked like one of those nutrigel packs - you might not be familiar with them, we used them during the war as sort of supplements to regular energon when we couldn't get the minerals that were supposed to be in it, they were mostly for sparklings - except it was glowing. Nutrigel doesn't glow, it's just clear. So they dumped it out onto the ground and just transformed and drove away. It stopped glowing when it hit the ground, and it didn't look weird, so I just left it alone. I assumed it was some sort of weird nutrigel variant that they wanted to get rid of. But this was right next to the filter that started having problems first. I figured you might think this was helpful to know for some reason? I probably shouldn't have said anything. I know you're really busy. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

"Don't be," Windblade said. "This is actually very useful information. Do you remember what color they were, or what their altmode looked like?" Mentally, she was already composing a message for Wheeljack to see if he could tell her something more about the poison. He'd been able to figure out what the mystery substance did, but information about what it looked like could only be helpful in figuring out what it was.

"Kind of yellow-orange," Pulsar said, "and... I don't know. Kind of like one of those Earth sports cars? But not. More streamlined. Floating, too - he wasn't touching the ground, once he transformed. Bright blue eyes. I remember because he glared at me after he saw me looking at him. I figured it was because he just didn't like me." He gestured towards his own eyes, which were a vivid scarlet.

"You remember where you were, right?" Windblade asked, calling up a map of Metroplex on the table screen. "Do you remember which way this bot went?"

Pulsar tapped at the screen until he'd managed to zoom in on a specific point far from the rest of the city, as close to the outskirts of Iacon as you could get and still be inside Metroplex. "I was here," he said, pointing to an exit from Metroplex, "and I was facing this way, so he must have gone... that way." He drew an arrow pointing out to the plains surrounding the city.

"Thank you," Windblade said sincerely. "You've been very helpful."

He smiled awkwardly. "Really?"

"Absolutely," Windblade said. "How much of this information can I give to others? I won't use your name at all if I can avoid it, but I can't promise Starscream won't want to talk to you himself. But your information could be vital to finding the poisoner."

"Really?" Pulsar repeated. He stared down at the table. "I don't want to talk to Lord Starscream unless I have to. I served under him in the war for a while, and he was scary. My squadron never had to deal with him directly, but we heard stories."

"I'll do everything I can," Windblade promised. She didn't expect it to be a serious problem; for all Starscream claimed to mistrust her skills, he actually believed in her much more than he let slip. His pride simply wouldn't let him admit it.

iWindblade,/i Chromia said over commlink, iStarscream's here early and he wants to talk /inow.

"Just a moment, please," she said to Pulsar. iThank you for telling me. Tell him I'm busy right now but I'll be there in a few minutes./i

Chromia sent a wordless affirmation back.

"If that's everything, I need to go now," Windblade said. "If you think of anything else you've forgotten to tell me, come find me or Chromia; she'll know where I am. Again, thank you for the information. I know it doesn't seem very helpful to you, but it's likely to be invaluable to the investigation."

Pulsar nodded. "Okay. Um, should I just leave now, or…?" He trailed off.

"One of the guards will show you out," Windblade said. "I'll come back to Metroplex's control center with you."

"Thank you, Cityspeaker," Pulsar said, standing and following her out.

Windblade started hearing Starscream, apparently arguing with Chromia, several rooms away; cycling her vents hard, she braced herself.

"What is Windblade possibly doing that is more important than this?" Starscream snapped.

"I can't tell you that," Chromia said, apparently not for the first time, from her tone. "When she gets back, she can - oh, thank Solus. She's here. Ask her yourself."

Starscream turned to glare at Windblade. "iThere/i you are, Cityspeaker," he said, with an exaggerated tone of annoyance. "Perhaps you're ready for our meeting now?"

"Of course, Lord Starscream," she said politely. "I was busy dealing with a Cybertronian who wanted to speak to me. I'm sure you can understand." As Starscream opened his mouth to reply, she settled in for another hours-long semi-productive passive-aggressive argument.

Blurr got a quick comm message that night - iI'm sorry, I need to deal with Metroplex and Starscream right now, I'll be there tomorrow night./i To be honest, he'd kind of expected it. The problem with Metroplex had been all over the news that night. It'd turned out to be energon filtration issues causing trouble with the Metrotitan's spark, or so it seemed until they'd found that the energon had traces of a corrosive poison in it. There'd been no official government statement, but the newsbots suspected foul play, and really, there were no good reasons for there to be powerful corrosives inside Metroplex's body.

The Iacon Communication Service's morning news the next day had an interview with Starscream, talking about what they'd found and what was happening now. "The oxidizing agent we found traces of is being analyzed now to determine what exactly it is," he explained to a brightly smiling Circuit. "We have some additional information gathered from an informant who would prefer to remain anonymous which is proving helpful."

"How much damage, exactly, did the toxin do to Metroplex?" Circuit asked, in a tone that Blurr couldn't help but feel was inappropriately chirpy for the subject matter.

"It's damaged some of his filters, especially those around his spark chamber, and some of his conduits - again, especially the ones around his spark chamber. Cityspeaker Windblade is working with Metroplex to find as many of the damaged areas as possible now. But we found the problem quickly, and he's expected to recover fully with no difficulty. We're also working on tracing the origins of the poison, but it doesn't seem that it's still being introduced into the system."

"Thank you for the interview, Lord Starscream," Circuit said, turning the video off. "There you have it, everyone," he continued, turning to the camera. "We tried to get a comment from Cityspeaker Windblade, but Chromia says she's too busy right now to focus on anything other than Metroplex. We'll update you as soon as anything worth being updated on happens. Circuit out."

Blurr started composing a message to Windblade. After a while, he finally settled on the shortest one he could think of, marked as non-urgent as possible - iHow are you doing?/i - and sent it before he could decide against it.

He didn't expect a response for a while, but one arrived only an hour later. It was just as non-urgent as his own, according to the labeling, but he read it immediately anyway. iTired. Busy. Hoping I can come see you tonight./i it read.

iThat sounds good./i Blurr paused for a moment before sending it, then impulsively added iLove you./i He sent the message before he had time to change his mind about the addition.

There was a pause of almost a minute before she replied. iLove you too./i

Windblade spent the next few days unsuccessfully trying to track down the bot Pulsar had seen. Starscream suggested early on that Pulsar himself might be their perpetrator, which had to be duly considered and rejected as an idea; beyond that, their search was unsuccessful.

Finally, she found a night that wasn't occupied by dealing with Starscream or the enforcers or someone else to go visit Blurr. They'd been talking over commlinks whenever they could, but that didn't substitute for a real conversation, and she was looking forward to getting to see him again.

She arrived not long before closing time, and waited quietly until the last patrons had departed before Blurr came over to talk to her. "Hi," he said quietly. "It's been a while."

"I know. I'm sorry. I've been busy," Windblade said. "You've probably seen the news reports. I know Circuit's been doing them."

Blurr sighed. "Yes. Someone's poisoning Metroplex, and you're not sure if your one source is reliable. That's basically all I know, though."

"That's because it's what we have," Windblade said. "A maintenance bot who thinks he saw the poisoning came to talk to me, and we have a description of who he saw, but it's not very detailed - just color and altmode."

"Those can still be useful, though. What did you say this bot apparently looked like?" Blurr asked.

"According to the maintenance bot, yellow-orange, with an altmode that looked like a floating Earth sports car. Blue eyes, so probably an Autobot. Other than that, he didn't have anything. And I'm sure that describes a lot of bots."

Blurr tilted his head to the side. "Actually, not so many. The antigrav thing is your main giveaway - maybe it's different on Camien, but that's rare here. The only bots with antigrav cars for vehicle modes picked them up off-world and never switched back. I can only think of two bots who could fit that description, and I'd say I know most of the bots in Iacon."

"What are their names?" Windblade asked urgently.

"One was named Sunbreak and the other was Lightstreak. I think Sunbreak was one of Starscream's guards, and I'm not sure what Lightstreak did. Maybe some sort of construction work?" Blurr thought for a moment. "Between those two, I'd guess you're looking for Lightstreak. He had issues with the entire idea of contacting the colony worlds - thought we could handle all our own problems and the colonies were just going to cause us more of them. I don't remember Sunbreak having any real opinion on it."

Windblade nodded. "Thank you. I'll probably mention this to Starscream tomorrow - unless you mind."

"No, that's fine," Blurr said. "I want this guy caught too."

Windblade smiled tiredly. "Now that's dealt with, can you come over here?" she asked. "Today was kind of rough and I want a hug from my boyfriend."

Blurr obliged, stamping down the thrill of hearing her call him her boyfriend. Not that he hadn't known that that was what he was, but she hadn't actually said it before. It sent a happy tingle down his spinal strut. He wrapped his arms around her gently, and she relaxed slowly into them.

"That feels nice. You're so warm," Windblade said, snuggling further into his arms.

"Racer frame," Blurr explained. "I'm supposed to vent heat easily."

"Makes sense. I'm supposed to retain it. Caminus isn't that warm, and the atmosphere gets really cold." Windblade paused. "This is really nice. Thank you."

"You're my girlfriend," Blurr said softly. "It's my job."

"Well, yes, but it's still really nice having someone to cuddle like this. It's… been a while."

"Did you have someone back on Caminus?" Blurr asked. From what he'd managed to pick up from overhearing Windblade and Chromia talking to other bots, and asking them questions about Caminus himself, everyone on Caminus was expected to have an amica endura, but not so much a conjunx. Romantic relationships weren't exactly frowned on, of course, but they weren't viewed as mandatory in the same way.

"No," Windblade admitted quietly. "Not for a while. Back when I was learning to be a Cityspeaker, I had something going on with one of the other trainees, but that was a long time ago." She snuggled into his neck.

"I haven't ever really been in a relationship with someone," Blurr said softly. "Back when I was a racer, I slept with a lot of people, but I never had an actual relationship with any of them. It was fun and I don't regret it, but after that there was the war and I had more important problems, and I've never actually dated anyone. I don't know what I'm doing any more than you do."

"This is a good way to start," Windblade said. "I like the way this feels." She kissed him again, slow and gentle, and that cut off all conversation for a few minutes.

They talked and kissed intermittently for the next hour or so. Finally, they both grew tired, and the question of where they were going to sleep came up.

"Where do you want to sleep?" Blurr asked, somewhat awkwardly. "I can reconfigure my berth so both of us will fit, or one of us can take the couch, or something else."

Windblade smiled, just as awkwardly. "Your berth sounds fine."

It took Blurr a few minutes to adjust the settings on his berth to get it big enough to hold both him and Windblade. Once he managed it, they both slid into the berth together, facing towards each other but several inches apart.

After a long few minutes of working out where everyone's limbs were going to go, Windblade pushed herself into Blurr's arms, snuggling against him. He wrapped an arm around her gently, and they fell asleep that way.