Thank you SkyenhaMarisa, in a round-about way you were the inspiration for this chapter.

Chapter 2:

The Still was a marvelous hit with the previously deprived Autobots and all of them were careful not to do anything that might get the new privileges taken away. Everyone had a suspicion of who would mess up first and get the bar closed, temporary or otherwise. Smokescreen, not being one to pass up a sure thing, set up a betting pool. The top contenders were currently the Dinobots and the twins themselves followed closely by the gestalts and the more opinionated of the minibots.

All of the suspicions were wrong.

Blaster went thundering down the hall, nearly flattening several mecha in his haste to reach the SecurityCenter. He skidded around the corner and nearly faceplanted into the door. The host-mech frantically pressed the entry chime in quick succession and was greeted with the suspicious face of the Security Director on the viewscreen.

"What do you want?" asked Red Alert as he glared at the errant communications officer.

"They're gone!" Blaster exclaimed. "Ah let them go without meh an' now they're gone!"

Red Alert sat up straighter, a potential mechnapping was a serious breach of security and he nearly hit the lock-down switch before he had another thought. What if it was a ruse? This could be an attempt to disrupt the Ark's functioning and sabotage Teletraan1. After all, the carrier had not said who was missing. The SD looked over the cameras and made note of where everyone was before he answered, it would not be wise to set off a traitor who might have help waiting in the wings.

"Just exactly who is missing?" The red and white Lamborghini asked neutrally. He was unaware that his horns were already flashing blue and giving away his current thought patterns.

Blaster wrung his servos in the beginnings of panic, if Red Alert would not help him all was lost. "The twins."

Now the Security Director knew that the host was lying. He could see Sideswipe and Sunstreaker clearly on the monitor for the entrance to the Ark where they were doing a shift of guard duty. He narrowed his optics, what plot was the traitorous Polyhexian trying? His horns began to spark as his glitch began to come forward.

"I knew you were in cahoots with the Decepticons, I knew it! Now I have proof and Prowl will have to listen to me! The twins are at the entrance and I bet you want me to lock down the Ark so they will be trapped outside where they can get ambushed! They are among our strongest warriors and it would be a great boon to the 'Cons if we were to lose them. Oh, I have seen through your plot and now security is coming to arrest you, traitor!" shrieked the paranoid mech.

"No!" exclaimed Blaster, trying to explain before it was too late. "Not Siders an' Sunny, my twins, Rewind an' Eject. Ah let them go ta tha rec room for noontime energon ahead o' meh an' when Ah got there, they were gone!"

But Red Alert would not hear it. It was all a ploy, a trick to get him to let down his guard and he would not fall for it.

At least not until Inferno, Prowl, and Jazz showed up to show him reason. After they finally got the SD calmed down and sorted out what had caused the panic in the first place Prowl called an all-points search bulletin out over the comm to begin the hunt for the missing bitlets.

The SIC would have permitted the sealing of the Ark's entrances, but the time it took to settle Red had made that a moot point. If the twin cassettes had been sparklingnapped by the Decepticons they would be long gone by then and the locked blast doors would slow down the search parties if the two were simply hiding. Why the cassettes would be hiding no one could figure out, but it was a tiny bit of hope when the other option was so forlorn.

As the joors went by that slim hope dwindle to despair as the younglings could not be found. Until finally, when all optimism had failed a comm from Jazz had them all rushing down to the storage facilities.

Blaster was last to arrive, having been searching the outside duct egresses for signs of struggle and when he dashed off the lift he nearly slammed into a wall of mecha. It looked as though the entire crew had come to see the little ones hiding spot. The worried host pushed his way through the crowd until he made it to Jazz and the black and white merely pointed him inside. Blaster balked at first, for they were at the entrance of The Still and he could not countenance a reason for his mechlings to be in the bar. Resigned to the apparent fact that Jazz could not be mistaken he entered, and stopped in shock.

Now, Rewind and Eject had grown, as mechlings do, over the course of the war and were currently a single vorn away from their majority. They must have been curious as to what they saw the 'big bots' doing in the evenings and had decided to try it for themselves. The two were smashed and that was putting it politely. It seemed they had decided to be systematic about it at first and had pulled down almost half of Sideswipe's stock so they could sample each flavor of highgrade. The first ten or so bottles had apparently not met with good review from the mini-mechs, for they still sat on the countertop. The blends that evidently the two cassettes really liked were empty and scattered like so much shrapnel around the plastered little mecha.

The coup de grace of the situation though, was the fingerpaintings on the once pristine bar divider. At some point during their inebriation the cassettes must have taken notice of the different colors the highgrade came in due to the additives mixed into the blends and decided that it would make for good art medium.

Blaster was horrified. His mechlings had disgraced themselves thoroughly and would surely be punished by the officers. They knew they were not old enough for the more potent grades of energon, and yet here they were giggling like all was right in the world. The mortified mech turned to apologize on behalf of his offspring and found that, rather than being angry, the officers were most amused by the situation. Even Prowl had a faint smirk flitting around his lipplates. Blaster tried to stumble through an apology anyway and was stopped by a raised servo from his Prime.

"My friend, it is alright. Mechlings will be mechlings, and most of their age are very curious. When they are sober again I would have you bring them to my office for a small talking to, after you are done with doing the same of course." said the august leader. "I shall also have Prowl make a rule about the age limitations for entering the bar to prevent such a happening again."

Blaster nodded at the merciful judgment and gathered up his sloshed cassettes for a trip to the MedicalBay. He was just turning around to make his way out when he heard Bluestreak ask a most horrible question. "So, who won the bet? Because I know I didn't bet on the cassettes, and Sunny and Sides didn't, and who would have thought they would be the ones to break the rules first, they have always been so good. Is it like that hormonal change that the human sparklings go through when they reach mechlinghood and go all crazy and stuff?..."

As one the crowd turned to Smokescreen to hear the verdict, however, the blue and red Praxian was hesitant to say and it had much to do with the fact that Blaster was glaring at him as if to dare him to involve his lover's offspring in his gambling machinations. The nudging and prompting from the crowd won out though, and Smokescreen resigned himself to a cold berth for the next few decacycles. "Well, actually, someone did bet on the cassette twins."

"Who?" came the accusing call, though it was lost as to who spoke with the way the crew crowded around the master gambler.

"It was Perceptor." answered the Datsun uncomfortably, but thankfully the pressure was removed from him as everyone turned to swarm the poor scientist who had somehow deduced the correct outcome despite his usual obliviousness to the goings on in the Ark.

Blaster was not paying attention anymore as he was too busy trying to overcome his deep embarrassment by taking it out on the unhelpful crowd that would not move out of his way so he could get to the lift. As he finally made it through, via a few well-placed elbows, he thought to himself that he did not care if the Prime was being kind, Rewind and Eject were still going to be grounded until the very orn of their majority vorn.