-1For the Race
Chapter Three
A/N: Thanks to MeowthTwo/Anne Clothier for the loan of Dr Syn.
Sam's thoughts were whirling. The arm, Ironhide's stares…not to mention Ratchet's….and Ironhide's comments….. all added up to one shocking conclusion.
He was a femme bot?
A look down, taking in the big chest, the shapely legs, confirmed his fears. He put his hands up to his head and face, feeling shaped metal in an imitation of a hairstyle, a thin, smooth face coming down to a delicately pointed chin. He glanced down at the metal table he was lying on, and it was reflective enough to dispel any remaining doubts. The face looking back at him was silvery metal, with big blue optics, pleasingly shaped even to Sam's human tastes, looking back at him out of a face that was unmistakeably feminine.
"What's your name, pretty one?" Ironhide said softly to Sam. Somehow, without his notice, Ironhide had advanced two steps into the room. Two big steps. He held out one of his large hands to Sam, palm up, as if about to take Sam's own hand. Ironhide stopped his advance, and looked at Ratchet again.
"Where did she come from, Ratchet? You haven't been out since taking Sam and Mikaela in here, and I'm sure she couldn't have sneaked past me at the gate, I was fully recharged yesterday and I wouldn't power down while on guard anyway! Or is Hound practicing his holograms in here?"
"No, Ironhide, it seems that Sam agreed to something he didn't quite understand the consequences of." While Ironhide was distracted, an increasingly panicky Sam, remembering Ratchet's comments about the loss of contact with the femme bots some time ago, and recalling from history how that sort of situation had affected the behaviour of human men, decided it was time to get out of the area fast.
He threw himself to one side, landing with a clatter on the floor. He tried to get to his feet, and couldn't stay on them.
The height, the mass, the shape of his limbs and body, the centre of gravity was all so different. He fell, tried to get up again, arms windmilling frantically, began to fall again, only to have his fall broken by two strong arms that lifted him up as easily as he might have lifted a child. Those arms were gently but firmly pinning his arms to his sides. Ratchet moved into his field of vision, so Sam was aware that it had to be Ironhide who held him, who was saying "Hey, easy there lady, don't be scared." He managed to shift Sam's body so he was cradled by one arm and hand, and that left Ironhide's other hand free to very gently stroke Sam's new femme hair, the smooth metal of his-or rather her-cheek. Then his arm returned to cradle his-no her-legs again.
"Ironhide, the AllSpark energy turned Sam into a femme Cybertronian, the same one you are holding, and you're scaring the Spark out of her! She was only onlined for the first time five minutes ago, so if you don't mind….?" Ratchet looked at the door pointedly.
Ironhide blinked.
"Wha…..woah, you're Sam?" he cried, staring at her as if she'd grown a new head.
"Y…yeah." said Sam.
"How old are you again?" asked Ironhide.
"She's seventeen human years old." Ratchet said. Sam cringed. Old enough for anything Ironhide wanted to do to be legal. However, Ironhide's eyes, if possible, got even wider.
"Why, you're barely a sparkling!" Ironhide said.
"Not to mention she's barely an hour into her body, adult though it is, and fifteen minutes into her first onlining!" Ratchet said. "Which makes her a sparkling even by human standards!"
"Just onlined, you say?" Ironhide asked.
Ironhide shifted his grip on Sam, holding her even more securely. He strode purposefully out of the emergency med bay, with Ratchet saying "Just where do you think you're taking her?"
"Right where you would." he said. "A recharge berth. Adult body or no, she'll need a recharge at some time, and perhaps twelve hours of not having to think about this sudden change will do Sam the world of good! Once she wakes from recharge, perhaps we can have warned everybody else, and maybe we can all sit down and discuss what this means for Sam and for us. For a start, I'm going to work on the security of this place. If Decepticons got in here, they'd be on her in a moment, and they wouldn't worry about her age!"
Ironhide turned to look at Mikaela, who had came after him when he started walking away.
"Maybe you can help her to adjust? There must be some aspects of being a femme that span the species barrier? We don't have any femmes of our own to help her."
"I know. That's why he ended up like that in the first place!" Mikaela said bitterly. She, out of everybody, was the one finding Sam's change the hardest to come to terms with.
By now, Ironhide had reached the recharge berths. Transferring Sam to one arm again, he pulled the silver sheet off the recharge chamber's cushion. Throwing it to one side, he carefully put Sam down, than pulled the light silver sheet over her. "Autobots don't use blankets, but having been human, you may feel more secure with one." he said. "Will says Annabel does, at any rate. You should feel more like coping with the world once you come out of recharge, Sam." he said. Stooping over her, he gave her a light kiss on the forehead, and stroked her cheek with a finger. Sam looked up without speaking, optics wide and staring.
"'Sweet dreams' is, I believe, the human expression. I'll make sure everyone knows you are not to be bothered, and I'll be here to tell you anything that's happened when you wake up." He pushed down the lid of the recharge berth, standing over Sam as the mechanism powered up and began re-energising his new systems. Her optics stopped staring, and dimmed, and her face slackened as the recharge process shut her down.
Once Sam had entered recharge, the big 'bot didn't move, just stood there, watching, and Mikaela, standing nearby, was worried. This wasn't like Ironhide! What was going on?
Mikaela had to shout three times to get Ironhide's attention. He crouched down, picked her up, and sat her atop Sam's recharge booth. She looked down at Sam. Sam seemed oddly peaceful looking, and when Mikaela looked up at Ironhide, he had the oddest look on his face. She wasn't good at reading mech faces. Was that…love….affection…and pride?….on his face?
"What's up, Ironhide?" she asked. He looked down at her as if noticing her for the first time.
"I have, with my partner, brought up four mechs from Sparks." he said. "I cared about them all and raised them as best I could, but every time we got given a mech Sparkling, I couldn't help feeling a little disappointed. I would have loved to have had the privilege of rearing a daughter. I kept hoping, but then the war happened, and the AllSpark got blasted off into space. Not only was there no AllSpark to get Sparks from, but there was no time or safety to raise them if there had been. There was only time for conflict and for blasting Decepticons, no time for dreams of raising a femme."
Ironhide sounded sad. Mikaela put a hand on Ironhide's. Mikaela watched as Ironhide looked down at Sam again, lost the bitter twist to his mouth and in his eyes.
"Perhaps I can share in caring for Sam and easing her transition if I can?" he said. "For a time, at least, it'll be the closest to having a daughter I'll get."
"I think you'll have to ask Sam permission to do that." said Mikaela. "By Cybertronian standards he may be a Sparkling, but by human standards, he's as near as damn an adult. The only adult things we can't do at our age are drink and vote."
"I guess so." said Ironhide, sounding half-surprised and half-disappointed.
He stood by the recharge berth for another hour, before straightening up, and saying "Well, I'll get talking to other people, let them know what's going on, and then start getting the security at this place up to a decent standard!" He strode off purposefully, happy to have a job to do.
Mikaela stayed at the recharge booth for a further hour until Ratchet came over with Bumblebee, who said he was going to get some recharge time in before tomorrow dawned too. It seemed that Ratchet and Bumblebee had been talking: Bumblebee peered in at Sam's recharging form before climbing into a recharge berth himself.
Ratchet put out his hand and Mikaela wearily climbed into it.
"I've made you up one of the human beds in the med bay. You can stay there tonight. Yours and Sam's parental units have been informed that you'll be here for a bit, although Sam's parental units will need to be told at sometime. They have met Optimus, I believe, so at some point I will instruct Bumblebee to go and bring them here. Optimus, you, and I shall have to explain it to them, preferably with Sam there to back us up. Hopefully his syntax and the things he remembers will manage to persuade them that we are telling the truth and that their human son is now a Cybertronian daughter, but otherwise the same Sam they know and love."
Mikaela groaned. She had forgotten for a time that Sam had parents, and that they would be affected by this as much as she. How would she cope with their reaction as well as her own? She swallowed.
She would have to cope. There was no other option available.
Ratchet put her down by a human-sized made-up bed, and she obligingly climbed in, but it was a long time before she got any
sleep.
Ironhide came back to the recharge bay after putting through a call to SecDef Keller for certain supplies he would need to improve the Base security. Keller promised Ironhide that the supplies would be with him by morning. Ironhide was chafing at the delay, but realised there was nothing more he could do now until morning. He decided to put himself in recharge for a few hours so he would be fresher to carry out the installation of the force-field and alarm system he was planning for tomorrow.
He looked in on Sam. She was lying curled under the blanket, three hours into her recharge. "Don't worry, Sam, no-one's going to hurt you with Daddy Ironhide around. After I finish my work tomorrow, they'll have trouble getting in in the first place! As they don't even know you exist in this form at the moment, you're safe."
Setting the dial on the timer to "4", he lay down and surrendered to the recharge process.
Nobody had noticed the small blinking light on the tiny device adhering to a pile of spares near the recharge chambers in the medbay. Nobody had noticed Frenzy plant it on one of the spares that was waiting outside the night before, and it had been carried into the Autobot base by an unsuspecting human soldier earlier that day.
The Decepticons were privy to everything that had been said in the medbay that day.
One and a half hours earlier……
"So, the Autobot base is not yet secured, and the AllSpark energy has turned that fleshling creature who destroyed it and Megatron into a femme." said Starscream to his companions, who were gathered around the receiver they had set up in a shabby, abandoned building in a seedier part of town. "If we gain control of her, we can breed a Decepticon army."
"But what good will Sparklings do against seasoned Autobot warriors?" asked Swindle, one of the new arrivals.
"Well, we don't have to leave them as blank slates, Swindle. We get her to bear the Sparklings, we steal the materials we need to make the bodies, we make sure the Sparklings go into fully-functioning adult bodies with the data they need already available, we teach them to fire their weapons and transfer between robot and vehicle forms, and of course we make sure their loyalties are to us. If we get enough Sparklings, sheer numbers will overwhelm the Autobots. Any femme Sparklings created can be put into adult bodies and bear more warriors for us. Think of it! A fleet of flyers and a squad of ground forces!" Starscream's eyes glittered with malice.
"We can obliterate those Autobots and grind the puny fleshling leaders who support and aid them into the ground. It will be sweet revenge! Think of how sweet it will be if the femme the Autobots think will save them bears the army that will destroy them! You heard that Ironhide. After tomorrow, it'll be much harder to get in. We must strike now, when they are at a disadvantage. Perhaps we can rid ourselves of a few before we get our army. Doctor Syn, how is Skywarp recovering from his bad landing?"
"He still can't fly, but he can stand and shoot." said the doctor, another of the new arrivals."
"Then you and he can stay here and guard the base, in case any Autobots or nosy fleshlings come across us. You can also construct a cell to keep the femme in." He turned to the others.
"Thundercracker, Barricade, Swindle, Frenzy and Soundwave, come with me! All of you will get a chance at her." he said. "However, as the leader, I get my go first. Come! We attack in two hours!"