Sorry about the two week wait! My family and I went on a cruise in Alaska and spent more than a week on board, including both Tuesdays, my chosen update day for this story. Do you know how much internet costs on international waters? Too much. So I decided to take a two week break to enjoy my cruise. (I know today is Wednesday, but I was busy yesterday and decided not to make you guys wait another week.)

So anyway, this is the chapter where you find out what exactly I'm doing with this story. Stop reading if you want, there's no harm there! But I do hope you enjoy and keep reading.

(I'm still looking for a new name for this story. For the rules, see the author's notes in chapter 1!)

"Speaking in English."

'Thoughts.'

"Sparkling Language."

I eventually came back to myself and started to feel things again. I regained sense of my limbs, but whatever they had done to me left me feeling off balance and odd in my body.

I could still feel everything well enough, but it was...a little distant. Strange. Odd, like I was...misaligned, but still working. Just wrong.

I tried to push the feeling aside, but it still stayed there, at the back of my mind. Deterred, I decided to ignore it so that I could focus better on my situation.

The restraints were gone. The chill from the metal didn't affect me, and the many needles had been taken out of my skin, so I should be feeling a little better than I had before.

But I didn't. Nothing hurt, sure, but that feeling of wrongness came back with a vengeance when I noticed the cold table didn't affect me, or that there was no feeling of needles or current in my skin. It was almost like I didn't have skin, or never had felt pain in the first place. Two parts of my mind were contradicting each other, one part clearly remembering the cold numbing my skin, the snug restraints, and the biting pain of sharp electricity. The other insisted that no such thing had happened at all, my systems showed no signs of such activity, but the phantom pains I remembered were confusing me. My mind couldn't agree on what happened, and eventually settled on the fact that something was wrong here, and that I should find out what. Carefully, I opened my eyes, mindful of their sensitivity to light after being closed for so long.

To my surprise, my eyes adjusted automatically to the amount of light in the room. I could actually see more clearly now than I had before, the areas of the room that had just been shadows now thrown into stark definition, but no more lighted than they were before. It was odd. I still felt wrong.

It was the same room I was in before, but I was in a different part of it. I must've been moved when they did...whatever it was this 'experiment' was. I was on another cold metal operating table, and Flatline was on the other side, poking and pressing at something. I twitched, some sort of phantom touch making me react, but Flatline pressed a few buttons and it disappeared.

Hesitantly, I pulled myself up. Almost immediately a red hand was on me, holding me down against the table. It didn't feel anything like the metal hands had before, more like skin on mine than unbending metal. It was wrong, my sense of touch was off.

"Oh, no you don't, sparkling." Knock Out's familiar voice spoke in a reprimanding manner. "We still need to run a few tests before you can start moving around."

Sparkling? I slanted an irked look at the red bot and mulishly resisted, even though I didn't have nearly enough strength to match even Knock Out's hand.

"Oi!" I snapped at him, swatting at his fingers irritably. I quickly froze when I caught sight of my hand, pulling back to stare at it in horrified silence.

It was metal. Like, not even 'covered in metal' metal, but honest to god completely metal all the way through. I could see the little wires, pulsing blue in the seams between the too-big, ill fitting armor. The arm and wires felt proportional, but the armor looked strange, as if it it had been slapped on the arm last-minute. This arm. My arm.

Motivated by something that can only be described by morbid fascination, I brought my other arm up to look at it. It was the same. Same metals, same pulsing wires, everything down to the pitch black color of the armor. Except... With a frown, I put both arms side by side to confirm my suspicion.

The armor was different shapes. I had too-big, lopsided, mismatched black armor attached to my new robotic arms. They had torn apart and rebuilt my body for their own amusement and they hadn't even bothered to make me look nice, I thought hysterically.

"Hn." I looked up at the short noise to see Knock Out eyeing my uneven pieces with almost obsessive interest. I had seen his beauty complex in action consistently during the hours I had spent under his watch, but I hadn't realized that it extended to other people.

Whatever, it didn't really matter. With him temporarily distracted, I hauled myself up to sit. Thrown off by an unexpected weight on my back, I grabbed the armor on my thighs to keep my balance. I settled myself down, adjusting for my strange size and whatever was on my back.

Cringing, I looked down at what I hoped hadn't happened to me. I was completely made of metal; legs, torso, arms, and everything. I had to assumed that my head was too, since it felt square and blocky when I ran my hand over it.

In fact, I felt pretty blocky all over. Broader shoulders than I'd ever had before that only slimmed down towards my hips, like mens' would. Though it wasn't really pronounced. I was short and stout, but not really...muscled. More like a chubby baby than an adult.

Very suddenly, I felt like someone was waking up. Frowning, I put my hand to my chest where the strange feeling had come from. I rubbed at the spot when it turned into feelings of disorientation, feeling wrong and settling down. It was an echo of what I had done when I woke up, but it wasn't me feeling it this time. Like I was reading emotions off of somebody else's face, but...without the face. I knew what they were feeling without looking at their face or hearing their voice, but just...feeling it from them. It was by far the strangest thing that had happened to me, including my new metal body.

"Excuse me, you red bastard, get your hands off of me."

My head snapped towards the source of the voice, eyes locking on whatever it was Knock Out was prodding at. It was...it looked like a smaller version of these robots. A much smaller version. A...sparkling?

Dread started to form a pit in my stomach as what had happened started to dawn on me. I stared in shocked silence for a full minute, as Knock Out finally left the small thing alone to go check out the result on screens behind him.

"Oh." I said-no, it was a chirp, I had chirped that sound. "Oh my god."

That sentence drew the attention of the little robot, who had previously been staring down at itself and poking the silver armor on its arms. Their eyes swung over to look at me, and I watched as horrified realization lit up in the dark, glowing red. I knew that my eyes were a similar color.

"We're like them." The other child robot summed it up nicely.

"Holy...holy shit." I started to panic. I dug my metal hand into the table beneath me, scratching at the metal convulsively. Not the best idea, but I'd bet that anyone else would be freaking out too.

"C-calm down." Her voice shook as she said this, rendering any calming effect of the words null. The fact that she started to pull on her own metal armor restlessly herself didn't help either.

"Calm down!" I screeched, the noise echoing through the room and electing winches from the three robots. The silver bot didn't so much as flinch as stare worriedly at me. She was starting to panic too, I could feel it through the bond. It fed my own panic, which fed hers, and very quickly we were both hysterical with anger and fear. "How am I supposed to calm down when I'm a fucking robot!"

"Hey, now." I turned to glare daggers at the interrupter. Knock Out stood nearer than before, an irritated look on his face. "Let's stop with the screeching, shall we?"

"Excuse me, did we ask for your opinion?" The silvery child snapped at him, fear pushed aside for the easier to deal with anger. Knock Out pulled back, staring slightly shocked at the silver bot. The metal plates that served as eyebrows furrowed, and his mouth opened to snap something back at her.

"Enough." Flatline snapped from across the room, low and dangerous. Cold fear doused the our anger like ice water, and we immediately went still and silent. His dark red eyes glared coldly at us, daring us to say anything else. When we remained quiet, he turned away to pick up something curled in his hand.

I stretched to look at what he had, and saw dark brown hair. I started in panic as I recognized myself, pale and unnaturally still in the giant hand. Wires were still attached to her-me-running up and down her spine and covering her head.

Very quickly a blonde head was added to the palm, as limp as the other body was. An equal amount of wires were attached to her, making us both look like stringy pin cushions.

Said pin cushion were placed in strange pods, ending up curled limply at the bottom. Flatline pressed some buttons on a panel beside it, and the glass covering the pods closed with a hiss before fogging over.

I shrieked in alarm, curling over myself as something cracked inside my chest.

My mouth opened, gasping in air as I rubbed desperately at the metal on my chest, trying to relieve the pain. It felt like I was being beaten, like I was being pulled apart, like I was tearing and shattering from the inside out.

My pulse stuttered, my heart or whatever had replaced it pounding like it was trying to steady its own rhythm. With every beat came pain, blood forcing itself through veins roughly. I clawed at the armor above my heart.

Vaguely I started to come back, and I realized that someone was screaming, a piercing noise that had my own ears ringing. Two distinct screams rang out, each different pitches but equally terrified.

I suddenly realized that I was screaming, the frightened noise leaving my mouth short, breathy intervals. Abruptly I stopped, snapping my mouth shut to stifle the noise entirely. The second scream faded down into a distressed wail, still loud but nowhere near as piercing.

"What in the pit was that?" One of the bots demanded over the wailing. Probably Breakdown. I uncurled from my fetal position, trying to get ahold of myself through the pain. It wasn't as fresh, but it still felt like my heart was struggling to push daggers through my veins. Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself past it, knowing that I still wasn't safe and that I couldn't afford to be incapacitated.

The door swished open, and I forced myself to look up, having to brace myself against another wave of pain. Dorito-scream or whatever his name was walked in and paused, scanning the room with an air of superiority.

"Flatline, what happened?" He growled, evidently having set his sights on the black and red robot. "I could hear them screaming all the way across the base!"

Flatline didn't answer, instead moving over to the whimpering silver robot. He pressed her down with one hand and used to other to press at an area on her chest. With a click of a latch undoing, her chest opened, revealing a blue glow to the outside world.

"The femme's spark has fractured." Flatline observed, surprise coloring his voice. He pressed a finger lightly against the blue glow, drawing a pained keen from the pile of silver metal he was holding down. He quickly withdrew, but almost immediately sent the light that signified a scan over her. There was an irritated beep from the silver-femme, apparently, who had quickly closed her chest back up the moment Flatline let go of her.

"Processor activity is beyond normal sparklings." He stated before shining that same damned light on me. This time I didn't have any hair on me that could raise in alarm, but it was still a creepy feeling. "In the mech as well." Mech? Wasn't femme french for female? I was female, I knew that at least.

Flatline's large helm tilted to the side, then he moved over to pin me down with his hand. With the other, he pressed at something on my chest. Some latches undid, and with a hiss my chest split and opened to reveal my inner workings.

Silently, I stared down in disgusted fascination at my own innards. I too had a glowing blue light, emitted between the cracks of a chamber in the middle of my chest. A large finger suddenly came down to lightly touch the metal box that held the light, and I yelped at the sudden flash of pain, like something was splintering. The finger retreated, but the pain from the glowing bit had reasserted itself and it was hard to pull myself back from it.

"And the mech's spark?" The grating voice of dorito-scream didn't do anything to help me through the pain.

"It is a femme's spark, and it has fractured as well." Flatline stared at some marks on a scream consideringly. "It appears to have happen when their processors and sparks were completely separated from their organic bodies." Shit. No wonder it hurt so damn much.

"Femme?" Breakdown started. He sounded flabbergasted. "I thought that you said it was a mech?"

"The body was originally." Flatline noted, but he seemed to be more involved in the computers than the conversation. "But the organic's spark is not. As she grows, her body will grow to become a femme as well." Ah. So mech must be their word for male? I was male but with a female spark? What?

"And as for the cracked sparks?" Starscream interrupted impatiently. "What am I supposed do with useless soldiers?"

Soldiers? Is that why they needed us? To turn into babies to eventually use as soldiers?

"They are young, and their processors are advanced beyond their age." Flatline was obviously not interested in the conversation, and visibly started to get more bored. "They are likely to be able to handle the fractures now, and will grow to be able to ignore them completely."

"So they will not need bonds to keep them alive?" Starscream asked, but Flatline ignored him and gestured for Knock Out to answer.

"Well, bonds to promote spark healing would help," Knock Out's smooth voice jumped in. "but it isn't necessary. They have bonds with each other, and enough processor power to handle it, as Flatline explained."

"Good." Starscream purred in that screechy voice of his. "Knock Out, you are in charge of the sparklings." He slanted a glare at the red mech to stop the protest before it could be voiced. "Monitor them; Flatline will be here, studying the machine and figuring out a way to keep the sparks from shattering when we transfer their processors." A dry 'of course' came from Flatline's area of the room. "If they remain stable for two days, we'll start training them."

"Yes, Starscream." Then Knock Out looked at the two of us, head tilted. "Though, we can't really go about calling them "the sparklings" forever, can we? They need designations, names."

"Indeed. But what should I name them?" Starscream rubbed his face with his pointy fingers. "I need to think of something perfect for the first members of my new army." Oh god. Was he always like this? Because if he was, I could afford to get out of here sooner rather than later.

"Bane." Starscream suddenly announced, re-obtaining everyone's attention. "The black femme will be designated Bane. The silver one: Havoc."

A new name for a new body. The crack in my chest ached at the thought, and I rubbed at my chest over my-my 'spark', I suppose.

"Excellent choice, Starscream." Knock Out replied dryly, unimpressed.

Starscream eyed Knock Out evilly for a few seconds, but then waved his hand dismissively and turned to move out. "You know what your jobs are. Report to me if anything doesn't go to plan." And with those parting words, the door swished closed behind him.

"Get going, Knock Out." Flatline ordered from the other side of the room, not looking up from the screen. "Keep them in the med bay for monitoring, give them fuel, ensure proper recharging cycles, and watch their sparks. Dismissed."

With that, I was scooped up into a red hand, along with the other, silver femme, who looked at me with a familiar shocked expression set in an unfamiliar face. We stared at each other worriedly as Knock Out carted us out of the room, Breakdown following just behind.

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