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Chapter 4
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For the Vehicons (and their flying Seeker counterparts), the first day of their surrender had been the best "motherfragging day of their motherfragging lives" (one of the Seekers had just finished watching Snakes on a Plane and decided this was the most appropriate way to describe their collective experience).
The orders of being restricted to base by the tiny carbon-based organic military units that they now had to be careful not to step on was actually taken with aplomb; for the Vehicons it was just one big excuse to have their first paid vacation since the war began. When asked what they needed to help pass the time until things got more settled, the requisitions officers found themselves with lists that looked like they'd been put together by a group of slacker college students trapped in their dorms over the weekend: televisions, music albums, video games, access to the "human datanet" and an enormous supply of paint and car-care products. Thusly, several dozen highly amused Skywatch soldiers were sent out with semi trucks to nearby Las Vegas to clean out half a dozen electronics, video game and automotive supply stores.
The initial tenseness between human and Vehicon military units had melted away with surprising (and to the higher ups in the EDF, disturbing) rapidity; to the Vehicons the human soldiers were simply "disposable castes" like themselves, and without the Decepticon officers barking orders at them to enslave the natives, they generally had no natural inclination to do so. The real ice breaker came when the Vehicons started conversing with the humans through their own culture; during the long shifts and down time aboard the Nemesis when they weren't being slagged by Autobots or their own elites, the Vehicons had passed the time by diving into Earth culture through their communication media, usually over whatever nation they happened to be passing over at the time. As the EDF military was made up of soldiers from most nations over the planet, this resulted in a sort of pairing-off of certain Vehicons with certain human ethnic groups whose broadcasts and cultures they had liked the most. This was further helped by the rapidity by which Cybertronians learned alien language structures; Russian soldiers could talk to Russian-speaking Vehicons, Chinese to Chinese, Venezuelan to Venezuelan, and so forth. Those soldiers who had not come from the United States in which the EDF facility had been erected were finding themselves enjoying the comforts of refuge in their own culture ... coming from giant alien transforming robots. It was a bit of a mind-screw.
Of course the cultural blending didn't go off entirely smoothly; the human soldiers didn't have a clue about Cybertronian taboos (no, you cannot ask to see our spark chambers, that is like asking if you can see and examine a random stranger's genitals) and Fowler's explanation on Cybertronian physiology and relationships was a bit lacking (look, I'm a mech and he's a carrier, that doesn't make us what you call "gay"), but the Vehicons took it in stride and tried their best not to be offended. Things didn't go perfectly on the other side of the fence either, particularly when the Vehicons learned that the human nation of India had a caste system of their own, causing them to try to translate Megatron's political writings into Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil as quickly as possible and attempt to convert the Indian soldiers to "Decepticonism" with the fervor of religious evangelists. The higher ups advised the Indian soldiers to simply nod their heads and play along rather than be offended, but the major points of Megatron's impassioned writings did have a couple of the Indian EDF becoming the first human Decepticons on Earth, and their overjoyed fellow Vehicon revolutionaries showed them how to create Decepticon badges and properly affix them to their uniforms.
And then there was religion.
While the Decepticon army had in general looked down their collective faceplates at Cybertronians with religious beliefs (Megatron held nothing sacred), that did not prevent their members from maintaining religious beliefs privately. The revelation that Earth was in fact the dust-gathering physical body of the Lord of Chaos himself caused some ideological upheavals among the religious humans stationed at NEST, shattering long-held beliefs about life and the universe, though by the time most of them had learned that there was life outside Earth, their belief systems had been challenged already. Most of the religious humans accepted Primus and Unicron (and to some extent the Thirteen) as just alternate names and forms for their own gods and deities, though a handful of human atheists and agnostics started asking how to pray to Primus since he provably existed (The Vehicons had discouraged them from praying to Unicron, despite his physical presence under his feet and the possibility that he was the reason their species came to exist). This would later have other ramifications, however, when it was understood that Optimus Prime was carrying a part of Primus' spark in the Matrix inside of him, thus earning him several new titles (such as Space Pope, Mecha Buddha and Robot Jesus) that, at the very least, were not used within earshot of him.
Names came next, because Dave and Skippy had started the whole thing when Shiftlock insisted that everyone should have a name. This, again, broke down to regional preference, but the choices were far more varied. Cybertronians seemed to have this thing about not sharing a name with anyone else, and most of the good names were already taken. Personalities and individuality were blooming like dandelions after a spring thunderstorm; some of the names were very dignified and classy, such as Leon, Alexandria, Li Po, Bomani; others reflected power (or a wish for power): Leonidas, Superman, Chuck Norris, Vegeta and Nobunaga; and some were ... well, it was like letting a five-year-old pick his own name. Case in point: Bjork, Frankenstein, Pop-Pop, Fun Wagon, Crackerjack, Daisy Duke, and "Beep".
An actual fight had broken out between two ground-type car Vehicons who both wanted to name themselves "Bender Bending Rodriguez", but after some convincing from the humans surrounding them, they accepted that on Earth, it was appropriate for two individuals to share the same name. After all, there were seven billion humans on the planet, and there just weren't enough names to go around. It was a major breakthrough in cultural assimilation and peacetime negotiations between two species.
Lastly came the customized paintjobs. Everyone was a little tired of looking like carbon copies of each other. When one of the EDF soldiers revealed he had spent part of his youth tagging graffiti on walls across Los Angeles, he was instantly employed as the world's first Cybertronian tattoo artist, and anyone with experience detailing, customizing or tricking out cars had Vehicons begging them for the equivalent of makeovers.
By the time the beer was being passed around and the multiplayer gaming parties had started, there were multicolored Seekers lining up to do the Invisible Horse with some femme two-wheeler Vehicons in a perfect Gangnam Style parody that had South Korean, Japanese, English and American troops roaring with laughter and trying to join in.
Optimus Prime hadn't had such a gratifying day in a very long time. Watching the human and Cybertronians carrying on like old friends at Maccadam's lifted his spirits like little else since the Matrix had been granted to him. It gave him evidence that his hopes and dreams were not in vain, and gave him newfound strength he knew he would need to be able to carry out the long and thorny task of integration and reconciliation.
Especially since the extreme amount of goofing off and lack of protocol was making Ultra Magnus, who was standing next to him, grind his dental plates. Audibly.
Yet it was Megatron who was the most surprised; the Vehicons were showering him with praise - real, genuine, not-required-to-stay-in-one-piece praise. Surrender had instantly elevated him to the status of a wise and all-powerful Prime in their optics, because he had finally delivered on the promises he had made in his writings so many vorns ago.
They were free.
Had it really been so simple? Had the mantle of true leadership that Primus had bestowed on the humble librarian been made of such simple stuff that Megatron had overlooked it all this time? The tighter the gladiator had squeezed his followers for control, the more their crushed and bloody ranks had slipped through his digits, and increasingly strenuous effort was required to maintain that desperate grasp. By the simple act of letting all of them go, they were willing to move mountains for him out of gratitude and respect alone.
He had once been the teacher. It was appropriately, satisfyingly galling to him that he would have to sit at Prime's feet as the student.