AN: This one came to me after reading a bunch of other writers theories regarding Transformers and their genders, or possible lack thereof, and wondering what the TF's would think of it. It almost became Movie-verse, with Sam, Mikaela, Aine, and Nolan doing the talking, but I changed it to G1 because I wouldn't have to use OC's that some readers might not be familiar with.

Meme: Silly

Universe: G1

Warnings: Several theories of TF genders discussed with considerable candor, including slash, but nothing icky. I tried my best to represent all views fairly, and maturity in reading is appreciated. BTW, it'll help if you've seen "Auto-Bop" to understand Raoul points, and maybe "The Girl Who Loved Powerglide".

Summary: The humans put their squishy noggins together and ponder Transformer sex and genders, or lack thereof. This can't end well.

It was a quiet day at the Ark, what with half the crew being out on patrols or PR assignments or other tasks, leaving mostly the scientists and technicians to keep an eye on the home base. Even the Decepticons had been quiet lately, which was probably why Powerglide and Tracks both took it in their heads to (finally) bring their respective humans by for a visit. As luck would have it, three other frequent visitors had come by as well, and all of them were left to their own devices when the mechs were called away for quick jobs.

These five humans in particular had never actually spoken to one another, although they had heard of each other through the Autobots. That they were all here now was sheer coincidence, two of them wanting to visit the Ark (having never been there before and finally getting their respective buddies to extend invites), two were regular visitors anyway, and the last had dropped by because Wheeljack wanted an objective opinion regarding the coding for his latest invention – preferably one more knowledgeable in the matter than Ratchet and a great deal more concise than Perceptor.

Introductions were already done, and even with the wildly varying personalities and backgrounds they were able to get along fairly well. As conversations go, it ebbed and moved and changed topics at random depending on whatever caught their fancy next. Of course, with their aforementioned wildly different personalities and backgrounds, there admittedly was only so much common ground for them all to talk on.

Luckily, that one piece of common ground was pretty fruitful.

"So…you and Powerglide?" Raoul asked, for the third time. The brunette rolled her eyes and exchanged an exasperated look with her fellow female.

"Yes Raoul. Me and Powerglide. Get over it. If it hurts your head, go lie down and try not to strain too hard."

"But…but, how would that work? And why? I mean, you're different species and all, so why…?"

"Well, for me, I just thought the Autobots were just so cool, and Powerglide was something else all together – so daring and confident, and while he likes to complain, he's a real sweetheart underneath. So really, it's not that strange. As for how…"

Astoria smirked and quirked her brow. "Do you REALLY want to know?"

Very strange and disturbing images danced around the poor Latino boys head. "No…no, not really."

"Well the tricky was getting his -"

"FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND HOLY, DON'T!!!"

The others laughed heartily at Raoul's expense, the poor guy covering his head before Astoria could taint his delicate virgin ears (not that they were particularly keen on hearing the details either – some things were best left to the imagination). Carly calmed as a thought occurred to her.

"Hold on, doesn't Powerglide have a history with, oh what's her name again, the sea foam green girl that came with Elita?"

"Moonracer?" Astoria supplied. At Carly's nod, the heiress shrugged. "Well, yeah, but it wasn't anything romantic. They were just old friends. I talked to her myself, she really is a sweetheart. After she got over the initial 'oh my heck' reaction, she wished us the best, and I think she really meant it."

"Elita's entire team is female, right?" Chip said thoughtfully. "You know, before I met them, I never thought the Transformers even HAD genders. I mean, why would giant alien robots need them, really?"

Everyone contemplated this for several seconds.

"You know, that's a pretty good point," Spike said first. "Back on Cybertron, they pretty much depended on a super computer called Vector Sigma to create more Transformers. That's where the Arielbots came from actually. So if they had that – and I'm talking from a strictly biological point here! – they wouldn't actually need female Transformers at all. They had Vector Sigma to do all the work."

"Whoa! Time!" Raoul made a 'T' with his hands. "You mean they're all asexual or something? That doesn't make any sense; if they were, guys like Blaster wouldn't love the ladies so much."

"I'm not saying they can't feel love or want to express intimacy," Spike clarified. "I'm just saying, the reason we have males and females is for reproduction, right? And it so happens that sex is also often used as a way to express deeper feelings, at least for us usually. But they don't actually need to reproduce because they've got Vector Sigma, so they don't need those, uh, that stuff. What they do instead might be so radically different we could never classify it as "sex". It'd be like comparing apples to moon rocks."

"Maybe, but I still find it hard to believe that Vector Something or whatever would be their ONLY source of new life," Raoul said. "If something happened to it, they'd be completely screwed. Not to mention, it'd be kind of hard for it to keep up with the population all by itself."

"It wouldn't have to," Spike retorted. "Actually, it'd be a great way to limit population growth to something Cybertron could have sustained, before the war I mean. These guys live for millions of years, it's not like they needed lots of babies to replace the old people dying."

"Seems logical, but too simplistic," Chip disagreed. "It doesn't explain why they're a dual gendered species in the first place if the usual function is moot, especially if they truly are asexual."

"Maybe it's not," Carly said, warming up. "You hear them sometimes say someone's acting like a 'sparkling,' right? It always sounded like they were talking about a baby. Vector Sigma makes them all grown up – naive and inexperienced, sure, but still adults – but they can still have kids of their own. It's probably just a whole lot harder."

"But they're robots," Spike stressed. "Intelligent, feeling, sentient robots, of course, but it's not like they have DNA or whatever. We can't project our own perceptions and experiences onto them and assume they're the same."

"No, but not everything might be as drastically different as you might think," Carly pointed out. "Besides, Ratchet once mentioned that Femmes have smaller but much brighter sparks than mechs do, and comparatively contain more energy contained in a smaller space. They wouldn't be that way without reason."

"Did he say what that reason was?" Chip asked. Carly shook his head.

"No, Sideswipe came in right then with Cliffjumper duck-taped to his kneecap. Ratchet was kind of distracted after that."

"Why the heck did Sideswipe have Cliffjumper attached to his kneecap?" Raoul asked incredulously. Carly shrugged in a 'how-should-I-know?' gesture.

"I didn't get to hear that part, I just tried to get out of the way before Ratchet started throwing stuff. Anyways, he didn't get a chance to finish that thought, but I've been thinking a lot about it. The only reason I can think of why femme sparks would be so different was for, um, 'sparking' I guess."

"'Sparking?'" Chip repeated with a raised brow.

"It's the only word I could think of, alright! But it makes sense of you think about it: smaller sparks to make room for more sparks, brighter sparks with more energy to spare for a new one. That would also mean they're not actually asexual either."

"I guess I could buy that…" Spike said slowly, rubbing his chin. "And if the only substantial difference is in the spark itself, then that would explain the different body types, so everyone would be able to tell who had a girl spark or guy spark. So maybe they're not so asexual at all then."

"Maybe they actually are." Astoria suggested.

THAT got her some odd looks. Astoria spread her hands. "What? I'm just saying, we've talking about sex and genders like they're one and the same, and that the alternative is to be asexual, which pretty much implies no sex of any kind at all, not as we understand it anyway. Maybe they're not any of that. I mean, we define gender as being 'feminine' and 'masculine', but it's not a hard and fast rule to be tied with a person's physical sex. And if all you need is a pair of healthy sparks, well, maybe they don't even have sexes. Maybe they're not 'asexual', so much as 'genderless.'"

"I'm going to have to disagree with you there," Carly said politely. "If they didn't have dual genders, they wouldn't have bothered with different frames like they did."

"Not necessarily." Chip spoke as his eyes lit up. "Astoria got me thinking: maybe femmes and mechs aren't different genders, so much as they are different models."

"Okay, now I'm really confused," Raoul said, rubbing his temples. "So you're saying that all the 'bots are pretty much sexless too?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far, but that's besides my point. I once asked Prowl if they were going to be having any trouble feeding so many new people coming all at once, and he mentioned that it wouldn't be so hard, femmes didn't need as much energon as mechs anyway. Turns out, femmes are designed for energy efficiency and material conservation: they need comparatively less energon to function and fewer raw materials to build, making them really practical in lean times. I bet if you looked at the history of popular models, the number of femmes would probably directly correlate with how prosperous Cybertron was at the time."

"That would explain why just about all the femmes are staying on Cybertron," Raoul said thoughtfully. "What with them not needing as much resources and Cybertron not having much left anyway."

"So we have, like, a femme minibot or jet, she's basically an energy-saving variation of Bumblebee or Silverbolt?" Astoria asked. Chip shrugged.

"Basically, I guess."

Spike frowned. "So if 'femme' just means 'energy efficient', aren't we back to all the Transformers basically being more or less asexual?"

"Dude, once again, I'm gonna have to say I don't wanna go that far," Raoul put in. "If the 'bots were honest to goodness asexual, then Blaster wouldn't like the ladies so much. I've seen him in the clubs, don't tell me he doesn't like the girls. And there's Powerglide, I think it's safe to say he likes girls too, even human ones."

"I'll vouch for that," Astoria said with a humorous smile. "Seriously though, I think we're going at this the wrong way."

She started counting off on her fingers. "One: to say they're asexual is over-simplyfing it, since we have seen examples of otherwise. Even without Powerglide and Blaster, there's also Ironhide and Chromia and Optimus and Elita One. Two: it's quite possible that to Transformers, 'gender' means 'model', and 'femme' means 'energy efficient model'. Three: carrying that forward, there could be dozens of "genders" for all we know, but we just don't know how to look for them because we're used to looking for 'male' and 'female' cues. Ergo…"

Astoria clapped her hands together as if making a grand announcement.

"As we understand the terms, they're not 'sexless' or 'asexual', so much as essentially 'genderless.' They go by 'he' more by default than as an actual accurate description, and the femmes go by 'she' to differentiate themselves as being something drastically different. If all that's needed is a pair of healthy sparks, then what's to say that two mechs or two femmes can't have a sparkling together?"

Spike shot straight up in his seat looking like someone had just stuck his finger in an outlet.

"Whoa! Hold on a second! Don't you think that's going a little far now? I mean, not that there's anything wrong with anyone being gay or bi or whatever, but everyone?"

Astoria shook her finger at him like he was a naughty boy.

"Uh uh, you're thinking too simply again. If you're gay, you're attracted to the same sex. If you're bi, you're attracted to both sexes. If the Transformers are essentially sexless or genderless, then being 'gay' or 'bi' completely loses its meaning."

All four humans stared at the young woman.

"If that was true, don't you think one of us would have noticed something by now?" Spike said at last in a suspiciously strained voice. "I mean, Carly and I, and my Dad, we've known these guys for years. Heck, we've been coming here for years, it's practically our second home. If there was any mech-on-mech stuff going on, someone would've noticed by now."

Astoria sniffed. "Clearly, you haven't been paying much attention to Jazz and Prowl."

Spike made a chocking sound.

Raoul rubbed a hand over his eyes. "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but where are you getting this? I've met those two, and they're not exactly making goo goo eyes at each other."

"Call it woman's intuition," Astoria said with a confidant smile. "You've gotta look for the small things, especially with guys like Prowl. Seriously, does anyone really think a guy as stiff as him would be comfortable with lots of PDA?"

Everyone conceded the point.

"You're probably reading too much into them though," Carly insisted. "Believe it or not, it IS entirely possible for two people, whatever their gender or lack thereof, to just be FRIENDS without being lovers."

"This is true," Astoria conceded. "But I still say there's more going on with those two, and they're just so compatible! Don't you think they'd make such a cute couple? And Inferno and Red Alert! They're just perfect for each other, aren't they?"

"I'm not hearing this…" Spike groaned, sounding like he was in physical pain. Carly patted him on the back.

"Wait a second, two minutes ago we were all talking about how some of the guys liked girls so much!" Raoul exclaimed in sudden realization. "And all the confirmed couples I've seen are all guy/girl pairing's, or whatever you wanna call them. How do you explain that?"

"That's right, all the confirmed couples are all guy/girl." Astoria replied. "Maybe they think it's just safer and easier for them not to mention all the other ones."

"Why would they want to hide from us?" Chip asked naively.

Astoria gave him a flat look. "Our culture doesn't exactly have the greatest track record when it comes to accepting perceived homosexuality."

Chip cringed. So did Spike and Raoul.

"So you think Blaster might just've been faking then?" Raoul asked. Astoria shrugged.

"Well, I can't say that. For all I know, he just has a femme fetish." She said.

"…Come again?"

Astoria spread her hands. "The way I see it, for a mech to have a particular liking for femmes wouldn't be any different from a human guy having a particular liking for redheads. So, maybe guys like Blaster just have a femme fetish. It would be exactly the same if someone had, I don't know, a jet fetish or something. It's just a matter of preference."

"But what about the sparks?" Carly said. "Femme sparks ARE different from mech sparks, remember? Smaller and brighter? If a spark is a spark is a spark, they wouldn't be different without a darn good reason."

"It could be an effect of the frame design," Chip said. "Maybe since they're so energy efficient, excess energy gets absorbed by the spark. It's basically a ball of tightly compact pure energy anyway. If it was absorbing extra energy, of course it'd look brighter."

"That would imply that a sparks energy would fluctuate pretty dramatically with energy readings, especially when the Bot's drained," Carly retorted. "A spark would have to remain steady and stable for as much as possible for the 'bot to be healthy, like our own heartbeats."

"Yeah, but our heart rates DO fluctuate depending on the circumstances, and I haven't keeled over yet."

"What is this about heart rates and keeling?"

All humans startled and looked to see the new voice: a tall pink femme with an ornate helm coming in. Carly brightened.

"Hey, I remember you, I saw you once yesterday. You're Elita One, the Femme Commander, right?"

"That is correct," the new femme said with a smile, coming over to join them. "You must be Carly, Bumblebee has spoken much about you. Which one is Spike?"

Introductions followed, along with quick stories as to what they were doing there.

"A pleasure to meet you all." Elita said, nodding her head towards them graciously. "I feared I would spend all this time on Earth and never get a chance to meet a human properly."

"You must be happy, you look like you're practically glowing." Carly observes.

Elita grinned, leaning in a little and lowering her voice as if sharing a secret. "Well, as happy as I am to meet you all, I have another reason for being in such a good mood."

"Really? Did something happen?" Astoria asked, coming in a few steps.

Elita started to answer, but stopped and looked around, checking they were bereft of Autobot listeners.

Thoroughly curious now, all humans leaned in ready to hang off of every word.

"I shouldn't be telling you this," she whispered with a sly grin. "But I can't keep it in for much longer!"

"What, what, what!" Astoria whispered/squealed. "Tell us, you're killing me here!"

Elita came in a little lower with the biggest grin anyone has ever seen.

"Optimus and I have just seen Ratchet," she stared. "It's been confirmed: we're going to have a sparkling!"

Dead silence.

For two seconds.

"OMIGOSH! That's incredible!" Astoria squealed.

"That's so wonderful, I'm so happy!" Carly exclaimed, running up to Elita's leg and trying to hug her.

Elita happily accepted the shower of praise and congratulations, and if she noticed the triumphant look Carly gave her boyfriend, or the mild confusion among the boys ('so, who's point does this prove?'), she didn't mention it.

"So how come you're not supposed to tell us anyway?" Chip asked. "Heck, it if were me, I'd probably be yelling about it over the intercom by now."

"Optimus doesn't want a huge fuss right now," Elita explained. "He just wants to let a few close friends know before letting the base at large in on it."

Elita clapsed her hands together under her chin. "But I'm just so happy, I feel about ready to burst! I want so much to tell everyone!"

"I should have guessed something was up," Carly said wisely. "I mean, you're practically glowing, I should've guessed you were having a baby, I mean sparkling."

"Thank you Carly. Yes, I do feel like I'm glowing. I'm just so happy, I just can't keep it all to myself. I just want to stand on a mountain and tell the whole world about Optimus' pregnancy!"

The office door swished open to reveal a peeved off medic, not an uncommon (if unpleasant) sight. His Prime raised an optic ridge.

"Ratchet. Can I help you?"

For once, the CMO ignored his commander and zeroed in on the rose femme standing next to him.

"Elita, I just had the novel experience of having Tracks, Powerglide, Prowl, and Bumblebee all come into my medbay with physically healthy but mentally traumatized patients. You wouldn't happen to know why I currently have five humans curled up in fetal positions rocking in a corner mumbling nonsense with four mechs hovering over them like panicked mother hens, would you?"

"I'm afraid I must claim ignorance in the matter," Elita said calmly. "Is this not normal? Why would you ask me?"

"You name was the only thing out of those humans anyone could understand!"

"Is that so? How fascinating. I did speak to them briefly, but I assure you I did nothing but talk to them for a minute or two."

Ratchet glared at her for a few seconds longer, before turning to leave muttering under his breath. Elita started to look back at the topographical maps of the surrounding desert, only to realize that her sparkmate was still looking at her.

"Is something wrong?" She asked innocently. Optimus wasn't buying it.

"Elita, what did you do?" he asked in a weary I-know-you-did-something-so-spill-already tone.

For a brief second, she considered telling Optimus about the conversation she just so happened to overhear, and the little joke she played to teach humans not to make such assumptions when all they had to do was ask. After all, it was quite rude to talk about other people's sex lives in their own home, so she was well within her rights to mess with their heads, just a little bit, right?

Instead, she smiled and pulled Optimus down for a kiss on the cheek.

"Why, nothing Optimus, nothing at all."

Just to clarify: no, no one is pregnant. Elita was just messing with the human's heads, because she could.

I know what some of you are wondering: which of these theories is the cannon for my universe? Well, my answer is: I'm nooot tellliiiiiing! :)