Title: Big Fans of Survival
Warning: MTMTE spoilers. Scavengers being weird and Decepticons. Hot-spot reproduction as done in a breeding AU. Violent sex?
Rating: R
Continuity: IDW MTMTE, breeder AU continuation
Characters: Fulcrum, Tarn, Overlord, Spinister
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.
Motivation (Prompt): Did it work? Yes. Sort of.
[* * * * *]
Part Thirty-Eight (Breeder: 6)
[* * * * *]
"Twins!" The news was so unexpected that Tarn laughed out loud, delighted. "That's wonderful!" With a population devastated by war, every single kindled spark was news for all of Cybertron. Separation announcements from the breeders were replayed for days after the initial broadcasts.
The breeding class had ignited multiple sparks before, but not twins. Tarn would be rubbing Tesarus' face in this for ages. Krok had managed six ignitions at once, which was why he had Preferred Donator stamped all over his record by the Medical Division, but they hadn't been twins. Twins had been uncommon even when Cybertron had real hotspots.
The multiple-spark ignitions the breeds had managed had produced uncommonly small sparks. A 'hot' spark wasn't the same as an actual hotspot. The energy to stoke had a breeder's spark had to be sufficient to cause a bud, and continued energy donations fueled the budding process until the new spark finally separated to implant into the wall of the breeder's spark chamber. Only then could newspark and protometal be removed to continue feeding it energy and metals in a simulated hotspot field. From there, it was the exact same process as regular forging.
Starting from a such a limited source limited the size of the kindled sparks, however. One newspark generally started small and didn't bloom to full potential until it had room to grow. More than one, and they didn't get enough resources at the budding phase to keep growing. Krok's little flock of hand grenades would never upgrade to larger frames, despite how ardently the medics had cultured them upon removal from Fulcrum's spark chamber. The K-Con simply didn't have a big enough spark chamber to give them the protometal and energy required for a normal-sized field. They'd budded small, implanted small, and ended up forging into minibot frames.
There was nothing wrong with that, of course. Tarn would have been thrilled by a flock of minibots, but Fulcrum had pulled off another impossibility, it seemed. From what Tarn had overheard from the twittering of everyone swarming the clinic right now, the K-Con had, yet again, managed to go against all expectations, including those of physics.
Tarn had escorted him to the clinic this morning - Overlord had merely rolled over and gone back into recharge, the glitch - and the signs had been positive for ignition. He himself had been exhausted, but Fulcrum had been groggy, cranky, and laser-focused on the extra energon cube Tarn had brought along. The ward manager on duty had looked up as they entered the building and smiled at the sight of a breeder being coaxed along by a ruststick held just out of reach of grabby hands. Tarn had taken it as a really good sign.
He hadn't known how good. The two sparks budding off the K-Con's spark right now defied all predictions of the scientists and medics involved in the breeding program. The sparks were of normal size, something they all swore shouldn't be possible. In fact, the newsparks were of perfectly equal size, as well as of identical type and frequency.
"Twins," Tarn repeated. Behind his mask, he couldn't help but smile down at the chart in his hands. The buds hiding near the core of Fulcrum's spark looked unnaturally large, and they'd only get larger from here on out. Well, then. Look at what he'd helped create. Fulcrum's 'hot' spark might have been what generated the little bits, but it was his energy that had fueled the process.
Fulcrum's personal medic - nobody else wanted him - looked at the other two medics who'd come out into the waiting room to deliver the news. "Yeah, twins," Spinister said. "He's going to hate you both. I'd start running now, to be honest."
Tarn and Overlord looked at him blankly. The leader of the Justice Division and one of the Empire's Phase Sixers, running from a short, twiggy, ex-technician coward? Pssht, right. Whatever.
To their surprise, one of the other medics nodded agreement. "If the twins continue to bud at this rate, their implantation sites are going take up whole walls of his spark chamber. We had to drill through in places the last time he carried multiple sparks, and I've never heard someone scream like that." Tarn's optics widened, and his hand pressed in involuntary sympathy to his chest. Oh. That did cast things in a different light. "We're hoping to find a way to reinforce his spark chamber before implantation to give the newsparks enough protometal for their size."
"Things are going to get crowded in there," Spinister said. Warning delivered, he'd gone back to studying the chart they'd brought out for the donors to see. "Extraction might kill him, what with how they're already draining him."
Tarn blinked. "I didn't realize ignition was so risky." He knew it took most breeders far longer than Fulcrum to recover from extraction, but he hadn't heard about any deaths. It made sense, in a way. The hotspot was literally the inside of a breeder's spark chamber. If a greedy little newspark took something vital as its own protometal, it could quite possibly kill the spark it came from.
"Yeah, well, they're big and energy-heavy, two things you don't want stuck in your spark chamber anyway." Spinister shrugged. "Point One Percenters are already tricky to handle. We have no idea what they're going to do to Fulcrum's spark. If they take more energy to grow than he has to give, he could gutter."
"Which brings us to your responsibilities," the last medic interjected smoothly before either Tarn or Overlord could fully process Spinister's words. "You already know about secondary donation duties," he glared sternly at Overlord in specific, and the Phase Sixer had the grace to look faintly guilty, "or you will once you read all the instructions I just sent you." Overlord coughed into his hand and looked at the ceiling. Tarn glared sidelong at him. What an oilpan. He'd done all his research on a donor's responsibilities before even beginning for the health tests. Donors were supposed to take care of the newsparks, not just merge, roll over, and go to fragging sleep.
Tarn wasn't too happy with his co-donor this morning.
The medic ignored the tension between them. "Right. In addition to that, you're both going to be placed at the breeder's disposal anytime, day or night, from here until extraction. Your goal is to give him as much energy as he wants - "
"As much as he can take," Spinister corrected.
" - hmm, you're probably right. As much energy as he can take. We want his spark feeding the buds constant, high-voltage energy, as steady and overcharged as possible. He's under orders to drink as much high-grade as he can tolerate every day, supplemented heavily by as many solid metals as we can get past his filters."
The second medic had, for some reason, come over to poke at Tarn's chest, seemingly uncaring of whom he was examining. "We'd like to take shavings off your spark chambers to introduce to his. Would you mind..." Something disturbingly shiny and sharp appeared in his hand, and Tarn took an automatic step back. Medics waving scalpels commanded instant respect.
Spinister looked up, suddenly interested again. "Good idea. Donors should be close enough energy matches that the newsparks will accept metal donations, at least this early on." Another sharp shiny thing was brandished as the surgeon advanced on Overlord.
Both donors retreated from the medics. Tarn wondered if this was some kind of medic joke. Overlord braced one hand against Spinister's face to keep him away. Tarn found himself backed into a wall, leaning back as an insistent hand pried at his chest plates.
He had to shake the surprise away enough to return to what he'd heard earlier. He was sure he'd heard wrong. "Wait, what did you say about Point One Percenters?"
"He was talking about us. Did our sparks hurt the little bombshell?" Overlord frowned at the surgeon blindly prodding at him. "Stop that."
"No, not you," the third medic in the group said. He turned the chart around to point at the tiny newsparks hiding behind Fulcrum's core. "Your sparks might have caused this, but - look. It's hard to tell the color difference at this stage in the budding, but those are definitely Point One Percenters in there."
Tarn lost his jaw. "Twin…loadbearers? Can - is that - " Holy frag.
"That's a first." Overlord tapped a finger on his chin. A self-satisfied smile spread slowly across his face. "Our dear leader hasn't even come close to managing that."
Of course Overlord would make this into some kind of competition with Lord Megatron. Tarn gave him a disgusted look.
The Phase Sixer didn't notice. The hand not keeping Spinister back had gone to his chestplates, rubbing absentmindedly the way he had all morning. Tarn had thought it somewhat odd, but he'd personally been too excited waiting for news from Fulcrum's examination to care if Overlord had an itch.
"Will merges hurt like that every time, or was that just the initial energy donation?" Overlord asked.
Spinister clamped his hand over one huge finger to push it away from his optics. "Hurt?"
Even Tarn gave him a funny look. "It didn't hurt me." Drained him, yes, and nobody had warned that donating resulted in a mind-blowing overload followed by a brief period of complete comatose bliss, but no pain.
Overlord scowled at him. "Are you kidding? Were you deliberately doing that?" Tarn could almost see his suspicion.
"How's it hurt?" Spinister interrupted, pawing at Overlord's chest again. "Sharp stabbing pains, or a generalized ache?"
The much larger Decepticon looked down at him. "Ah, right now it's an ache. It was…more severe during the merge. It felt like something stretched in my spark." He scowled at Tarn. "Something snapped when you joined in." His unamused glare silently accused the tankformer of doing it deliberately.
The three medics exchanged a strange look. Spinister stepped back to glance at Tarn. Tarn shrugged a negative. He felt fine. Exhausted, but proud.
The second medic blinked and made a sudden grab for the chart. "Did anyone do the Matrix-test on your spark when you returned to Cybertron, Overlord?"
"Ohhh," Spinister breathed. "I knew I recognized those symptoms."
"Has anyone tried getting two breeders to merge?" the third medic asked no one in particular.
"Not with a third mech acting as a donor to both."
"Are we looking at triplets, you think?"
Overlord's optics went wide and a sickly pastel color.
"…have to take him off the fighting roster immediately…"
"…too high risk…"
"…sparring is too much…"
"…disarm..?"
"…remove armor, at the very least…"
"…tripled t-cog might need to be disabled."
"How by the Pious Pools are we going to cut through an ununtrium-coated spark chamber?"
"Carefully, I'd guess."
"Hey, where'd he go?" The three medics looked up.
Tarn had the singular, fantastic pleasure of witnessing Overlord, rogue Phase Sixer and traitor to the Cause, flee the clinic.
[* * * * *]
[A/N: Overlord would probably be horrified until Megatron took the time to…persuade him.]