"Thinking"
:Com Talk:
~Bond Speech~
A New Version of Reality
Chapter Five
Coincidence? I Think Not!
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us. – Arthur Schopenhauer
Recall onlined with a hiccup and a twitter. His optics shuttered for a moment as he took in the dark space he had woken up in. It wasn't scary though. It was actually kind of…cozy. He wiggled a little, chirruping when he bumped up against something soft, which moved a little against him before settling back down. Recall used one of his skinny fingers to poke it with a giggle before wiggling along the little tunnel of dark coziness.
Eventually he encountered a wall, feeling his way up it until he finally reached the end. With a beep, he stuck his head out of the tunnel to look around. Downwards was a cliff; upwards was the top of the room; left and right were two more walls. A twitter of disappointment came from him. This room was more boring than the other places he had been! Where were all the people?
And then he happened to glance in front of him. An excited series of beeps and clicks came from the tiny sparkling as he spotted his bestest friend in the whole wide universe curled up in front of the wall that he could see through. He wondered if his other bestest friend was okay. Surely he was; all he did was sleep, so he couldn't go anywhere. He just had to wait until their new friend went to get him. She'd make him feel better and not want to sleep so much, which meant he'd be able to play; she could even give him a name! Recall liked his new name. It was better than "spawn" or "runt" or "specimen" or some other big words that he didn't listen to half the time.
But he had other things to do at the moment. Like wake Star so they could go exploring! There was a lot of fun stuff to be played with. And they had to find the nice people; where did they go? Hopefully they'd be back soon; he wanted to play with them too! Especially the funny looking one. He wanted to let that one know that he'd play with him even if he did try to open his front and look at his pretty light.
Recall patted looked down at the pretty light and patted his chest before looking further down the cliff and then back up at where Star still slept. How would he get over there? Maybe he could climb down…
His planning was interrupted by the fact that he leaned too far over the cliff and his big head caused him to flip over. He landed heavily on his back and drew in a huge breath before releasing it in an equally huge gush. That hadn't been so bad, and he was on the floor now!
Oh, maybe he could use his legs like the big people did! Star could do it; well sort of, but that was how he got on the seat over there. All he had to do was…roll…over…
He wiggled around as hard as he could, twittering in aggravation when his plan refused to work. Why couldn't he roll over? It was his big head wasn't it? He knew that thing would hold him back one day. He demanded to have a smaller head!
Finally, finally, he managed to put enough strength behind his wiggling and rolled over onto his belly. Speaking of his belly, what was that funny feeling? He'd never felt it before while he was in the tube thingy with Star and his other friend. He sighed and laid his head on the floor for a moment, all the energy expended on his efforts finally catching up to him. This was a lot of work. Why'd Star have to choose the farthest place to sleep?
Recall picked his head back up, put his spindly arms underneath his chest, and pushed up. He attempted to get his pedes under him and stand, but unfortunately that just took too much effort, and he wasn't a very patient little mechling. So he began to crawl like he had the night before, falling forward a few times as his arms unexpectedly gave out. But he persevered and was soon sitting in front of the ledge where Star was sleeping.
He called out to the Seekerlet with a series of clicks and beeps. No response.
Thinking that Star just couldn't hear him, Recall reached up and grabbed ahold of the blanket that was lying over the edge of the seat, pulling himself up after a couple of tries and grabbing the edge to keep him up on his shaky legs. He peeked over and gurgled happily when he saw a pair of red optics glaring at him. Star!
Recall reached out one hand and attempted to grab the other sparkling's hand. He had to get up so they could start playing!
Recall's very first memory had been of Star. He could remember seeing the Seekerlet, who had been tinier back then, curled up in his tube of pink liquid. He hadn't even realized he was being held by what he would later refer to as the "one-optic meanie" until he had reached out for Star with a happy squeal. Then the meanie had pulled on his springs and threw him into a tube of his own.
Anytime Recall woke up after that, he always looked over to see Star, and eventually the smaller sparkling had showed up. But Star had been Recall's friend first, and Recall knew the Seekerlet liked him the best. Why else would he follow after Recall had climbed out of the thingy they had been put in? And then help him when the nice people tried to take his spark? Of course, he didn't think they'd actually take his spark like the meanie always did to the others that didn't get put into tubes. They were too nice, and the funny one had looked really sad afterwards. Meanie had never looked sad.
Recall beeped and made a grabby motion with his hand. Star huffed and shuffled around, turning his back on the other sparkling. Recall twittered in confusion…maybe Star was still tired. Yeah, that had to be it! They had had an exciting night. He just needed a little encouragement to wake up.
Tiny movement under the covers caught the bright eyed sparkling's attention, and Recall tilted his head in thought. Star always jumped up when someone touched the little bumps on his back…
A screech filled the room, and Victoria ricocheted off the couch without a second thought. With the blanket gripped in one hand, she sleepily twirled around to find the owner of the screech. The sound of innocently amused giggles helped her find the culprit: a very annoyed Seekerlet that was making every sound possible to convey his annoyance while glaring down at a giggling sparkling.
Victoria yawned and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her free hand as she made her way over to the two, unconsciously dragging the blanket behind her. "What are you two doing up so early?"
Recall twirled around at the sound of her voice, losing his grip on the blanket he held and falling on his little behind. But that didn't faze him a bit. He just gurgled and reached both arms out to her. She returned the laugh with one of her own and picked him up with a little grunt. "Nothing can bring you down can it little man?"
He smiled and cooed while craning his neck upwards. Victoria laughed again as he clumsily rubbed his little nose against her, just as they had been doing the night before. Right before the mechling had commandeered the cake and ice cream. "I'm not falling for your cute act. What did you do to make Star scream?"
The sparkling tilted his head to the side with a beep and wrapped his legs and arms around her before snuggling into the dip of her neck with a series of soft coos. She resisted for a fraction of a second before returning the snuggling, giving the bouncy springs on his head a little kiss. "You are just too adorable. But that won't get you out of trouble."
Star huffed at the pair and turned his back to them, figuring their cuddle session had made them forget about him. He shrieked and crawled backwards until he was able to cling to Victoria's waist, hissing once at the face that had just appeared in the window. Recall tilted his backwards to chirp in question while Victoria just scowled and leaned forward to open the window a bit. "Wheeljack stop scaring the kids!"
Wheeljack's head fins flashed in apology. "Sorry bitlets. I was just seeing what you were screaming about already. But it's a good thing you're awake. That way we can get your little tanks filled and the checkup shall begin!"
"That's the first time I've ever heard any of you guys use 'checkup' in a positive way," Victoria commented as she shifted Recall's weight from one hip to the other and comfortingly patted Star on the head.
"That's because Ratchet isn't around to administer the checkups," Wheeljack answered, waving a hand at the sparklings. Star hissed again and unconsciously huddled closer to the woman; Recall giggled and enthusiastically waved back. "You guys get the fun…I can't really say I'm a doctor because I was never given the proper training. But I know enough to give you guys a checkup!"
"That probably makes you a nurse."
"Sounds kinky." The engineer paused. "Wait a minute…this probably isn't the situation to be making those kinds of jokes. Anyway! There are two containers of Energon for them stored in your refrigerator. Make sure they drink most of it."
"You're storing Energon in my refrigerator now?" Victoria questioned as she moved into the kitchen. Or tried to; Star was making it difficult to walk as he continued to cling to her. Funny how the Seekerlet's attitude towards her had taken a complete one-eighty due to Wheeljack's accidental scare. "I thought Energon was harmful to humans. What if it's giving off radiation and contaminating my milk?"
"Energon is harmful if it is directly consumed, enters the human body through some other type of orifice (like the eyes or nose), or makes direct skin contact, which may cause first to second degree chemical burns in extreme cases or mild itching and skin irritation in cases of brief contact. While it might exude some radiation, it's nowhere near enough to contaminate the food in your refrigerator. I should know; I tested it out years ago and neither you nor your family is walking around with two heads because of it."
"I feel so much better knowing you'd be willing to poison me without my knowledge," she yelled back at him after entering the kitchen. Recall did a short mimic of her yell while Star glared at them both, his claw-like fingers digging into the human's skin for a moment. "What would you have done if I did sprout another head?"
"Called the experiment a failure and moved on to other things," Wheeljack answered as he crouched down at the kitchen window. His sudden appearance made the trio inside jump, and Recall clicked at the engineer as if scolding him like Victoria had. The engineer found the scolding amusing and showed it through his brightly lit facial fins. "It'll save Perceptor a lot of time when he finally lands and gets sucked into wanting to know every little thing about humans. Maybe it'll even save some humans some grief from being the subjects of his observations."
Victoria shook her head and refused to comment. Instead she carefully placed Recall on a kitchen chair, where he sat legs swinging in the air and big head barely rising above the edge of the table, steered Star to another chair, and finally opened the refrigerator to find two containers that were definitely not there the night before. She reached in and grabbed one, twirling the green container around carefully and running a finger along the melted seam of it. "Oh how creative of you. You took those plastic watering cans and made bottles out of them."
"Pretty good, right?"
"They're ugly and very shabbily made."
"…this is payback for the Energon thing isn't it?"
Victoria gave him a sweet smile and placed the first bottle of Energon in front of Star. The Seekerlet gave it a long hard stare as she turned to Recall, who happily grabbed for his. "Hold on-" She sighed when the sparkling began to hack on the Energon that spilled up his nose instead of into his mouth. "He eats like Bluestreak does—just shoves it in his mouth without a second thought. Except it didn't make it to his mouth this time."
"It wasn't like that before he knew of cookies," Wheeljack attempted to defend the Praxian while Victoria carefully wiped the liquid off the sparkling with a damp washcloth. "Cookies are very addictive. They make good mechs do crazy things. I find myself more interested in food of the sour-tasting persuasion, but to each their own I guess. Speaking of which, I think I'll swing into town soon to replenish my monthly supply of Warheads."
The woman ignored him for a moment as she picked Recall up and got him situated in her lap after sitting down in the chair he previously occupied. He clapped his hands together with an excited twitter when she held the makeshift bottle his lips. "Now just take it slowly, okay? It isn't gonna vanish into thin air just because you don't drink it all in one big gulp. See how Star's drinking his? He's such a big boy." She winced as the Seekerlet spit up a glob of Energon with a hacking cough after filling his mouth with too much of it. "Well he was doing a good job. You need any help over there Star?"
Star shook his negatively and with a huff stuck the nozzle of the "bottle" back into his mouth. Victoria shrugged and looked down at the sparkling eagerly sucking down his breakfast. He looked back up at her with big, bright blue optics, making little noises as he patted one of his hands against the one she held the bottle with, and Victoria's small smile made him grin widely, allowing a small trickle of Energon to escape from his mouth.
"Bluestreak says your warm and fuzzy feelings are beginning to overpower him and make him feel like a femme. Well, he didn't say the last part, but I figured it was doing that."
Trust Wheeljack to break such a cute moment with one of his jokes. The human turned to glare out the window at the mech. "I'll bring them out when they're done Wheeljack."
"That feels like a cold dismissal," Wheeljack said, looking back at her with bright, almost-innocent optics. "Are you rejecting me Vicky? I promise to change my ways and tell you the next time I use you for a potentially dangerous experiment."
"I'll bring them out later," she repeated while shifting Recall in her arms so that she could reach over to Star and wipe away some of the Energon left over from the Seekerlet's earlier coughing fit. "Your 'witty' humor isn't needed right now."
"Fine then; I see how it's going to be!" Wheeljack said with mock offense as he stood up from the window. "No one needs Wheeljack for Wheeljack. I'm not even fully appreciated for cleaning the house, which you didn't notice!"
Even though she knew he wasn't really mad at her, Victoria still felt a stab of guilt as she listened to the mech walk away. The guilt was almost immediately swept away by Bluestreak, who sent her a small pulse of reassurance. With a sigh, she turned back to Recall, who was strangely shuttering and unshuttering his optics as if he was suddenly sleepy. But that didn't make any sense, since the sparkling had just been bursting with excited energy. "Hey, you okay little guy?"
He released the end of the bottle and turned his head away from it, a clear sign that he was full, before opening his mouth in a big yawn and cuddling into her with a tired click. Victoria might have dismissed it because she had babysat young children occasionally while growing up, and it wasn't uncommon for them to fall asleep in her arms after consuming a meal, but it was too much of a coincidence for Star to be displaying the same response and almost falling asleep in his chair. "Wheeljack!"
Bluestreak was instantly by the Star's side, preventing the Seekerlet from falling out of the chair and reassuring the increasingly worried human. "It's okay! Wheeljack just told me I should come in here and help you, so I'm guessing he knew this would happen. I'm sure they're perfectly fine and will wake up soon. There's no reason to get- Vicky! Wait up; Star's harder to carry than Recall is!"
Victoria ignored Bluestreak's call as she stomped through the house with Recall cradled in her arms and out the back door towards the barn. Wheeljack peeked around the edge of the door before ducking quickly back in after seeing the impending anger raging towards him. "Wheeljack! What did you do to these sparklings?"
He carefully glanced back out and danced out of the way as the human marched into the barn between his legs to stand in front of him with a scowl. "Just give me a chance to explain before you go all Ratchet on me!"
"You have ten seconds," Victoria said, shifting the child her arms around to get a better grip as he unconsciously wrapped his legs around her waist.
"Maybe you should stand over here. You know, where there are fewer things within arm's distance that you could throw at me?"
"Nine. Eight."
"Okay, okay!" Wheeljack said, desperately waving his hands to stop her angry countdown. "You literally meant ten seconds. I get that now. But you know, ten seconds isn't really enough time for anyone to explain-"
"Five. Four."
"I put a small dose of sedative in their Energon last night!"
"What?!" Victoria shrieked as Bluestreak slowly entered the barn, Star carefully cradled in his servo. "You put a sedative in a baby's food?"
"How else was I going to be able to give them a thorough examination? You saw how Recall reacted last night; if I had attempted to do that again while he was online, he would have freaked out!" Wheeljack knelt down to put himself near eye level with the human, who was now glancing between him with anger and the sparkling in her arm with worry. "I swear on my spark that I would never harm either of them. But it's obvious that these two have been through something that left a big enough impression to make them fear exposing their sparks; that's not normal for anyone. I don't want them to have bad memory fluxes when I'm trying to make sure they're okay."
Victoria stared back into the engineer's dark blue optics with severe grey eyes. "Wheeljack, you never answered my question from last night. If a sparkling doesn't normally respond the way Recall did when their sparks are exposed, then what could have made him respond that way?"
Off to the side, Bluestreak watched the pair in silence, his door-wings jittering up and down in slight agitation. He gently stroked Star's wing nubs as Wheeljack answered. "You've already figured out the answer to that question; I can tell. That's why I really need to do these examinations. I have to make sure that they haven't been…damaged."
Wheeljack held out a hand, and Victoria took the hint and stepped up into it. She wobbled a bit as the mech stood up and walked over to his work table, where he deposited his passengers beside a clean blue tarp that was laid out. The brunette glanced down at it as Bluestreak walked up and laid Star onto it. "How long are they going to be out?"
"Long enough for me to examine them," the engineer answered cryptically while gesturing for her to place Recall beside the Seekerlet. "Like I said last night, medics have to do hands on examinations with sparklings who haven't fully developed their medical ports. That means it's gonna take a little longer than the quick checkups with Blue. Plus, I didn't want one of them coming back online while I was examining the other. We all saw how strongly Star reacted last night."
Victoria nodded and stepped back to watch the mech pick up a datapad he had placed on the table beside them and start scrolling through it. "You ever examined a sparkling?"
"Nope," he said, a little bit of his usual humor returning in an attempt to lighten the situation. "But there's a first time for everything." Seeing that the human didn't appear very amused, Wheeljack sighed. "How about this? You guys can use this time to go and find the pod that these two landed in because sparklings don't have the ability transform into one and fly through space. They can't transform into anything yet with their underdeveloped T-cogs, assuming they're the age that I figure they are. Maybe you can find some clue as to where they came from. And then stop for lunch for or something. There's no rush to get back here."
Victoria glanced at Bluestreak, who nodded in agreement, and sighed. It was obvious that both Autobots weren't about to let her stand there and worry about whatever Wheeljack may or may not find in his inspections. "Fine. Me and Blue will go and find the pod. I'm pretty sure I can get back to where I found them at last night. But you better make sure they're completely healthy. No shortcuts!"
"You're never going to let that go are you?" Wheeljack responded with a laugh as Bluestreak lost the almost unnatural frown that had occupied his features since stepping into the barn. "It was just one small virus, and it's not like it would have killed Blue!"
"Maybe not, but he had a stutter for an entire month before you finally gave in and rescanned him," she countered while stepping into the hand Bluestreak offered her. She motioned to be held up to the engineer's face and carefully leaned over to place a hand on his blast mask. "And I noticed the house; I notice a lot of things you do. You take good care of me and Blue. I'm positive you'll do the same for these two."
Wheeljack's fins lit up in silent appreciation, and he waved at them as the duo exited the barn. He turned back to the pair of sparklings and with an almost a sad sigh resumed scrolling through the contents of the datapad. "Alright little sparks. Let's get this started." He paused and glanced behind him to make sure the others had left before continuing in a low voice. "I'm gonna have to tell Ratchet that there's finally someone out there who can possibly give him a run for his money. I'm starting to see why humans came up with the term 'mama bear.' It's very appropriate…why did an image of Ratchet in a bear suit suddenly pop into my head?"
)(
Victoria rested her head gently against the glass of the window and stared out as the trees passed by in a blur. She heard the gear shift change gears and the car sped up, making the blurs whiz by faster. "You know, we're not in any hurry. You don't have to go a hundred miles an hour."
"But I wanna," Bluestreak whined through the radio, the needle on his speedometer inching upward as his engine growled smoothly. "The road is empty, it goes on for miles, and did I mention there's no one in sight? Do you know how rare that is even if we do live in nearly the middle of nowhere? If someone isn't tailing my bumper, then the road twists too much. This is perfect!"
"I know," Victoria said with a grin as the adrenaline Bluestreak felt seeped through their bond. "And I hate to ruin your fun, but we passed the spot I was at last night about ten minutes ago."
Bluestreak screeched to a stop, his tires leaving marks about five feet long. Victoria was flung forward and she yelped as the seatbelt Bluestreak instinctively tightened bit into her neck. "You didn't have to stop that quickly."
"Sorry!" the mech squeaked. He quickly performed a three-point turn and backtracked at a more decent speed. "I didn't mean to do that. Did I hurt you? I did, didn't I? I'm so sorry! It won't happen again. I'll never speed when you're in the car, no matter how tempting it might be…okay maybe just a little over the speed limit because humans are so slow. Seriously, why would you force someone to go forty-five when they can clearly go seventy without a problem? Is it really going to hurt anyone? I mean, I understand going slow when there's other things around, but I scanned the area and there's nothing within ten miles of us."
"Blue," Victoria calmly stated when he slid to a stop on the side of the road, yet continued to complain about the unfair speed limits. "You've gotta let me out of the car."
"Oh!"
The seatbelt hugging her to the seat slackened, and she took the chance to jump out of the car. Rubbing at the soreness of her neck, Victoria stood on the side of the road and scanned the trees in front of her. "Alright, I'm pretty sure this is the place. All the trees look the same, but I distinctly remember this one because it has a sort of hole in it. Of course it was getting dark and what I saw could have been shadows."
The sound of clicks and gears shifting caught her attention, and she twisted around to see Bluestreak's armor sliding into place as he crouched in the middle of the road. "Bluestreak! What the hell are you doing? You have to transform before anyone sees you."
"There's no one around," he insisted while gesturing vaguely. "I told you I scanned the area. There's nothing but little wood critters and they're deeper in the trees."
"Bluestreak!" Victoria huffed as he ignored her and wiggled himself between the trees. "How do you even expect to make it through all the trees in that form? You're too big!"
"But I'm really limited when I use the holoform. It's perfect for blending in with humans but really not useful when tracking down tech." Bluestreak paused, and Victoria watched him fiddle with something on his arm. "There we go! Wow…how come we didn't notice this thing falling from the sky last night? It's huge. Or maybe I need to just adjust this so that it's not zoomed in…"
"What is that?"
"Something 'Jack installed before we left. It's supposed to be able to track down anything giving off a Cybertronian signal, electromagnetic fields, and other stuff like that. You see, escape pods are normally programmed to send out a frequency once they land. That way a rescue party wouldn't have any problems locating it. If you don't want that frequency to go off it's really easy to turn it off."
"But wouldn't that attract the attention of…something non-Cybertronian? Like a human satellite?"
"Well yeah, if that satellite was pointed in the right direction, at the right time, and kept an eye on it as it fell through the atmosphere. Human's just don't have the right tech yet to keep track of our technology. Wheeljack was able to make it seem like we were stray space junk that burned up in the atmosphere when we came to Earth."
The pair walked in silence for a few moments, Bluestreak waving his arm around while Victoria looked out for anything that looked vaguely familiar. "If you guys were able to cover your tracks after landing on Earth, then how did that group of humans find you?"
Bluestreak tripped on a fallen tree, clumsily grabbing at the other trees surrounding him and wincing as a few branches scratched against door-wings. Victoria patted his pede as she felt the same pain he did. "That might have been…me and Smokey's fault. You have to understand that the first place we lived in was freakishly boring. There was absolutely nothing to do no one exciting. Just a bunch of old people who hated Wheeljack for making a excitement in their lives with outgoing personality and explosive tendencies. But every summer their grandkids would come to visit, and me and Smokey learned that they would sneak out every weekend and go drag racing. So we thought we'd go out and have a little fun one weekend. That weekend sort of multiplied until it was every weekend and sneaking behind Wheeljack's back because we couldn't let him come without the risk of him showing off and running everyone away.
"Anyway, one night there was an accident during one of the races. A guy took a turn too quickly and flipped his car. Smokescreen had been right behind him and the only way he could avoid it was jumping over it. He was just too close and going too fast to do anything else, and it was really instinctual for him to transform to get out of the way. Long story short, one of the kids got a picture of him with their phone, it went viral before Wheeljack had a chance to stop it—but he did stop it eventually!—and we had to leave. It was in-between moves that that group of humans attacked us, so Wheeljack concluded that it was because of the picture that they found us. Of course, we had to go through the motions of finding less flashy and more 'normal' alt-modes after that too."
"I thought you guys didn't know how they found you."
"Wheeljack said not to make you worried about pictures that are no longer on the internet." Bluestreak looked down and flinched at the sight of the woman's glare. "I didn't lie! I just…omitted some of the truth."
"Whatever," Victoria said with a sigh before smirking and carefully bumping up against his pede. "But look at you. You're more of a bad boy than I thought you were. Drag racing behind Wheeljack's back and lying to my face? I'm sorry—'omitting the truth' to my face? Those sound more like things the Twins would happily do."
"You can't really stay a saint when you're friends with the Twins and one of your role models growing up is Jazz. You just learn to hide it by being cute." To prove his point he stopped long enough to give her a charming smile and wiggled his kibble, making the brunette giggle. "It also helps that Praxians are one of the top three most desirable frames back before the war. We ranked just below the Seekers and Polyhexians because Seekers are more 'exotic' and most Polyhexians have very enjoyable personalities like Jazz. And they're also very—how would the humans say it?—flexible."
"Ew." Bluestreak laughed at the disturbed expression on his friend's face. "Let's not talk about that."
"But it's a very natural thing."
"Don't start sounding like Wheeljack with 'innocent' explanations that are started just to see me squirm."
The mech's laughs eventually died to snickers and the two continued through the trees with only a light conversation popping up every now and then. Occasionally they had to stop because of Bluestreak's door-wings getting caught on branches or Victoria having to dig a twig or rock out of her sneakers. But after nearly an hour of walking, Bluestreak's arm eventually led them to the place they were looking for.
Victoria had to stop and gawk at the damage the pod had done on its touchdown. Of course with the speeds and the heat it must have picked up while free-falling through the atmosphere, it had been bound to knock over a couple of trees and burn the vegetation around it. With the damage she saw, it would have been safe to assume that anyone within a twenty mile radius would have heard it. "How did you not hear this last night? It must have made a loud enough noise for you to hear!"
"Well, you have to remember that we were in Wheeljack's barn and he had been working with power tools at the time you said it would have landed. Plus I wouldn't be surprised if the trees didn't dampen the noise a little. They're pretty dense in this area. We did feel a slight tremor though if that makes you feel better. We just wrote it off as a small seismic anomaly because we feel those pretty often and it's never anything serious."
Victoria nodded and listened to Bluestreak babble off onto the topic of earthquakes, quickly followed by other natural disasters. She jumped over the shallow ditch that had been created when the pod had slid along the ground before stopping and went to examine the outside as Bluestreak stuck his head into the little ship. "So…what are we going to do with it?"
"Take it back with us," was the mech's simple question as he stood back up and scanned the area around them. "That's weird. It's picking up traces of three EM fields. Maybe it's just a glitch; that happens pretty often with Wheeljack's prototypes." He stopped to stare hard down at the new device implanted into his arm. "Right before it explodes…"
"Stop that," the woman ordered while running her hand along Cybertronic symbols the size of her hand that were embellished into the metal of the pod. "I think we give him too hard of a time when it comes to his things exploding. Not everything he makes automatically explodes."
"Yeah, sometimes he has to make it explode." Bluestreak glanced back at her and sighed at the glare being sent his way. "Don't be that way! He makes fun of it too. Actually he's the one that brings it up half the time. It's like his catchphrase or something. 'Need something that makes your life easier but explodes without any warning? Wheeljack is the mech for the job!'" He smiled at little bit of laughter seeping through their bond and how Victoria tried to hid her smile by biting her lip and stepping further behind the pod. "You can't hide that you think it's funny. I can feel it!"
The Praxian's smile fell at the sudden worry and anger that came from Victoria and quickly made his way over to her. "What did you find?" The human wordlessly pointed up to the symbol she had found, and Bluestreak had to crouch down to wipe away the dirt and pine needles obstructing his view of it. Once he could see it though, the reaction was immediate; his door-wings shot up into a tense position, a scowl made its way onto his features, and the servo he had used to brush away the dirt clenched tightly. "Decepticon."
"Those-those," Victoria stuttered as anger began to take over the previous bit of worry that she had felt. She turned to him and pointed angrily at the faction emblem. "Are they the ones who did that to Recall and Star? Made them fear what they shouldn't? I swear, if I ever get my hands on one of them-"
"They'll squish you without a second thought," Bluestreak finished harshly, quickly rising from his crouch and poking around the inside of the pod once mroe. "Unless you found one that likes to 'play' with his victims before killing them. We can't take it back with us now because there's no telling what hidden weapons or other things have been added. It's too big of a risk that a second unknown beacon might come on and lead a pack of Decepticons to us, so we have to get rid of this thing before they come looking for it, if they aren't already. Emergency beacon…okay good. That's been disabled now. Now for the self-destruct protocols…"
Victoria rose out of her anger long enough to look at him incredulously. "Self-destruct protocols? Now I know blowing something up would definitely draw the attention of others, especially when you make it explode in the middle of a flammable area."
"Which is why it'll explode up in the air," he answered confidently without rising out of the ship. "Hold on and I'll show you how…there we go!"
Later she would tell herself that she really shouldn't have been surprised when the pod began to collapse on itself as the surface area of it began to break apart into tiny squares and shift around like how the Autobots would when shifting from one form to the other. Once it was done collapsing, Bluestreak proudly held a basketball sized pod out for the awed Victoria to see. "There's a reason why the humans from your dimension call us 'Transformers.' I wish you could have seen Cybertron before the war. You would have so amazed by the buildings because some of them actually changed every day, and-"
"Bluestreak, that thing is rigged to explode."
"Oh yeah!" Bluestreak pulled his arm back and chucked the "basketball" pod as far into the air as he could, which was pretty far for a mech his size. The only proof of the impending explosion was a small flash of light and a light unnatural breeze from that general direction. "Now that that's taken care of, I need to check the area for anything else that might draw a Decepticon to this area."
"Do you need me to do anything?" Victoria asked as the mech began to prowl around the area.
"No," he answered without looking up from his arm. "You can do whatever you want. I shouldn't be long."
"'You can do whatever you want,'" Victoria repeated to herself while watching Bluestreak quietly and efficiently scan the area like the trained soldier she sometimes forgot he was. "And what exactly would that entail? Sitting on the sidelines and twiddling my thumbs? Because there is just so much to do in the middle of nowhere."
"Why don't you look for some trails or something?" Bluestreak suggested when he felt her cynicism even if he couldn't hear her thoughts. "A trail would be a lot easier to traverse than the trees again."
"Fine, but I know you're just doing this to make me feel useful." The brunette paused before leaving the new clearing. "Thank you."
He smiled at her briefly and went back to scanning while she vanished into the trees. Victoria walked through woods more easily then she had the night before, no longer worried about getting lost in the light and with Bluestreak not far from her; it also helped that she was actually dressed for hiking. Either way, it was easier and less stressful and soon she found herself stepping out onto a dirt road.
The raven haired woman looked both ways down the seemingly abandoned back road. She hadn't even known there was such a road that cut through the dense woods. She walked down it a few feet and paused. "Hey Blue! I think I found a road, but I don't know where it-"
She stopped as the familiar sound of a car engine caught her attention, and she quickly stepped off the road to avoid being potentially ran over. An old blue truck chugalugged around the corner ahead of her and slowly made its way down the road. Victoria stepped further off the road in hopes of not being seen but had no such luck as the truck stopped directly in front of her. She backed up further as the driver opened his door and hopped out of the cab.
"Well howdy," he said with a smirk as he watched the woman's careful expression break into one of surprise. "Didn't think I'd ever get the chance to see you again after yesterday."
"I kind of hoped we wouldn't," Victoria responded, looking the man up and down and taking another step back as the man took a step towards her. "People don't usually take well to being held at gunpoint, almost attacked, and ran back to their car in fear of ending up on the next episode of 48 Hours when the man they deliver a package to has a mental breakdown."
The man laughed as if what she said was truly a joke and casually whipped off his square glasses to clean them with the bottom edge of his shirt. "Sorry about that. I was having a…off day. I'm James by the way." He held out his hand as if for her to shake it, but when Victoria crossed her arms to make it obvious that she wouldn't, he retracted the gesture. "Right. I wouldn't be that trusting after what happened either."
"I'm not by myself," Victoria informed him abruptly while staring blankly at him. "My friend's just slow, but he should catch up soon."
"Oh good! Is this the friend that was 'sick' yesterday?"
"As a matter of fact it is. He just had one of those twenty-four hour bugs that pop up every once in a while. We thought a quick hike—some fresh air and all that—would do him some good."
"You're probably right." James gestured vaguely in the direction behind him. "I guess I'm just a little surprised to see you here instead of on one of the hiking trails a little further north. Makes a casual hike a lot easier."
"We like roughing it."
They stared at each other awkwardly for a few seconds, openly assessing the other person. "So, what brings you out here?"
James was saved from answering as the sound of clumsy running came from behind Victoria, and soon a familiar blond was bursting out of the trees and rushing to cling to the woman. "Vicky, you walk too fast! I thought I had lost you until you heard you talking to someone. Who's your new friend? Hi there! I'm Blake!"
The older man looked thoroughly surprised to see Bluestreak, obviously assuming that Victoria hadn't been telling the truth about someone else being with her, but recovered quickly and plastered a fake smile on his face. "I'm James…nice to meet you."
"Sorry, I don't shake hands," Bluestreak explained when James held out his hand. "Germs and stuff. Did you know that your hand is the dirtiest thing on Earth? I mean, you touch everything with your hands, and most soaps don't even get them clean."
James looked down at his hand in a whole new light, flipping them over to look at them from every angle. "Wow, I didn't know that…little piece of information. I'll be sure to clean them more often when I get back to the house."
Bluestreak hummed, and Victoria tried hard not to flinch as a sudden shock came from his holoform. Seeing the flinch, Bluestreak carefully unwrapped his arms from around her and settled for gripping one of her hands. "Be sure to use hot water and don't touch anything immediately afterwards. Germs find it easier to cling to wet things. Well I think we should be going; lots of things to do today. Like cleaning the house, and doing laundry, and getting ready for company and-"
"What's the rush?" James asked with a little shrug. "You deserve a little more time to recover from being sick. I'm sure your company would agree."
"No, we really need to go," the mech in disguise emphasized with a wince and a tightened grip on Victoria's hand. "Plus we don't want anyone to come across our car and think it's been abandoned."
"Alright," the older man said with confusion as he watched the blond twist the brunette around and quickly hike back into the trees. "Maybe I'll see you around?"
"Don't count on it!" Victoria managed to yell back before she completely lost sight of the man. When she figured they far enough away to not be heard, she immediately turned on Bluestreak. "Bluestreak what is going on? Why does your holoform keep shocking me?"
Bluestreak visibly winced and gripped her hand even tighter. "Remind me that it's never a good idea to send your real self in one direction while your holoform goes in the other. In fact, I think I know now why Wheeljack advises only having it activated when you're parked in your alt-mode. It's so hard to keep track of things when you're looking through two different perspectives, and it's even harder to keep the holoform grounded. It's a real strain; I think I might have broken something in the generator."
"If it's hurting you then turn it off! I can find my way back to you."
"I don't want to risk you getting lost and me having to come back in to find you."
"You are so stubborn!"
"I get it from you."
Victoria smirked at that and rolled her eyes as "Blake" led the way through the trees, his image wavering every once in a while and shocking her the whole way.
)(
As Bluestreak and Victoria had re-entered the woods, James had watched them leave with a suspicious glare. Once they were completely gone, he returned to his truck and grabbed the tools he needed before wading in after the pair. He would have to work quickly if those two were wandering around in the woods; he didn't want to risk them coming across his little discovery and calling the local news to have their brief five minutes of fame.
After taking the thing back home last night, James had come to realization that in his rush to procure the living alien he had completely forgotten about the transport! So he had woken up early that morning, assured that the alien was provided for and wouldn't die or escape while he was gone, gathered some supplies, and headed out to bring that pod home. If the alien he had found was anything like N.B.E 01 or any of the other N. he had seen, it would be intriguing to find out what these robots traverse in, seeing as they could essentially transform into vehicles to begin with.
He had come prepared to confront an agent from S7 or another inhabitant of the middle of nowhere like himself, but when he had pulled up in front of a woman on the side of the road, he had been honestly surprised to find out that it was the same woman from the day before: Victoria.
In all honesty, James had been a little let down at first. Her appearance so close to the site of the clearing couldn't have been coincidental, and that meant that she must have been working for that organization, which meant he would have to get rid of her before she reported back and then find a new place to live just to make sure no one else from Sector 7 would find him. And he was actually beginning to like the place he lived in.
The boy that had suddenly appeared had probably been the only thing to save the girl. James felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders when he realized that she hadn't been lying at all—she really did have a friend, and he did look to be recovering from a recent illness if his twitchiness and paleness said anything. So he had let them run off to continue their young lives. No need to let the innocent suffer from his rash decisions.
Now he cursed as his wheelbarrow got stuck on the root of a tree. His plan was simple. Strip the alien transport of anything useful and haul butt before the alien at home woke up and decided to do something fishy. It was a full proof plan because he had spent the night before timing the thing between its moments of consciousness and sleep. It didn't wake up very often…actually it exhibited the sleeping pattern of a newborn…
James shook his head and with a grunt pushed the wheelbarrow over its obstacle and continued forward. He couldn't start thinking of that…thing as a child or he'd never get anything accomplished. They were robots; they couldn't have children! It wasn't biologically possible—hence the title Non-Biological Extraterrestrial.
No, whatever he had must have been disguised to seem like a child to dissuade enemies. It could probably whip out a gun from nowhere and kill everyone in a room with one fatal swoop. James wasn't going to be fooled by their clever transforming disguises! He was going to use what he had to find a way to defeat those things; not make a car or toaster oven like Sector 7 had so foolishly done with the information they had discovered.
James was so lost in his mental bashing of the organization he had previously been proud of being a part of that he didn't notice the clearing he finally walked into was missing one very important detail until he walked up on the empty crater.
"No, no, no," he repeated several times as he abandoned his tools and haphazardly rushed down to the center of the crater. "What happened to it? It couldn't have been taken so quickly. You can't leave with something that size without being seen or at least leaving a trail behind!"
He kicked around the dirt and yelled in anger when his actions didn't magically dig up the pod that had been there the night before. When the man finally finished his tantrum, he trekked back out of the crater and resolutely sat on the edge. He should have found a way to return earlier. The things he could have done with that tech; he didn't even want to think about it now! All it did was dredge up a headache.
As James sat and attempted to rid himself of the headache, a sudden thought flashed through his head, making him freeze on the spot. Could it be mere coincidence that the two he had met some minutes before just happened to be wandering around in the woods?
"Coincidence?" James snorted, standing up with a grunt and dusting his pants off as he turned to leave. "I don't believe in such things. You don't see the same woman twice in two days because of coincidence."
"Though she may not be part of Sector 7 as I previously thought," he thought begrudgingly as he traveled back to his truck. "Members of Sector 7 aren't as…subtle as she has been. They tend to travel in packs, flashing their 'power' around when they apprehend what they are after."
So it was perhaps she was on her own, just like he was. That was fine with him. The woman and her friend could pretend they knew what they were doing as they stripped the mechanism in their possession because he had something better.
And she wasn't going to get her little hands on it if he had any say about it.
)(
"I'm telling you Bluestreak. There was a reason why he just happened to be on that back road when we were, and it wasn't for some innocent hiking trip."
"I think you're reading too much into it Vicky," Bluestreak sighed through the speaker as the disgruntled woman huffed in her seat. "He couldn't have possibly known about the pod. We would have never known it was there if you hadn't brought home two sparklings, and we're only an hour away from the crash site. From what you say, he lives even further away, and it was ten at night. What are the odds of him being there—at the same time you were—to see it crash to Earth?"
Victoria bit her bottom lip in thought and glared at the radio for lack of anything else to glare at. "I don't know! I don't have all the answers. But he knew something; I could see it in the way he looked at me."
"Maybe he just took his medication this morning," the mech suggested while turning into their driveway. "You said he was a little crazy yesterday. Maybe he realized what he had done and took something to keep himself from hurting anyone. Humans have medicine for that."
"No, because he still had that crazed look." She sighed as Bluestreak came to a stop and waited patiently for her to get out. "Bluestreak, do you know anything that goes by the name of 'Sector 7'? He kept saying something about it, accusing me of being a part of it, and some Simmons guy."
"Mmm," the Autobot hummed in thought. "The names sound familiar, but I can't think of anything specific. Maybe they're from TV or something. Like a popular crime show. That reminds me, I'm totally missing that marathon of Law & Order today."
"I said no more crime shows," Victoria scolded lightly with a light smack to his dashboard before climbing out. She waited until the mech stood beside her in all his door-wing glory before continuing. "I don't want you coming up with even more ludicrous theories of what happens to me when I don't come home on time."
"But those shows are addictive, and entertaining, and cool, and interesting, and somewhat educational at times. Would you rather me watch stuff like Doctor Who and theorize which alien race will invade the UK every Christmas?"
Victoria pursed her lips in mock thought as they made their way over to Wheeljack's barn, where sounds of squeals and giggles could be heard. "Alright point taken. Just cut back on them. Your theories really are becoming ridiculous."
"I won't make any promises," was the mech's reply as he pretended to stealthily peek through the crack in the barn door to see what was happening inside. Victoria shook her head at him and smiled when he started to giggle. "I think Wheeljack's found another apprentice."
Victoria mimicked Bluestreak actions and put a hand to her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. While she could barely see the top of Wheeljack's table from her current angle, she could see enough. Wheeljack sat patiently in his Transformer sized chair and talked as Star held up random objects he found on the table. "That is what will one day be a transistor. A transistor is used to amplify and switch electronic signals and electrical power, and I'm currently working on making it applicable to some of my future projects, but that's taking a little work since I have to find the materials big enough to–hey. Where are you going bitlet?"
Recall screeched as he rolled over the edge of the table and freefell for a klick before Wheeljack casually reached over and caught him. The engineer carefully put the sparkling back on the table and out of the paralyzed Victoria's sight, though she could clearly hear Recall clicking and beeping in immense enjoyment. "That was funny the first dozen times you did it, but I think we're overdoing your new form of fun. What would Vicky say if she caught us?"
"First she'd ask why the hell you let him do that to begin with!" Victoria shouted as she ran across the room to them. "And really Wheeljack? A dozen times?"
"Er, overexaggeration?" Wheeljack answered sheepishly while holding his hand out to catch the giggling sparkling once more. He caught the glare she was sending him and shrugged. "Oh come on Vicky! Give me a little more credit than that. I wouldn't have let him do it if I didn't think I could catch him each time." As she continued to glare at him, the engineer flashed the lights framing his face in mock disgruntlement. "You're going to be one of those fun sucking parents aren't you?"
"And you're going to be the irresponsible uncle that shows up every six months to make the parent's life miserable and encourage the children to be reckless while giving them false hopes and dreams."
Bluestreak glanced between the two as a glaring contest commenced. He shrugged and carefully shuffled past them to lean down and speak to the sparklings. "Were you two good while we were gone?" Recall chirruped with a smile and flopped over onto his back. "Um hmm. Did you have fun?" Star made a shrugging motion and picked up a new object, gesturing between it and Recall's springy "hair" with a knowing beep. "Yes, that is a spring, and you're right Star! It is like the springs on Recall's head…no Recall. We don't eat the things we find in the barn."
Star clicked in annoyance and snatched back the spring that Recall was so determined to chew on before the other sparkling could really get started on it. Recall blinked down at his suddenly empty hand and chirped in disappointment. Bluestreak chuckled as Star huffed with annoyance and pressed the coil into the table, releasing it to allow it to fly up into the air. Recall shrieked in joy as he watched the piece of twisted metal soar up into the air and come back down to land close beside him, clapping when Star grabbed the coil and repeated the action.
"Give up," Wheeljack taunted as he and Victoria determinedly glared at each other. "Unlike you, I never need to blink!" Just as he said that, the human blinked and proceeded to rub her dried out eyes. "Ha! I win."
"And you just proved my point," she retaliated while blinking in rapid succession to get rid of the stinging in her eyes. "What did you find out while we were gone? Are they both okay?"
"Yep!" Wheeljack said cheerfully while turning around to grab the sparklings. "They're both physically fine; a little underdeveloped but nothing to worry about. That leads me to believe that whatever has made them scared was something they saw instead of directly involving them. Not saying that that's any better, but at least they're not hurt in any way."
Victoria sighed in relief and could see Bluestreak do the same. Wheeljack was right when he said it didn't make things all better, but at least that was one less thing they had to worry about. "You're dying to tell us something else; I can tell."
Wheeljack nodded giddily and lowered his hand before Recall could attempt his first try at sky diving. The sparkling gurgled and vaulted into Victoria's arms to cuddle into her. Star was a little harder to get rid of since he seemed intent on chewing through one of Wheeljack's fingers. The engineer wiggled that finger, causing the Seekerlet to growl, before shrugging. "Are we going to have to get you a chew toy? Anyway, I found something very interesting once I got a chance to get a good look at their sparks."
He paused dramatically and waited until Bluestreak asked, "Are you going to tell us what it was or do we have to start a game of twenty questions?"
"It has been a while since we've played that game." The engineer smiled in his special way as Victoria and Bluestreak gave him similar looks. "Fine. I'll just tell you…wow, you've got a pretty sharp set of chompers there don't you?" A cross between a growl and a purr emitted from Star as Wheeljack used a finger to gently pet the Seekerlet's wing nubs. "I think you might actually leave a mark by the time you're done."
"I don't think he has anything interesting," Victoria mock whispered to Bluestreak, who crouched down to wiggle his fingers above an amused Recall. "He probably just misses the good old days when he did something other than tinker with microwaves."
"I tinker with other things, thank you very much! And I do have interesting stuff to say. For one, these two are definitely mechlings. Both of their sparks follow the same pattern observed in most mechs. Don't give me that look Vicky; despite how sure you were about them being mechs, I had to check. Moving on: Star is in fact a runt. He's about five inches shorter and a couple of pounds lighter than he should be for his estimated age, though that can be debatable with how funky his spark is."
Wheeljack paused for a moment in an attempt to amuse said Seekerlet (which didn't work) before continuing. "His spark is just…weird. I don't know how to describe it. It's like its old but at the same time very young, like half of the old spark was lost and replaced with a new one. I do however know for certain that this little bugger has a trine out there somewhere."
"Should we be worried about two other Seekerlets out there?" Victoria asked with concern.
"Or an older pair of Decepticon Seekers?" Bluestreak added with a bit more severity hidden in his concerned tone.
"I don't know. The trine bonds are connected to the old half of the spark, so I'm guessing that they don't belong to other Seekers his age. But it's odd that older Seekers would share a bond with a Seekerlet, let alone let him out of their sight. I would think that anyone bonded to a sparkling would go the extra mile to keep it safe if only to protect themselves."
"Maybe it was accidental and the Seekers were trying to get rid of him." Bluestreak shrugged when Wheeljack and Victoria gave him identical pairs of incredulous looks. "What? I don't pretend to know how Seekers work."
"You don't bond to someone accidentally," Wheeljack said incredulously before looking thoughtfully down at Victoria. "You know, unless you're trapped in a tiny toy replica of yourself, become friends with an unexpectant human (let's just say that human's a female for, uh, explanation's sake), and then travel between dimensions where your very souls are completely exposed to each other. Then—and only in that extremely rare and special case—may you accidentally create a bond. Otherwise it has to be a conscious action to even occur…unless you're a sparkling. Sparklings seem to abide by completely different laws of bonding…and nature…and maybe physics. You know what? Sparklings just have a completely different rule book than us adults."
Star squawked in agreement as he finally released Wheeljack's finger and demandingly pointed to be put down. Recall clicked in excitement and wiggled to be put down as well so that he could crawl to where the engineer placed Star. When the sparklings were settled down with a few harmless spare parts to play with, the adult turned back their conversation. "What about Recall? Did you find out anything we need to know?"
"As a matter of fact, I did," Wheeljack replied while turning to retrieve his datapad from the table. "Recall is not, as I had previously assumed, a Mini-Bot. Don't ask me what type of frame he is because apparently the keywords I use to search through the files to try and figure that out are too broad and won't give me a specific frame and because he's so young, he hasn't developed any telltale signs. So I'm working on that." He tapped his finger against the screen once and subspaced the datapad. "In the meantime, we might have a little problem."
The engineer glanced at the sparklings before crouching down beside Bluestreak and continuing at a lower tone for only them to hear. "When I found out Star had two already established trine bonds, I made sure to run some tests to see if those frequencies matched Recall's spark. Both were negative, so I assumed that that meant Recall completely lacked any bonds, which is very important to know because he might reach out and attempt to forge some bond with me or you Bluestreak. Sparklings created the way they were are usually more likely to reach out for a bond after spending half of their development depending on the carrier's spark to keep it going and may even fell uncomfortable without one."
"So it's a problem that he might want to bond to one of you?" Victoria asked in confusion when Wheeljack paused to check on the sparklings they were talking about. "That can't be too upsetting, can it?"
"That's not what the problem is. It would be fine if he formed a sibling or guardian bond with Bluestreak. I'd actually prefer it, since I'm not in the mood to make a bond with anything at the moment. No offense little bitlet; you're adorable, but I'm just not ready." Recall clicked up at the mech as he came rolling between the three adults and kept going until he hit the leg of Wheeljack's table. Then he reversed until he was once again beside Star, now a giggling mess despite the Seekerlet giving him a slightly impatient stare. "Where was I before that brief interruption? Oh yeah, the real problem.
"The real problem is that I found that Recall is actually bonded to something." Wheeljack nodded at their shocked expressions. "Yeah! And it's not to Star. From what I could deduce, it wasn't strong enough to be a creator or guardian bond, and seeing how he's a little too young to be looking for a sparkmate, I believe it's safe to assume that the bond is most likely sibling. A young bond too. So the problem ultimately turns out to be that I think there might be an unaccounted for sparkling out there." He looked between the two of them suspiciously. "Why have you two suddenly lost your shocked expressions and now look like you know that something that I don't?"
Victoria gestured up to Bluestreak. "Go ahead. Tell him what you found in the clearing."
"Well," the Praxian dragged out while detaching a small device, almost like a USB drive, from his arm and handed it to the engineer. "That device you gave me to help us find the pod picked up on traces of other EM fields. I figured the first two were from Recall and Star and the third one was just a glitch since you said the device had never been used before. Is it possible that it's from a third sparkling?"
Wheeljack flipped open an armor panel on his arm and slid the USB drive into a port with ease. Bluestreak and Victoria waited patiently as the engineer downloaded the information, his optics dimming from the action. It didn't take long, and soon he was detaching the device. "Actually, the first and third are Star and Recall's EM field. The second one is the mystery one, and I can most definitely assure you that that is no glitch. Since you thought it was a glitch and Vicky didn't show back up with another bundle of joy, I presume that means the sparkling wasn't found at the crash site."
They shook their heads, and Victoria spoke up as the older Autobot sighed and rubbed his nasal ridge with a finger, a habit he had unconsciously picked up from other teachers while working at the high school. "I know where the sparkling is."
"Vicky," Bluestreak sighed immediately. "He does not have the sparkling! If he did, then I doubt he would have returned to the place he found it and risk being caught. Plus he really seemed like a nice guy when I met him."
"That's because he didn't have his hunting rifle pointed at your head! And I know he's hiding something. A person doesn't change that radically in one day for no reason."
"Unless he's taking something to keep him calm. Besides, you still haven't given a reason as to how he would have even known the pod was there."
"Because. He's. Crazy! He could have been stalking me for all I know."
"Hold on, hold on!" Wheeljack interrupted as he attempted to placate the duo. "Who is this 'he' that we're even talking about and why would he be stalking Victoria?"
"Someone she met yesterday," Bluestreak said with a shrug while Victoria glared at his dismissal. "He was just a crazy client, but I met him today and he looked completely harmless. He probably just suffers from mood swings or skipped a day of taking his meds. If he was dangerous, wouldn't we have heard about him before now? I mean, the only thing I have heard about him just makes him sound like a humanized version of Red Alert."
Victoria hated how thoughtful Wheeljack looked right now. "Maybe, but if Vicky thinks that he might be involved, then I think it's worth looking into. She wouldn't suggest it unless she had a legitimate reason even if she can't necessarily put that reason into words. I've seen Jazz go on little more than that when he thought it was important. But Victoria if he is dangerous, then I don't want you going anywhere near him alone. Me and Bluestreak will stake out his house and assess him. If a sparkling is involved in this, then it'll become our top priority to get it to safety even if it means revealing ourselves."
"I still think we should go right now and get that child away from him," Victoria couldn't help but insist even as Bluestreak agreed. "I already know that he has something to do with that missing sparkling and giving that man the time to be alone with him worries me."
"I know, but I believe this is what Optimus would do." At the mention of the Prime, Victoria almost immediately backed off the subject. She knew that the engineer was right; Optimus would never go after someone based on little more than a woman's hunch. "As many would say, the man is innocent until proven guilty, and I'd rather not blow our cover if he just turns out to not be completely there if you know what I mean."
"I know, I know. It's just-" She stopped mid-sentence to check on the unnaturally quiet sparklings. "Why did they suddenly get so quiet? A kid only does that when they've gotten into something."
The mechs glanced into that direction as well and began to laugh at the sight that greeted them. Recall looked up from the puddle of white paint he was splashing his hands in and laughed along with them; Star just clicked and continued to smear the white as well as red paint all over his chest. He even reached behind him to grab a pail of blue paint with a content expression on his face instead of what was already becoming his customary pout.
"I think we may have a pair of…Picassoes in the making," Wheeljack joked after a brief internet search on famous human artists.
"Or a pair of Sunstreakers," Bluestreak joked right back with a laugh as Recall began to do his funny rolling through the paint on the floor. "Hopefully they won't develop the same touchy attitude that he has, right Vicky? Vicky?" He looked around when he realized the human was no longer standing with them until he finally found her halfway out the door. "Hey!"
"Oh no," she paused long enough to say as she slid out the door. "Since you two think this is so funny, I'll let you be the ones to clean it up. Just because we have kids now doesn't mean the woman is gonna be saddled with all the responsibility when it comes to them."
They watched her disappear before turning back to the sparklings, both of them finally realizing how big of a mess they had created. "That devious woman. I have to hand it to her though; she knows how to weasel her way out of things."
"Yeah, I think the Twins are rubbing off on her more than we realize," Bluestreak conceded with a sigh before catching the Cybertronian children's attention with a clap of his servos. "Alright! Who wants a bath first?"
)(
Later that night, Victoria silently padded up the stairs after helping Bluestreak clean up the paint in the barn. Her conscience had gotten to her when Wheeljack's holoform had come into the house carrying a pair of paint spattered sparklings with minimum difficulty and informed her that Bluestreak had been saddled with barn clean-up after they discovered that his holo-generator had short-circuited after his actions earlier in the day. So while the engineer got the sparklings clean, she had ventured back out to lend the younger mech a hand. They had actually finished cleaning up an hour or two ago and were just sitting outside talking when Wheeljack had come back outside to inform them that Recall and Star had settled down for the night after a very…interesting bath time and feeding.
Now Victoria peeked into the guest room across from her bedroom and smiled at the sight of the two sparklings curled up in the plain queen size bed. She opened the door further and tiptoed to the edge of the bed where she carefully sat down. Recall, the closest one to her, yawned widely in his sleep and rolled over to snuggle up to Star's back. The Seekerlet didn't seem to mind the contact in his sleep and emitted a soft chirp as he brought the sheet clenched in his hand closer to his chin.
Victoria lightly stroked the springs and wires that sprung from Recall's head and silently wondered about the mechling's missing brother or sister, lost out there without anyone to properly care for him. While she didn't like the thought of him being in that James character's possession, she had to admit that that was better than the sparkling being lost in the woods and on his own. Hopefully the man would find more use in the sparkling alive rather than dead and somehow find a way to care for it until the stubborn Autobots she lived with had enough evidence to convince them. Until then, all she could do was wait.
With a near silent sigh, Victoria bent down to place a small kiss on the back of Recall's head, reached across the bed to do the same for Star, and left the room as silently as she had entered it. She made sure to leave the door open wide enough to be able to hear if one of them woke up before making her way to the bathroom further down the hall. The first complete day of having new babies in the house was drawing to a close, but Victoria knew better than to think it was really over.
After all, every new "mother" knew that it was the time after dark that proved to be the most challenging.
AN: I had thought that this chapter would be bouncing back to the Decepticons, but I decided that it would make more sense to write this first :P Decepticons will be in the next chapter, which is already a good length done :)
So…yeah :) I'm half asleep right now, so I'll leave it at that for fear of saying something stupid :P
