Things Spike Wishes The Universe Had Told Him
by K. Stonham
first released June 7th, 2011
Replacing Trailbreaker's salt-corroded undercarriage in the spring is even more nauseating than that salmon you once caught that had a plastic bag wound through its guts.
Decepticons are scary, but generally they only want to kill you. Humans... can be much worse.
Lamborghini twins get pissed when you learn how to distill high-grade energon from them and end up being better at it.
Over ten years' experience in the nuthouse that is the Ark still doesn't manage to prepare you for keeping up with a human toddler.
You should never, ever, say "Compared to fighting Decepticons, this is easy!" for the same reason other people should never say things like "God himself could not sink this ship!"
You know you've come a long way from the oil rig when your son is learning to read and asks you what a "warphole blade" is and your first thought is to forbid him to ask Wheeljack to make him one.
Contrariwise, while a recitation of anything Lewis Carroll wrote may make Prowl's logic circuits break down, it has the same effect on Shockwave.
Introducing Bluestreak and Kup to one another means that Bluestreak's babble slows down and starts to become more coherent under the older bot's tutelage in the Ancient and Venerable Art of Storytelling. It's something that someone ought to've done ages ago.
"Soldier in an ancient war with giant robots from another planet" may be the coolest job title ever, but your insurance premiums will be through the roof.
Going Headmaster, however, lowers them somewhat.
Being a Headmaster means you have voices in your head. Fortunately, though, while Cerebros tends toward gloom and depression, the world is still new to Maximus, and he explores it with a sense of wonder. You end up being an optimist to one and a tutor to the other, and eventually can't remember what life was like without the trinary bond.
Sometimes you don't even have to tell Carly. She just looks at the scars, at how tired you must seem, kisses you and tastes chemicals instead of saliva. And she knows you're no longer completely human.
Carly humbles you because she doesn't even blink at this.
She does, however, go off on the Autobots for letting Daniel get hurt like that. Mothers, no matter the species, are scary.
When she tells you two days later that she's expecting, it's all you can do not to hold her close and cry because you suddenly realize that your wife and unborn child are human, mortal... and you and your son are not.
After over twenty years of friendship, you two can still surprise Bumblebee/GoldBug when seven months later Carly hands him a pink-wrapped bundle and tells him the baby's name is Melissa, in his honor.
Asking Autobots to be godparents for both of your kids may not be the best life insurance program out there... but damn it feels good to include your friends in the rites and rituals of human society.
Sometimes people will come back from the dead and you have another chance to say all the things you wish you had...
Most of the time they don't.
Author's Note: Been sitting on this one for a couple years; finally said screw it, did a bit of editing and rearranging, and decided to post. It's based on my hazy recollection of late G1 events. The "warphole blade" mentioned is actually a four-year-old Daniel (perhaps dangerously) mispronouncing "vorpal blade" from Carroll's poem Jabberwocky. He likes how it goes snicker-snack. "Melissa" (which means "bee" in Greek) was inspired by Spike and Carly having a second child in the Transformers Animated series, though in that series she was named either Jennifer or Nancy depending on what you take as canon source. Melissa (despite its similarity to Marisa, a canon character) made more sense to me for a G1 name. And I should really rewatch The Rebirth at some point and see how far off I am.
