Title: Reboot - Report
Author: akisawana
Disclaimer: Aerial Assault is my favorite episode of all time.
Characters: Skyfire, Seekers, Aerialbots.
Continuity: G1 cartoon/IDW fusion AU
Rating: After thirteen chapters, I think you ought to know about how appropriate for children this is.
Warnings: They go grocery shopping. How bad can it be?
Summary: Everyone's been turned human. Skyfire is shocked and awed. Silverbolt is significantly less impressed. Skywarp's waiting for it to get fun.
Note the first: I suppose at some point they should do human stuff, what with the human thing and all.
Note the second: Let's play Spot the Shout-Out! Winner gets, I don't know, imaginary Thin Mints? There are at least two here. Possibly three, depending on how you count.
Sadly, I do not have a pithy quote for this chapter.
The power was out when Skywarp came home with donuts and more coffee, but Thundercracker still hadn't come back from sitting around the medbay with Fireflight, so at least he wasn't complaining about the lack of television. On the other hand, that left him alone with Starscream and absolutely nothing to do.
Normally, that wouldn't be so bad, Starscream had one really good idea for every three terrible ones, except Starscream was sunk into his notebook again, sitting on the floor between his laptop and …something scientifical and indescribable, scratching out science or shopping lists or whatever else he kept in there. He'd looked up when Skywarp opened the door, but then he'd made the ancient Cybertronian warrior hand signal for "watch my stuff, I'm taking a nap," with two fingers and written Skywarp out of his mind completely before Skywarp had dropped the plastic bag on the counter. Maybe not completely completely because he wasn't doing the talking thing Thundercracker had mentioned, and Skywarp didn't know if he should be insulted or flattered that Screamer apparently thought he needed to be watched at all times. Probably flattered, and a little annoyed that now he couldn't entertain himself by dyeing Starscream's hair funny colors. He'd picked up some green Jello, that would have been interesting.
Skywarp threw himself on the couch, and dropped a donut next to Starscream. This was so slagging boring. "I'm bored."
"That's nice," Starscream said.
"Super bored."
"Go across the hall then."
"Don't wanna," Skywarp said –which was not a whine, whining required a pitch his vocalizer wasn't capable of reaching. "Don't feel like making nice."
Starscream didn't say anything, flipping back a few pages to tap his pen against underlined numbers. The power never went out all the way on the Nemesis, and even when only the backup backup generators were working, there was duty shifts and cassettes to superglue to the ceiling and triple-changers to teleport behind and shove down a flight of stairs and the option of leaving. Proper-leaving, not just across town. And he didn't have to be careful about scaring off babies that turned into a giant robot that could rip his tailfins off and shove them down his intakes. Okay, Menasor, but Starscream hadn't ordered him to make friends with the Stunticons.
"I'm really bored," Skywarp repeated, since Starscream clearly didn't understand his dire predicament. "I wanna go home."
Starscream ignored him, so Skywarp poked him.
"Go battle the one-eyed purple warrior or something," Starscream mumbled. "Busy with important stuff here."
"Isn't that what you're doing?" Skywarp asked, puzzled. He could almost grasp that somehow, pages upon pages of mathematics was fighting against Shockwave, but since that was totally a Starscream thing how was he supposed to help?
Starscream paused in his scribbling and twisted around. Satisfied with whatever he saw on Skywarp's face, he didn't say anything before returning to his utterly boring work, leaving Skywarp alone.
"I wanna go home," Skywarp said again.
"I'm working on it!" Starscream snapped. "Turning on a planet isn't like flicking a lightswitch."
"That's not what I mean and you know it." Skywarp rolled over and let his head hang off the side of the couch. "I wanna go home."
"I am quite sure I have no idea what you mean then," Starscream said, with the edge that meant he knew perfectly well what Skywarp meant but was giving Skywarp one last chance to not get screeched at. "Find some way to entertain yourself and stop whining."
"'M not whining," Skywarp mumbled. Starscream ignored him, and it didn't take too long before Skywarp was bored enough to find himself launching cartoon birds at green cartoon pigs and eating all the donuts. Even Starscream's, while his wingleader doodled in his notebook and pretended he was alone.
Thundercracker did come back eventually, and he'd brought Skywarp a bag of candy. Well, he had a bag of candy with him, and he'd left it in the pocket closest to Skywarp, so it worked out to the same. Starscream was ignoring Thundercracker so hard, it was a tangible force, strong and invisible like a re-entry shield, and Thundercracker was ignoring him right back with a stubbornness that nobody else could hope to match. "How'd the thing with Fireflight go?" Skywarp asked, when Thundercracker settled himself on the couch and their mutual refusal to acknowledge each other threatened to crush their poor, innocent wingmate.
Thundercracker shrugged; he'd pushed Skywarp around until Skywarp was laying in his lap. He'd tried to push Skywarp off the couch entirely, or at least upright, but Skywarp was having none of it. "You know how you get in the repair bay, and how fragging annoying that is?"
"I do not get like anything in the repair bay, and it is not nearly as annoying as you," Skywarp huffed.
"You are terrible in the repair bay." Thundercracker tugged on Skywarp's hair, not ungently. "You are the textbook terrible patient. They do case studies of your visits to teach new medics how to deal with difficult patients. You've been banned from repair bays before."
"I am a model patient and a joy to repair."
"You are the benchmark by which all other terrible patients are measured."
Skywarp folded his arms. "Well, some people are worse. Like, um, Thrust."
"Thrust may be worse, but they measure in milli-Skywarps. He's twice as bad as you, so he's two thousand milli-Skywarps. You are so legendarily horrible of a patient, they've named a unit of measure after you."
"That's pretty cool," Skywarp grinned. "They don't have milli-TCs, now, do they?"
"Yes they do," Starscream said from the floor. "It measures how likely a mech is to stick his nosecone where it isn't wanted." Apparently, while he wasn't going to acknowledge Thundercracker in the same room, he would at least admit that their wingmate existed, which put him one step closer to forgiveness than Thundercracker. Shiny Cybertron, Thrust never had to put up with this sort of slag. On the other hand, Thrust had to deal with being Thrust.
"So how many milli-Skywarps is Fireflight?" Skywarp asked.
"None. He's a model patient. You should take lessons."
"There is nothing an Aerialbot can teach me."
"Aside from how to make your phone play terrible music when someone calls," Starscream reminded him.
"That is a stupid human thing and I would have figured it out eventually except you want them to think I'm all helpless and junk. Which I'm not."
"Whatever you say."
Skywarp did not rise to the bait, because he was a better mech than Starscream. "So how bad is he hurt?"
Thundercracker shrugged. "Dunno. The medics didn't seem too worried; they sent him home to let his self-repair work."
"But…" Skywarp prompted.
"But he cracked a strut." Thundercracker touched Skywarp's wrist. "And it was weird. It was almost like it didn't hurt."
"So not all Autobots whine. We knew that."
"No," Thundercracker waved vaguely. "He wasn't pretending it didn't hurt. Fireflight just…didn't seem to mind or something."
Skywarp looked up at him. "You are making no sense. Again."
"Look," Thundercracker sighed, frustrated with Skywarp not getting it or his own inability to express it, "it hurt a lot, and it distracted him, but it didn't upset him. He was more worried about what Silverbolt was going to do to him."
"Silverbolt is scary." Skywarp nodded thoughtfully. "I could like him. I want to see him lose it on someone else, that would be awesome."
From the floor, Starscream made some weird noise.
"Do you really think Silverbolt's going to throw him out the airlock?" Skywarp continued.
"No, but…it was weird."
"Hey!" Skywarp sat up. "You're impressed! He was supposed to be all awed by you, and you were supposed to eat it up like energon goodies, and now you're impressed!" He waved the bag of candy at Thundercracker to make his point.
Thundercracker stole it back. "So? He's not a complete scatterhead like some people I could name."
Skywarp stopped, trying to parse everything wrong with that sentence. He failed. "Okay, one, do you know how many walls I've seen him walk into since we got here? Two, have you met Fireflight? Three, did you at least ask him about the boobs?"
"It's too early to ask him about the boobs."
"Well, you've taught him how to make coffee and rescued him from being abandoned wherever he was and sat with him in a medbay, so what else do you have to do before you think he'll say yes to the boobs?"
"It doesn't work like that!" Skywarp rolled his eyes and mouthed along to the next words that came out of Thundercracker's mouth. "There is not a magic number of nice things to do for people before they owe you boob-touching." Originally, it was wing-touching, but Skywarp guessed the substitution easily.
And it wasn't like Skywarp thought it did work like that. He just had enough of a grip on reality to know his odds of getting to touch Fireflight in what was, from his research, a sexual way without Thundercracker being involved somehow. Also without being set on fire, or zapped, or shot, or who knew what the other two had up their sleeves, but Thundercracker was really good at pacifying irate wingmates.
When he felt like it.
"Fine," Skywarp said, "when will it be time to ask the guy who's been staring at you for his entire life about boobs? Because there is no way he's letting me do it when he thinks he's got a chance with you."
"I don't know," Thundercracker said, looking down at the bag of candy and tearing it open. "Maybe not while I'm in the middle of doing him a favor?"
Like that hadn't been the perfect time. "You want to ask him about boobs," Skywarp guessed, from the way Thundercracker didn't look up at him. "But you don't want him to say no."
Thundercracker didn't confirm or deny it, but went for the distraction. "He said something else, too. Said the Protectobots were younger than the Aerialbots."
"That's not possible, though," Skywarp frowned. "Unless he meant they've got shorter uptime."
"No, he thought we didn't shoot Defensor for the same reason we didn't shoot Superion."
Nobody with enough processing power to put a name to a target shot Defensor, not after what Superion did to Dirge. A good quarter of the Decepticons didn't meet those requirements, but he had no point value, and with other, better, targets on the field few mechs would risk it without substantial gains. Or a fusion cannon pointed at them. Or the Stunticons, but there was something deeply wrong with those lunatics.
"I thought they had to have been in stasis." Skywarp poked the back of Starscream's head. "Didn't you say they had to have been in stasis because they had to have come from Vector Sigma before?"
Starscream tipped his head back. "I only said that to shut you up. They're a fusilateral quintrocombiner with full gestalt mind integration. Shockwave didn't finish kludging that up until after we woke up from our long nap."
"Huh?"
Starscream sighed. "You know how Menasor is more of a person than Bruticus? He does things on own?"
Skywarp screwed up his face as he tried to think about that. Normally he didn't pay a lick of attention to the gestalts, though, and while he could tell them apart, that was about all. The only thing he could think of was…"You mean like how Bruticus doesn't care what he's told to hit but Menasor hates Superion so much it's scary?"
Starscream smiled proudly. The smile was gone quicker than it came, but he did smile, Skywarp saw it. "Exactly. That has to do with how Vector Sigma created their sparks. Menasor has opinions about the Aerialbots, Defensor has opinions about squishes. What does Bruticus like? Nothing. He doesn't have the mental capacity."
"So because Defensor likes to help squishies, the Protectobots are sparklings." Not that the squishy-liking proved anything in and of itself, but it was a thing Defensor liked, much like Menasor liked punching Superion, and neither Devastator nor Bruticus liked anything enough to do it on their own initiative, so reality lined up with what Starscream was saying for once. Starscream was weird like that, could take something one mech said and something another mech did, and stick them together into a truth. Skywarp nodded in understanding, and then suddenly realized something important. "Wait, First Aid's a Protectobot!"
"And so..?" Starscream asked.
"I've held a gun to his head and threatened to shoot him." Skywarp buried his face in his hands, like Thundercracker did all the time. It didn't help. He'd threatened to kill a sparkling! He was supposed to be one of Megatron's Elite, he was supposed to have standards, and he'd taken a sparkling hostage! "You let me take a sparkling hostage!"
"If he's old enough to choose a side, he's old enough to get shot," Starscream said. "And whatever else you may say about Prime, he at least lets them choose for themselves." Which was kind of the exact opposite of what he'd said about the Aerialbots not having seen enough to make a truly informed decision, but then again he was a slagging hypocrite who'd done all sorts of nasty things to the Protectobots. Who were, apparently, sparklings, he was never so much as looking scary at them again. Except for the helicopter, because he was a jerk. But he was only going to look.
"You also told him every dirty joke you knew until they handed it over," Thundercracker reminded him.
Skywarp perked up at that. "I did, so at least he got some education out of it." And surely First Aid hadn't really been all that scared. They called him the stupid one, but not even Skywarp was dumb enough to kill one component of a gestalt when the other four were standing around watching, especially one who was as practiced at missing an arm as Defensor. First Aid must have known it was a bluff. And if First Aid hadn't been terrified, that was okay then. He hadn't threatened a sparkling, not really. He hadn't sunk to the Autobot's level. He hadn't.
"How is this my life?" Starscream asked the ground.
They were baffled. Utterly, completely baffled. Shockwave had beaten them.
The quantum wave had, somehow, shrunk their sparks. And when Powerglide had assumed root-mode, the extra energon dumped into his spark chamber had overwhelmed his spark to the point of extinguishment. Before they could even think about reversing the reformats, (which was difficult enough,) they had to reverse the spark-shrinkage. Somehow. Even though the new alts that didn't exactly have room for expanded spark chambers. To do otherwise was to risk death from a too-big frame.
But at their core, they were still machine covered by polyderma, not fully organic. This was still an alt-mode of a sort. There was a way to format themselves back into their proper bodies, even if it was a bit more complex than asking Teltraan I the way they had back when they first awoke. Science had reformatted them more than once, in some cases many more times, science would reformat them again. They just had to figure out how.
"Well," Wheeljack said, far too cheerful this early in the morning, "Shockwave had a lot more time than us to work on it."
Ratchet snorted into his mug. "He couldn't have been working on it that long. Menasor was the first to utilize spark-shifting in any context, and he has to be using a form of that."
Skyfire didn't understand all the talk about sparks; he was an explorer first, geologist and astrophysicist second. At this point, he was probably better at fighting than he was anything to do with sparks. Scientifically, anyways.
"It is unfortunate that we cannot inspect a miniaturized spark," Perceptor put in.
"Why not?"
Everybody turned and looked at Skyfire. "You can't just crack open someone's chest and look inside," Ratchet said, very patiently.
"Humans do it," Skyfire said. "I've seen videos." He left out the context of said videos; like so many things involving Air Raid, it had seemed like a good idea at the time but was impossible to explain later.
"You can't crack open someone's chest just to look inside," Perceptor clarified. "We'd never get clearance from the ethics committee."
Skyfire ceded the point with a nod; while he knew the Ark had an ad-hoc ethics committee, he didn't know who was on it. His own experiments hadn't needed review since he was a student, not with his specialties. Skyfire assumed, given some of the other things the committee had okayed, a routine human procedure wouldn't need more than perfunctory defense, but Perceptor, who had a far wider field of study than Skyfire, would have had that much more experience with them.
"You know what we could do," Ratchet said slowly. "We could program Teltraan I to reformat us into cassettes. Still small, but at least no longer organic."
"But we'd be rectangles," Wheejack protested. "Kinda hard to do…anything with no hands."
"Hoist and I can program it to swap root and alt mode. It won't be any harder than Defensor's torso was." From the looks the other two were giving him, Skyfire didn't think Defensor's torso had been easy. "It would be a step in the right direction, and for certain mechs, a great improvement on their mental state."
"I can help with that, unless you still need me, Percy?" Wheeljack said.
Perceptor shook his head. "I will continue to attempt to contact our colleagues on Cybertron, for whatever insight they can provide. I fear Shockwave's interference may make that a rather lengthy endeavor, though. Skyfire, are you having any more success with the extraneous chromosome?"
"I've learned all I can from the raw data," Skyfire said. "I think it might govern some sort of structural abnormality. Next I plan on splicing it into the zebrafish to see how it plays with other structures."
"At least somebody's making progress," Ratchet grumbled.
The power was still out when Skywarp stopped his daily shift of pretending to be human, and it was Thundercracker's first day of work, so he headed across the hall rather than spend another day bored out of his mind watching Starscream science. When Slingshot opened the door, Skywarp gave him his very best "please don't shoot me" smile.
"So this is a thing now," Slingshot asked, "the power is down and you show up?" He didn't wait for an answer, but he did let Skywarp in.
"I hope the power doesn't go out that often," the Seeker said. "What are you guys up to?"
Slingshot went back to clearing cans off the counter into a plastic bag, Skydive was peeking around the corner with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, and Fireflight was sitting on the couch. Skywarp sat next to him, waving to Skydive as he passed. Skydive returned the wave and retreated back to the bathroom.
"We're going grocery shopping," Fireflight said, not looking up from the shoe he was trying to tie one-handed.
"Here, lemme help." Skywarp took the laces from him, and let Fireflight put his foot in his lap. "How's your arm? TC told me what happened."
Fireflight shrugged. "It's not so bad, just really hard to only have one hand, you know?"
"I could tell you stories," Skywarp said, trying to figure out how to tie a shoe from the other direction. His stupid wet brain had completely blanked on how to make a knot. "He was totally impressed, though."
Fireflight flushed red. "Well, it's not like I'm used to this."
"Huh? No, not like that." Skywarp's processor jumped over to what red humans meant, then how Fireflight could be mad about what he'd said, and when it jumped back, it managed to pull up how to tie the laces. Upside-down, but it was better than staring stupidly at them. "No, he was sincerely impressed by how you were all not-hysterical."
"Oh."
Skywarp patted his foot, leaned down and picked up the other shoe. "Switch," he prompted.
Slingshot walked by as Fireflight smiled at him and said "Thank you."
"Do you really have to flirt with both of them?" Slingshot demanded, collecting the pyramid of cans from the desk.
"Well, yeah," Skywarp answered for Fireflight. "Flirting with Thundercracker is flirting with me by proxy, didn't you know that? Switch," he repeated.
"At least Starscream's not involved," Slingshot muttered, walking away.
Fireflight put his bare foot in Skywarp's lap, and hugged his other knee to his chest. "So I'm taking you out to lunch too?"
"If you want," Skywarp shrugged, slipping the shoe on Fireflight's foot. "Unless we're going to get you in trouble?"
"Oh, no," Fireflight rolled his eyes. "You are not going to believe me, but he approves of you."
Skywarp tied the laces. "You're right, I don't believe you."
"Well, he didn't say anything to you." Fireflight shrugged. "He didn't know about the proxy thing. I did, because I hear better than he does. And he's got this thing where he assumes everyone is a hot mess like he is so in his head, it made sense. And he knows that he's, um, sharp, so he…you look confused."
Skywarp grinned at him. "As long as we're on the same screen with the proxy thing, 'cause that'll save a lot of time." He patted Fireflight's foot and was rewarded with a brilliant smile.
"He really does like you though," Fireflight said, not taking his foot back.
"As long as he's not going to shoot me, I don't care if he likes me," Skywarp said, sliding his hand up just as far as Fireflight's knee. Even if the Aerialbot had never been a Seeker, surely he couldn't mistake it?
"I like you," Fireflight said, shyly, putting his hand over Skywarp's.
By the door, Slingshot dropped the bag of cans. Twice. "You guys coming or what?"
"Do you want to come with us?" Fireflight asked, standing up and offering a hand to Skywarp.
Skywarp took it, and stood up very close to Fireflight, close enough to feel the warmth of him. Fireflight was a few inches taller than him, he wasn't used to having to look up even that little bit. "We could let them go, and we could go…get lunch."
"They'll need help with all the bags if the elevator's still out, though." Fireflight stepped away, tugging Skywarp along. "Besides, I don't owe you lunch."
"Ah, but I helped you with your shoes," Skywarp said, ignoring the silent looks Skydive gave their hands. And how Slingshot tried to hand off the bag of cans to him.
"That is coffee, tops," Fireflight said. "Maybe coffee and a donut."
"Does this donut have sprinkles?"
Between breaking up the food fight that morning –not a real fight, just the regular cyberhorseplay that tended to occur when all five Aerialbots were in the same place at the same time without some sort of distraction- picking up a second car, and the time difference, Silverbolt didn't call Hot Spot until after his shift on Decepticon-watch. It was a bright day, warm but not too hot in the shade, and it reminded Silverbolt of the time when he and Hot Spot had sat outside, Hot Spot's back to his chest and his arms crossed over the fire truck, plugged together at the wrist and they'd 'faced slowly, sweetly, all afternoon long. And nobody had interrupted them, and nobody had said anything when they came in together, even though Hot Spot had still been glowing, and nobody had put the fear of Ratchet into their brothers to make it happen.
And then in the middle of a meal that was dangerously close to all ten of them getting along Blitzwing had stomped all over a Raiders game, but nothing was perfect. The Raiders had been having a good season, too.
Hot Spot answered the phone with, "So Streetwise convinced First Aid that the toad, being used to humans taking care of it for its entire life, would never survive in the wild. Now we have a pet toad."
Silverbolt laughed, for the first time in far too long. "Well, they say pets teach responsibility."
"Now they're arguing about putting crickets in the fridge. How are you?"
"I'm…okay," Silverbolt said. "Better than last night."
"I'm glad," Hot Spot said, and Silverbolt could hear the smile in his voice. "You can always call me."
"I will," Silverbolt promised, and that was the end of it. If Silverbolt wasn't quite a hundred percent ready to forgive Fireflight for that little stunt, or up to dealing with Air Raid's latest drama, he could at least fake it well enough until it was real. And Hot Spot knew that, had to know that after so long, but Hot Spot cared enough to spare Silverbolt's pride, and trusted Silverbolt to tell him if it was different.
So now Hot Spot would tell some completely ridiculous story about his brothers, and Silverbolt would, depending on the ridiculousness of the story, perhaps remind him of that first time they'd spent together in the shadow of the mountain without being interrupted, for as long as they wanted.
But Hot Spot wasn't saying anything, and after thirty seconds of silence, an eternity for the Protectobot leader, Silverbolt asked, "What did Slingshot do?"
Hot Spot hesitated, and then said, "How did you know it was Slingshot?"
Because it was always Slingshot. "Because he spent half the night hunched over his phone, even though the power was still out and he didn't have a way to charge it." Silverbolt had left the car charger with them, but he drew the line at driving in circles just to charge a phone.
"You know how Blades and Slingshot tell each other everything?"
"You mean when they're speaking to each other?" Silverbolt asked. Slingshot tried to keep his relationship with Blades private, something that he didn't have to share with his brothers, and as much as they tried to respect that, merging still meant Silverbolt knew far too much about what Blades like to get up to. And even without merging, whenever the right arms fought, the rest of the gestalts suffered for it.
It wouldn't be so bad, except both Superion and Defensor were right-handed. That made for a lot of fights, between two mechs who knew exactly how to make it hurt. "Wait, are they speaking to each other?"
"They haven't fought since First Aid got mugged," Hot Spot said. It wasn't that Silverbolt doubted Hot Spot, but it would have been nice to just know that, to know Slingshot would have kept him updated on the on-again off-again of his best friendship. It also would be nice if Fireflight didn't make poor choices and if Skydive made a friend who wasn't part of one gestalt or another, while Silverbolt was wishing for the impossible. "Blades didn't tell me this until this morning, I would have told you right away," Hot Spot continued, and his dancing around the subject gave Silverbolt a horrible falling feeling in his tanks, "and I'm not trying to get him in trouble, neither of us are, I want you to know this."
"Where did he hide the body?" Silverbolt said, hoping it was just a joke that fell terrible flat.
"What? No, there was no body, he didn't kill anybody. He told Blades that he told you he was fired because of the gun, but he also told Blades that he really got fired because he refused to take off his sunglasses."
"I suppose that makes more sense than Slingshot being irresponsible with a gun," Silverbolt sighed in relief. "I knew I could trust him."
"But he lied to you!"
"He got the important part right," Silverbolt said, "so it's okay."
Over the line, he could hear Hot Spot shaking his head. "I can't believe you're okay with him lying."
"Triage," Silverbolt said, wondering what was in the text Air Raid had sent. Hopefully he hadn't been arrested. "You taught me that. This isn't new, in fact, he told Blades the whole truth so that's actually an improvement." He'd tried to explain this to Hot Spot before, but Hot Spot never seemed to get it. "He's never quite been on speaking terms with the truth, and things haven't changed enough that it's not for the same reason. But Fireflight's hiding injuries and calling Seekers for help, which is new and not something we know how to work around."
"I guess that would be worse," Hot Spot said, though he didn't sound completely convinced. The Protectobots were all funny about the truth sometimes. Superion had said once it was because none of them had ever had a reason to lie, so they didn't understand why people did.
"And, honestly, it's harmless," Silverbolt said. "Like I said, triage." Triage, and tiredness, and at least Slingshot was talking to someone. Last night, he'd even agreed to join the jet-pile instead of dragging Air Raid off to the couch. Fireflight, on the other hand, had taken the missing link, and the authorization that Silverbolt should have never gotten for him, and twisted that into…Silverbolt wasn't even sure what, but he'd totaled a car. He could have died and he didn't even bother calling? That wasn't a scouting mission, that was hiding and he knew better. Slingshot at least had the decency to be ashamed of himself.
No, Silverbolt wasn't quite ready to forgive Fireflight yet.
The store was big, the parking lot big, bigger than any building Skywarp had been in yet except the airports. It was very near the store Starscream had made him work at, and from what the Aerialbots said, near where Air Raid worked as well. It was fairly crowded; Skydive ended up parking rather far from the door. "So this is where you guys do grocery shopping?" Skywarp asked, getting out of the car and stretching.
"Where do you get food?" Slingshot asked, his head in the trunk.
"Fast food, mostly. The one with the big number on the corner for coffee and stuff."
Fireflight frowned at him. "But, they don't have real food."
"They have coffee." Skywarp shrugged and grinned. "I give up. Why are you carrying around a bag of empty cans?"
"Doesn't he know about the deposit?" Skydive asked.
"Maybe they don't drink out of cans?" Slingshot suggested.
"Why would I know about their drinking habits?" Skydive wondered.
"Aren't you supposed to be watching them?"
"Am I supposed to be watching them more than you?"
Fireflight sighed and looked at Skywarp. "Do you know how long they can go on like this?"
"Sixteen hours, twelve minutes and eight seconds?" Skywarp guessed.
"How did you know that?" Slingshot demanded.
"Maybe he just got lucky?" Skydive speculated.
"Maybe he's a spy?"
"Do you two mind if we go start without you?" Fireflight asked. It was kind of funny, watching him twitch, and kind of weird; this was the closest to flustered Skywarp had ever seen him, and for no good reason.
"Where are they going?"
Pausing to wait for a car to pass, both Slingshot and Skydive grinned at Fireflight. "I really hate this game," he muttered. "They're going to go return the cans, they'll get ten cents back for each one."
"Bye, loser," Slingshot waved. Skydive passed a slip of paper –Skywarp assumed it was a shopping list- to Fireflight and followed him.
Skywarp blinked. "What was that?"
"That was a stupid game they play," Fireflight said, leading Skywarp towards a different door. "You answer a question with a question as long as you can. It's really stupid."
It sounded like an awesome way to torque someone's nosecone. "Yeah," Skywarp agreed, walking through the automatic doors, "sounds pretty…"
He stopped.
There was a pile of apples in front of him. A whole pile, taller than he was, and another behind it, and another behind that, and off to his left was a bank of cash registers but to his right was just stacks and stacks of food. Food just sitting there, no guards, no cages, no tethers, just lying out where anyone could pick it up and walk off with it. More vegetables than he'd seen in one place, he could just walk right up to it and pick up an apple or a banana or he didn't even know what that green thing was, but there was nothing stopping him from taking them all.
"Hey," Fireflight nudged him. "Hey, you okay?"
"There's a lot of food," Skywarp heard himself say, as if from a great distance. He needed to report this, or make sure it wasn't a hallucination or something.
"Yeah, this half's all food," Fireflight said, taking his hand and steering him away from the door. Half of this building was devoted to food? Skywarp had known that humans didn't have fuel shortages quite the same way as Cybertron's energon shortages, that Earth's problem was more distribution than supply, but this was the first time he'd actually seen it.
"There's a lot of food," Skywarp repeated, squeezing Fireflight's hand. He reminded himself that he was a Decepticon, a goddamn Seeker, and he didn't embarrass Starscream by standing around staring like some idiot who'd never seen a plant before. He could take one of those carts and put all the food in it and push it right out the door and nobody could stop him. There were no guards. No guards at all. Just a giant pile of unguarded food right by the door.
Fireflight brought one of those carts over to where Skywarp was standing. Right, he had come with the Aerialbots, who had very definite opinions about Decepticons resupplying themselves. Okay, he still had some of his allowance in his pocket. He could buy food, with money, and take it home, and eat it, and come back later and they would still have it. There were prices posted, and he wasn't up on how expensive food was compared to rent, but out of his allowance he could buy…a lot of apples. He could buy three apples and three bananas and three of those green things.
"Do you know," Skywarp shook his head. No, Fireflight didn't know, he remembered, and it was Thundercracker's job to tell him, not Skywarp's, thank Primus and Starscream for small favors. "Gimme a minute, I have to…just gimme a minute."
He took a picture, and texted it to his wingmates without a comment. He could just walk over and pick up an apple and eat it. Starscream texted him back and asked him to buy a potato. Thundercracker told him "I'm at work this is hard enough leave me alone ill look at it later."
Well, Starscream was an idiot and Thundercracker hadn't opened the attachment. Did they even have potatoes? Also, how hard a time was Thundercracker having that he'd forgot grammar?
"Are you sure you're okay?" Fireflight asked.
"Yeah," Skywarp said. "I'm supposed to bring back a potato."
"Okay." Fireflight smiled at him. "Those are…this way?"
There were four different kinds of potatoes; Skywarp grabbed one of each for Starscream, and three apples, and three of those green things, and something called a yam Fireflight said was good when microwaved. Skydive's list had apples on it, and onions, and a few other vegetables Skywarp couldn't match the names to. There must have been something wrong with the cart; it kept pulling itself towards the right and bumping into the displays. Or Skywarp's ankle. It reminded Skywarp of the time with Wildrider, except this time nobody was going to come beat someone half to death with his own arm.
Bread was next on the list, and on their way to that aisle, Fireflight stopped the cart. "I don't think they have any donuts with sprinkles."
There was a glass display case full of donuts in front of them, and it took Skywarp a second to remember. "Oh, hey, these have jelly." He found the waxed paper and took one.
"You are seriously buying him a donut?" Slingshot asked. "Seriously?" Skywarp did not jump. He was in no way surprised by two Aerialbots sneaking up on him. And he definitely didn't check to see if he'd been shot when he wasn't looking.
"Yes," Fireflight said, unconcerned by his brothers' sudden appearance. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Even for you, that's fast."
Fireflight smiled at him, and something about the way he tilted his head reminded Skywarp of Starscream receiving a comm. "You know the best thing about being gestalt?" he asked. "I get to learn from his mistakes, too."
Slingshot scowled, and for a moment Skywarp thought he was going to just punch somebody. He went as far as curling his hands into fists, before jerking the cart away from Fireflight and heading towards the bread.
Skydive said, "Take your time with the donut," and followed him, nearly running to catch up.
They disappeared around the corner, and Skywarp turned to Fireflight. "What the hell was that?"
Fireflight held out a small paper bag for Skywarp to drop the donut in, and shrugged. "Just 'cause he can't help being a jerk doesn't mean he gets to get away with it."
Skywarp folded the bag shut. He recognized history when he heard it, though he wouldn't have thought the babies had been online long enough to have history. "I thought you guys," he said, meaning Autobot gestalts in general, "were supposed to like each other and get along?"
He had the feeling Fireflight was making the effort to not laugh at him. "What does one have to do with the other?"
Skywarp spread his hands and shrugged. If he knew the answer to that, he wouldn't have to worry about his wingmates killing each other.
"Besides," Fireflight said, heading off in the direction the other two had gone, "he's jealous of me getting hurt."
"That doesn't make sense," Skywarp said, following Fireflight. They passed more aisles, more food just sitting out.
"Yesterday, he had a bad day, but mine was worse so I got all the attention and now he's all jealous."
"Okay," Skywarp said slowly. He caught a glimpse of Skydive going around the corner at the other end of the aisle and headed towards him. "Sure, that makes sense."
Fireflight followed. "He is as he was coded. Do you think the power will be back on soon?"
"I hope so," Skydive said. He had a faint frown on his face, like he was wishing for eye lasers.
"There was an electrician's truck in the parking lot earlier," Slingshot added. He didn't so much as look at Skywarp funny.
"How did you know it was an electrician?" Skywarp hadn't seen one, but he'd left before dawn.
"Because it said "electrician" on the side, geek." Slingshot rolled his eyes hard enough that everyone could tell, despite the sunglasses.
But that was it; Slingshot wouldn't take any bait Skywarp dangled for him, no matter how stupid the question. Skydive stepped on his foot once, when Skywarp volunteered to go drag Fireflight away from the candy display, but didn't say anything to Skywarp himself. Skywarp gathered that was just the quiet Aerialbot's way, and didn't mind. Maybe he'd throw Thundercracker at him, they could sit there and be quiet together, or maybe Skydive was smart enough for Starscream to talk to. Skywarp wasn't smart enough, and Thundercracker couldn't think sideways enough, and though Starscream generally found something else wrong with whoever Skywarp dug up to talk to him, that didn't mean Skywarp was going to stop trying. It wasn't healthy to not have friends outside the wing.
And while Skywarp would bet that at least three of the Aerialbots weren't going to hurt him, and one wasn't going to hurt Thundercracker, he had no such confidence about Starscream. Then again, Starscream seemed to still be busy with science –he'd given Skywarp another list of stuff to bring home and he was getting to the end of his notebook.
His musing were interrupted by Fireflight –Fireflight had kept nudging him along through the whole store, which somehow managed to not be annoying. Mostly because the Aerialbot was so earnest about it, not mocking at all. Skywarp suspected that Starscream secretly wanted to poach the Aerialbots entirely, and if they did, wow, Fireflight would be eaten alive.
Then again, he was really hard to shoot down and apparently really good at getting Slingshot to shut up, so maybe he'd be fine.
Also, Skywarp had kept getting distracted by the sheer variety of food. Not just more than one breakfast food, but more than one kind of cereal. And more than one brand of each flavor. There were more choices of tortilla chips than Skywarp could remember forms of energon. So it wasn't like Fireflight was asking out of the sun. "I'm still okay," he said.
"Did you need anything besides the potato?" Fireflight asked him. "Because we're done and they're in line."
"No, I'm good," Skywarp said, then remembered, "My stuff's all on the bottom. Lemme get it out."
Skydive waved him off. "Don't worry about it," he said. "We'll just put it all together and figure it out later."
Skywarp was going to argue about Autobot charity, or possibly thank him, but before he could decide, his phone went off. "I really hope that's not TC bugging out and shooting people," Skywarp said, poking open the message.
"call me," it read. "i is glad hearing yous alive. Astrotrain."
Notes the end: What, you really thought Starscream felt bad about shooting babies? Air Raid once arranged a "who can find the grossest Youtube video" contest that Skyfire ended up judging. First Aid won with the open-heart surgery one. "The one with the big number on the corner" is a Seven-Eleven, which is a convenience store, I don't know how common they are. The store they went to was a Meijers, which is kind of like a Wal*Mart except I've been inside. Extensive rewatching of G1 leads me to believe that "geek" is the worst insult in Transformers. Air Raid simply wanted Silverbolt to know he got a ride home from a coworker. I wasn't planning on making you wait six weeks to find that out.
Thank you for reading.