Part Fourteen

Disclaimers in Part One

-Sidhe Chronicles-

"There he is again, staring at you," Julie deMarco said, slid her eyes sideways at Sally Vanderpool, and smiled.

It wasn't a nice smile, and Sally read it correctly as a challenge to her own leadership. "Stop scowling at him," she said. "I may have a use for Minigeek."

Julie and Madison Gentry laughed; the girls stood in a tight group on one corner of the recess area. Amy Mathers, not quite a solid part of the Mean Girls as yet, joined in only when she knew the laughter was...okay to join in with.

Sally had no such reservations. If anyone declared the laughter okay, that person would be her. She debated stopping it, decided it wasn't worth the trouble.

She nodded to Raf Esquivel, but turned back to her girlfriends. Minigeek took the hint, and went to the Geek Squad, his natural affiliation, diagonally across from Sally's group.

That day at lunch, Sally said to the other three while they were in line for food, "I'm going to eat with Minigeek."

"Oooh," said Julie. "Dean's going to be jealous."

Sally tossed her head. "Dean knows all about it. He thinks it's hilarious."

The other Mean Girls exchanged glances among themselves, Madison to Julie to Amy, in descending order of seniority. Sally, who didn't have to care, said, "Later," and took her tray to Minigeek's table.

Madison smiled like the sun had come up. "Trouble's on the way," she said, "for the little kid."

Amy had not learned yet to watch her mouth sufficiently. She said what she thought: "That's mean, Sally going to eat with him. He'll think she really likes him."

The other two exchanged glances. "Yeah, and what's wrong with that?" Julie said.

"He has feelings too," Amy said.

She turned back to her lunch and studiously ignored the other two. They rolled their eyes at each other, and chorused, "Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo."

Amy, a smart kid, realized that these girls were not all that much fun. It would be her last lunch with them. That she had shunned them was for the Mean Girls the beginning of the end, though none of them would realize this for a while yet.

Meanwhile, their leader was finding it hard going over at the geeks' table. Raf had immediately made room for her, and smiled; but he also had not terminated his part of a Sally-incomprehensible conversation. It required both hands to illustrate some concept Sally previously had not known existed, so he hadn't grabbed for her hand, either; while it would have pleased her, she would have evaded this connection. It didn't suit her plans to hold hands with a geek.

But Sally considered this implicit double-snub in the overall scheme of things. Her first impulse was always to wrap any boy around her little finger as tightly as possible, which was why her steady was not over here pounding Minigeek to a pulp. But this time, this one time, she had other fish to fry. She remained silent, only directing a smile at Raf whenever he looked at her, and not deigning to make eye contact with the other geeks at all.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

"Confound it!" Shad White exclaimed, as the unblinking blue screen of death stared back at him from his laptop screen.

Raf rubbed his eyes and looked up. "What's the matter, Shad?"

"It locked up again. Do you think you could take a look?"

The silence between them grew long, and Shad was about to say, "Never mind, I'll ask Chip" when Raf finally answered. "Would it be OK if I do that Saturday?"

Shad took a closer look at the smaller boy. There were dark circles under brown eyes in an otherwise pale face. "Sure, Raf, that would be fine. What are you doing there?"

"I just finished my essay for English."

"Why don't you relax and watch some TV or something? You look a little tired. I'm going to find another computer and finish my math homework."

Raf yawned. "OK, Shad."

Shad closed his laptop and went back to med-sci, where he found Chip Chase working on a screen of full of code. "Chip, do you have a minute?"

"Sure, Shad. Come on in and sit down."

Shad put his computer on the bench. "Do you think you might have time to see if you can get my laptop going again? I got the B-sod." By which he meant the aforementioned Blue Screen of Death.

"Yeah, should be able to," Chip said, eyes and mind still engaged with his code. "Did you reboot it?"

"Not yet."

"Take the battery out and let it sit for ninety seconds, then put the battery back in and see what happens."

"Yes, sir."

"Thought Raf was working on it?"

Shad's own hands were busy for a moment, then he said, "He usually helps me, sir, but I'm a little worried about him. He seems really tired, and he asked if it was OK if he did it Saturday. He knows I need it for school the rest of the week, and it's...it's not like him to forget something like that, sir. And usually, he jumps right on any work with computers. Once before he told me he couldn't get to it in time, so I should take it to someone else; but that time, he didn't forget that I needed it for school."

Chip glanced at the teen. "Tell you what, I'll mention it to his uncle. If he's stressed to the point where he's slipping, something needs to give."

"That's probably the best thing. Thanks, sir."

Shad was occupied with the computer for the time it took to narrow the problem down to some new software that was creating a conflict. Chip was busy with his own duties, but whenever Shad got stuck, he was always happy to give him a little advice or some quick instruction in something Shad hadn't learned yet. Shad located and disabled the offending program, thanked Chip, and left the engineer to his work.

The next time Chip took a break, he found Raf asleep in the teenagers' hangout, occupying half the sofa. He rolled off to find Fig, who proved to be performing some kind of equipment inspection which involved the very belly of the beast: only his boots were visible.

"Hey, Fig?" he said, and wheeled to a stop beside the machine under inspection.

"Hola," Fig said, rolling out from under and sitting up on his transport. "What's up?"

"I'm a little worried about Raf," Chip said. "A friend of his said Raf asked if he could help the friend with a computer problem on Saturday, instead of today. Probably don't have to tell you that's not like Raf. I had a look at him, and he's sound asleep on the sofa in the teenager's hangout. 'Course, it might not be anything, but I thought I'd give you a heads up."

Fig stood and craned his neck to take a long look at his nephew. "You're right, that isn't like him. I'll ask Ratchet to run a scan, see if he needs some vitamins or something. Thanks."

"No problem," Chip said, and rolled back to his recalcitrant code.

When Fig got off duty, he stuck his head in Ratchet's office. "May I have a moment, Ratchet?"

Optimus Prime's Chief Medical Officer raised a helm that was more than half Fig's height. "Certainly, Fig. What do you need?"

Fig sighed. "I'm a little concerned about my nephew, Raf. He declined to be involved with a computer problem earlier today, and that's not like him. Then he fell asleep watching TV and he's still napping out there. I have to wake him up and take him home to dinner. That's not like him either: he's usually going a mile a minute from first thing in the morning until lights out."

Ratchet scowled, realized his shift was over and he could do exactly as he pleased, and metaphorically looked at the pile of Pretender's exams still metaphorically on his desk. Decision made, he said, "I'll go out with you and run a few preliminary scans. But you probably know better than I do that human sparklings change so quickly from one day to the next that sometimes they need to let their bodies catch up to their growth. Both our species do that in recharge."

Fig said, "Yeah, that and they give kids so much homework any more that they're living on energy drinks younger and younger. Even a pint-size genius like Raf needs some downtime now and then to just be a little kid." He sighed, and put his hands into his pockets.

"Yes," said Ratchet, signing out of the computer, "because the child's neurological structures at that age are far from adult, even after a child reaches adult-seeming bodily development. They need good quality rest and some downtime, just as you say, for connections within the processor, brain, rather, to form properly. —I'll take a look at Raf."

"Thank you, Ratchet."

"You're quite welcome." The medic stood, which made him almost five times Jorge Figueroa's height. "Are you going to get him now?"

"Yeah. I'm just off-shift."

Ratchet put away his data pads and strolled through the commons, walking slowly to pace Fig. When the Ranger knelt by Raf's sofa and touched his shoulder, the Autobot medic scanned the boy.

Raf yawned himself awake, smiled at his uncle, and poked his feet back into his shoes—Miko routinely had a cow about people's dirty shoes being where she had to sit, so shoes on the couches were verboten. Then the boy's attention shifted to the Giant Alien Robot. "Why are you looking at me like that, Ratchet?"

"Your uncle was a little concerned about you, so he asked me to run a scan," Ratchet said. "That's all."

The child tilted his head and put the glasses he'd stuck in his shirt pocket back on. "Oh. Am I sick or something?"

"No. There are no unexpected populations of microorganisms in any of your systems. You do have elevated stress hormones, and chemical signatures consistent with physical exhaustion. To put it plainly, you're worrying too much, and you need more rest. Also, your serotonin levels are a little low, but your people have medications for that. I will notify Dr. Parker of the test results, no doubt she will prescribe something for you tomorrow."

Raf smiled, which lit up his face. "Thanks, Ratchet! That's a lot better than going to a lab and getting stuck for blood tests!"

"Hmph. I should think so." Ratchet might actually have smiled at his small patient; this rumor was never substantiated, however. "Go home, eat a good dinner, get some sleep."

"Yes, sir," Raf said, and Fig found himself wanting to echo the boy. He settled for a dignified nod, and another, "Thank you, Ratchet."

Ratchet settled for another "Hmph."

-Sidhe Chronicles-

"It's about to get good," Sally said, later the next day. "The dance is coming up, and I've done exactly what I wanted to."

"What do you mean?" said Maddy.

"Look at the doorway to the science quad."

Raf Esquivel stood foursquare in that doorway, accepting the buffets as other, larger students crowded around him, neither minding nor moving. His eyes were fixed on Sally, who ignored him.

The other two turned back to her and laughed, and Sally did too. Then, most natural thing in the world, she "happened" to look up at Raf, smiled at him, and rose from her seat, tray in hand. "I'll tell you how it went later," she said, and left to meet a young boy with his heart in his eyes.

Sally had a heart too, but kept it carefully out of the transaction.

When she met her cohort again in gym class, she smiled at all of them, said, "Hook, line, and sinker."

Maddy said, "He thinks he's taking you to the dance."

Sally smiled. "He knows he's taking me to the dance."

-Sidhe Chronicles-

Borealis' days had settled into a comfortable rhythm since she arrived at Mission City. That comfort, however, was not enough to fill the hole in her spark.

She missed being in a trine: less "missed," actually, than "yearned after on a spark-and-coding level." As she booted up, she searched for her links to Skyquake and Dreadwing, and until she fully wakened, felt disorientation when they weren't there.

That wasn't changing as fast as she hoped it would. She didn't want them back, did not wish to reinstate the bond. But she was a Seeker, not sparked to be alone.

These days, as she wakened, her sparklings did too, and those bonds grew stronger every day.

At first, it had been little more than a ping and response. Carrier was there, all was well. But as they developed, more started to come through the bond. They slept and wakened, they shifted position inside their eggs, they constantly needed reassurance that carrier was paying attention to them. They got hungry: the largest more so all the time.

Ratchet had said that was an early sign that he—the largest was a mech—was nearly ready to separate. While that was good to know, as it meant she wouldn't be as miserably egg-heavy as she was much longer, her little mechling's readiness had activated the section of her carrier coding regarding a nest.

Developing eggs required a supply of energon and temperature regulation, both supplied by the nest. Her coding held the schematics for it, and she had been gathering materials for several days. Today it was time to start.

Under ordinary circumstances, though, no carrier would be this egg-heavy: Borealis had been having trouble moving properly for some time. That was going to complicate her task tremendously.

Further, she and her trinemates would have shared the carrying and other duties, again under ordinary circumstances, both before and after separation. Many servos make light work.

One day, Borealis was going to see Strika regret the trouble she had caused. But...if the hatchlings were all healthy, she would let Strika live. If not for the would-be warlord, the small Seeker would not have her brood; therefore, much could be—well, if not forgiven, at least overlooked. Though if any harm came to her little ones, Borealis thought, both Strika's reign and her life would be short.

For Borealis, getting out of berth in the morning had become a production, not an instinctive, easy movement. She had to carefully fold in the wing on the side she wanted to roll toward, then push with the other wing until she could reach the edge of the berth, and use her arms to pull herself to the edge. Then she could swing her legs off the side, and use the resulting momentum to push herself carefully into a sitting position.

From there she had to rise slowly, allowing her navigational systems a moment to adjust to the nightly changes in her mass and center of gravity as the sparklings grew and shifted.

This morning, once she was sure of her balance, she went to the large transparent sliding door that gave onto the central common area with its seats and cactus garden surrounding the central air vent. Along one wall, a ramp led up to the sky, clear and chill this morning.

Borealis had moved in before the level was fully finished. There were enough apartments here for all the fliers on base to have their own, eventually, though all save her own were empty.

Barricade and Flareup had been here yesterday working on what would become their apartment. They would be in residence, the Tiny Trine their reason for moving, within the orn.

Would the Aerialbots live here eventually? Borealis was not quite sure what to make of them. Younger cousins, perhaps, just barely old enough not to be nuisances. For now, though, they were happy with quarters aboard Excellion.

She walked up the ramp to the clifftop and stepped off, falling only a few feet before her heel thrusters caught her, and drifted easily over to the cityformer's landing pad. He sent a glyph of greeting as he opened the hatch for her.

"Good morning, Excellion!" she replied.

"How are you today?"

"Heavy," she sighed. "The healers will separate my first egg soon."

"May I ask if that one will hatch before the others?"

"Certainly, but I will have to disappoint you. He still has to continue developing in the egg for a long while yet. But once separated he will have room to do so, and he won't crowd his siblings. I think that one is Dreadwing's, and he could very well have inherited his size from his sire."

"Can you tell which one is yours, and which Strika's?"

"Not yet. The smaller ones both have more of my coding than their other genitors'," she said, and to Excellion's amusement, preened a bit over that information. "The medics will be able to tell me more when they separate the first one."

"I see.—Perceptor is waiting for you this morning."

"Thank you. Good joor, Excellion."

"Good joor, Borealis."

She walked sedately, which was now her standard gait, through Excellion's halls, and once at the medbay door sent it a glyph. It slid aside to reveal Perceptor as well as Jazz' apprentice Sapphire, who was studying with the tiny healer this morning.

A loud clank from her midsection stopped her in her tracks. Optics bright, she put her hand to her plating. "Did you hear that? He kicked! He actually kicked!"

Borealis' excitement was contagious. "Let's get a scan!" Perceptor said, rubbing three of his servos together as he stood on the back two and indicated the scan booth with the sixth, his gossamer wings conveying extreme interest.

It was a fact of Cybertronian life that she had more language in common with this tiny Seekerkin than with grounder bots closer to her own size and configuration. Among the grounders, only Praxians still maintained the language of the air with their doorwings.

She had not been rude enough to ask if Perceptor's wings were vestigial. But it was true that until Borealis had seen him take short hops to reach surfaces designed for larger bots, or glide to the ground, she would not have thought anything so delicate capable of generating the necessary lift.

By now, she was very familiar with the scan booth. She stepped inside and raised her arms and wings, then when she was stable, nodded to the healer. Perceptor started the scan and all three watched the three-dimensional image form.

Sapphire said, "Oh, look, the littlest one's wing buds have formed since the last scan I saw!"

Borealis demanded, "Where? I can't see!"

Perceptor grinned widely as he indicated the smallest sparkling's backstrut, then pointed out the embryonic flight array. Sapphire followed his gesture with her own optics as bright as Borealis'.

"Oh. Oh my. What about the middle one? I haven't felt hir move yet, and zhe hasn't indicated hir preferred gender either."

"Zhe hasn't reached that level of development yet. I suspect that zhe will be a larger bot, but hir development is delayed due to hir brother's rapid growth. Once he is delivered, freeing more resources for hir, zhe will catch up very quickly."

"So that one is probably Strika's creation? Is zhe showing any signs of being a triple-changer? How would that affect hir development? I don't really know anything about triple-changer sparklings."

Both Sapphire and Perceptor peered intently at the display. "There isn't enough detail in the embryonic t-cog array yet to tell," the microscope, whose experience was far greater than that of the apprentice, said, turning back to Borealis. "Perhaps, if hir third form affects hir root mode, we may start to see indications of that in the protoform. Some triple-changers never discover the talent until well into their adult phase, though. Or, theoretically, at all. If their root and primary alt modes are very well suited to their function in life, they might never have occasion to discover the third mode." Perceptor glanced at Jazz' apprentice. "We are nothing as a species if not diverse. No matter how well we understand our frames, I think Primus will always have a few surprises for us."

"But zhe is healthy?"

"All of you are fine," Perceptor said, with precisely sufficient firmness to reassure a carrier. "I'm going to consult with Ratchet, but I'm fairly certain that we are going to be delivering your little mechling within the orn. How long will it take you to construct your nest?"

"Not long, but I need help," she said.

"I'll have someone assigned. Shall I just tell them to go on up?" The tiny healer smiled, sharing Borealis' own excitement, as he put the scanning equipment to rights.

"Please do. I'm going to get started on it right away."

-Sidhe Chronicles-

The Wreckers joined the Tractorbots and Excellion's work crews in gathering around an energon dispenser, checking the assignment board, gossiping, sniping verbally at one another, and collecting work tickets for the day.

Perceptor's request arrived at about the same time the last of them sauntered in; the latecomer happened to be Leadfoot. Roadbuster, as clan leader, assigned the requests; he handed that slip to Tracer, a bot from Excellion.

But then Hot Rod spoke up. "Let me do that one, OK?"

The room filled with hoots and catcalls. Leadfoot grinned from audial to audial. "She's way outta your league, kid!"

Rodi felt the teachings Optimus had given him kick in. "She might be, but I'll hear that from her before I believe it."

"OOOoooOOOoo," said several different species of sarcasm, all of them backed with real affection for this kid.

This kid who, not too far beyond his own sparklinghood, sat next to the bottom in the Wrecker's hierarchy, and was the youngest within it. But it was he among them who would someday become a leader of his people.

OOOoooOOOooo, the Wreckers might have replied, in unison. But they also, to a bot, would have died under torture before they told anybot how proud they were that this one of theirs was a Prime candidate.

Roadie looked at the ticket's original owner, and raised a questioning browplate. Tracer smirked and nodded. "Far be it from me to stand in the way of true luuuurve."

It took that to set Hot Rod's faceplates aflame to match his paint job, but he nodded his thanks to Tracer, and accepted the ticket.

-Sidhe Chronicles-

By the time Hot Rod arrived at Borealis' door, Borealis was already tired. Arcee, who had been helping her accumulate and sort materials, got up to answer the door.

Borealis remained in what Ratchet, without hesitation, would have labeled a "nesting fugue," picking over the materials, discarding this and saving that, according to some internal principles known only to her. She wasn't really paying much attention when suddenly her space was filled with a Wrecker. It took only one to do that, which several other bots on base could attest to.

"Good joor," Rodi said, with his easy grin. "I'm here to help you build a nest."

"Oh." Borealis blinked at him. "I really didn't think..." that they'd send a Prime candidate.

Rodi said, stiffly, "Look, if I make you uncomfortable, someone else can do it."

"Oh no, it's not that," Borealis said, and Arcee smiled and half-turned away, keeping both audials pinned on the action, just as Rodi glanced at her. "I'm happy to have your help. I just—I thought I'd have a day or two more to potter. But no, this is best."

Rodi's cables lost some tension. "Do you have plans for me to work from?"

"They're just sketches, really," Borealis said, and sent him the file.

But looking through them, Rodi realized they were far more than sketches. He would not learn this for some time yet, but Seeker and Wrecker coding both derived from the same lines of base coding. That commonality meant that Borealis' "sketches" made all kinds of sense to him. He even understood the need for temperature and airflow regulation. Almost.

"What temperatures do the little ones need to be kept at?" he asked, and she told him in depth and in detail.

"All right. How about airflow? And the energon supply has to be matched to their absorption rate, right?"

"How did you know that?" Borealis said, tilting her helm up to him from her chair.

"Uh, well, the flow rates are modified by the 'variable' glyph, but everything else is constant. So the eggs have to be supplying that variable," said Rodi, who over his few vorn had seen his share of plans.

Borealis smiled. "That's exactly right. Who else have you done this for, Rodi? What other Seekers?"

"Uh, well, none. By the time I was old enough to apprentice, the war was pretty well underway, and all the Seekers had followed Starscream to Megatron." He sent Arcee a list of supplies. "Can you get these, Arcee, or would you like help?"

"Oh, sure," Arcee said, "not a problem. Look, will you set up pings for Borealis' meds for yourself? If that's all right with you, Borealis? I might not get back in time."

The gravid Seeker nodded.

Arcee went on, "You never know with quartermasters. Sometimes," she said, wrinkling up her olfactor plates, "they want to talk."

Rodi laughed. "Sometimes, they do. If you can get the first page's worth of supplies here, I can start today, and then finish tomorrow."

"Do my best," Arcee said, and shut the door carefully behind her.

If she did this right, she thought, she could make three trips to the quartermaster, and if that didn't give those two time enough for some serious talk, she would...she didn't know.

Well, she wouldn't, probably. It was Arcee's hope that Borealis would settle into a full life at Mission City, and that Rodi was interested, had been since she landed, she viewed as very positive. She wanted Borealis here, and happy. She felt herself to be on the side of the young Seeker.

Yes, Arcee thought with satisfaction, Rodi was shaping up very nicely. And that he was a Prime candidate was icing on the cake. If a Prime Consort were one day this Seeker, that could go a very, very long way toward healing the rift between the Primes and the Seekers which Starscream had torn open with his very own talons.

And that, of course, the soldier part of her added, would mean that Prime's forces were strengthened in the air. Nothing against the Aerialbots, of course, but they were only five in number. It would be many vorn before the Tiny Trine were ready to even think about fighting.

Arcee transformed and sped away in the direction of the quartermasters, her life about as full of metaphorical energon goodies as it could hold.

End Part Fourteen