My readers are saints. There's just no other way to explain your patience as I rewrote this chapter at least three different times before I finally realized how it needed to go. And even though it's been ages since I posted anything and even more since I updated this story, there hasn't been a day someone hasn't read something of mine, so I just wanted to tell you all how grateful I am that you are all so amazing!
Now I just have to remember what I wanted to happen after this... o.o
Across Bounding Interstellar Waves
14 – The Shipyard – 14
Saving the femmebots from that slobbering buzzer-beast had been so much more fun then what the Old Programmer had told her to do, so she figured she would keep on doing it. It was a full time job too, seeing as how Pit-bent they were on killing themselves, so she'd been left with no choice – absolutely none! – but to ignore her programmer's directives and run away from her home computer entirely.
Besides, she wanted to see what else she could do that was fun.
Lots it turned out. She could run down wires like they were roads, could tamper with circuits and switches whenever she felt like it, and no one ever had to know it was her! She even accidentally triggered the air cooling unit after tripping over its code, leaving the sublevels of the Old Programmer's laboratory stuck in arctic temperatures. She'd escaped the base entirely while he was trying to fix it.
It'd taken her a few revolutions of the planet to find the shipyard where the bots were fussing over things. But it was so full of odds and ends for her to explore – labyrinths held in broken motherboards, exposed connections she could use to jump between machines, and severed pathways she could spend hours getting lost in – that she got a little distracted from her Objective. But today she would focus!
Oh, look! Guests!
"He released a what?"
And they were talking about her! How flattering.
She skipped over, running through rust-cluttered technology that had been abandoned in the Scrap Fields until she was slipping past the protective plating of something un-broken and spiraling up the circuits of what proved to be a very fancy hammer. Magnus Hammer, her coding picked up the identification tag as she settled in to eavesdrop properly. Can it be eavesdropping if they're talking about me? she idly wondered before tuning in to the conversation.
...
"Keep your volume level, Ultra Magnus, this is not information that needs to be shared at this point," Elita-One murmured, something like a warning ghosting down her spinal strut. She looked around but didn't see anyone standing close enough to listen in on their conversation, but her extra sense continued to hum a hazy warning that they were not alone.
"But an untested AI personality?" Ultra Magnus hissed in his reverberating voice. "Why would he just let it out?"
Elita kept one optic out as she nodded grimly, glad someone other than herself saw how outrageous this was. "He did not say, although he clearly expected her to return afterwards."
Ultra Magnus, optics burning fiercely out of stern faceplates, turned back to the miles of garbage, broken bits, and all around junk that had been tossed in the Elysium Scrap Fields before the war broke out. Elita-One spared a glance as well, taking in the valley of half rusted machinery falling down below them only to rise on the other side, leaving a wide valley to hide their ships in. Hasn't changed much, she thought. But then it wouldn't, would it? Who'd want to spend all their time slogging through this useless scrap?
"Hey look! A vintage warp core! It's practically new!"
Elita's optics slid to the bots surrounding Wheeljack. The knot of engineers stared at the hunkajunk reverentially, afraid to even touch it. Moonracer, shunted to the edge of the cluster, caught Elita's optics, rolled her own, and shook her head.
The femme commander gave a small smile. At least I'm not the only one bored out here. But as far as hiding in plain sight goes, this has worked out far better than I anticipated.
Ultra Magnus hadn't noticed her introspection. "I can't believe he would be so foolish..." he grumbled as he surveyed the hills for any signs of the Swarm. Their respective ships were perched below them, hidden from above by overhanging scrap metal. The Starlight was nearly invisible where she sat, her silver skin reflecting the surroundings like a mirror, but the Steelhaven – a Galatica-class battle cruiser that had been left here as a shell of its former self and far bigger to boot – stuck out beyond the edge, like a cyber-cat that had grown too big for its cave.
The big mech turned to her suddenly. "I know you are fond of the old mech, Elita-One, but perhaps it's better that he has decided to stay here. I am concerned he would cause...additional trouble in his semi-addled state if he accompanies us."
Elita-One flared her optics at him. "And you leave him here to starve for it?" she demanded.
Ultra Magnus had the gut-wiring to bark a laugh. "Like something as simple as energon deprivation could extinguish him. I have no doubt he'll do exactly what he says he'll do and somehow find a way inside Vector Sigma to wait for our return." His optics narrowed and he grumbled not quite loud enough she was meant to hear, "Probably by yakking at him until he lets him in just to mute him."
Elita felt herself smile at the edges of her mouth. She wondered if Ultra Magnus realized he believed in one of the most persistent pre-war rumors that Alpha Trion, in his tenure as Archivist of Cybertron, had discovered the secrets of the Thirteen hidden away in the Hall of Records, including the location of Cybertron's central processor, Vector Sigma.
"I still do not like the idea of leaving him, or anybot, here Magnus. Even ones as well prepared as Beta appears to be," Elita told him, her optics sliding to the energon stockpiles they'd transported here for the Starlight and Steelhaven. Bots carefully sorted the stock according to ship consumption and crew size. "I can't help but think he should have left with Optimus, since he understands Alpha Trion so much better, but we needed him here."
She trailed off, half consciously reaching for her shuttered sparkbond with Optimus, but stopped herself before she could open the floodgates. Memories still rose up, trying to swamp her – the hum of his spark, the depth of his voice, how he would still sort data alphabetically if he was stuck on some inner problem, even though he was no longer a data clerk – numerous of those little things no one else was in a position to really notice. She held them close for a klik, then locked them back down deep in her memory core where they would not get in the way of their immediate survival.
A small, persistent motion eventually jutted into her awareness and she looked up, only to see Ultra Magnus shifting uneasily between his stabilizing servos. Elita stared, briefly not believing her own optics, but no. The Wrecker Commander was fidgeting.
"Ultra Magnus?" she prompted, for a moment thinking he just felt uneasy about her retrospective, but the look he shot her was too uncomfortable just to be on her account, she thought.
Elita-One stepped closer so there was zero chance of them being overheard, although her warning sense continued to hum annoyingly in the back of her helm. "What is it?"
He looked at her and she leaned back. Her premonition mixed with shock at the fact that Ultra Magnus looked uncertain, making electricity snap down her limbs. She'd never seen him doubt himself as long as she'd known him. It was as unnerving as Alpha Trion telling her they'd have to leave without him.
Ultra Magnus stared at her, his optics unmoving. He obviously didn't want to tell her, but perhaps still thought she should know...?
"Magnus," she said more firmly, voice going even lower. "Tell me."
He looked back at the ships sitting in the valley of antique scrap. The knot of engineers had broken up, returning to their tasks. Sparks showered down to the ground to smolder as a squat mech welded the base of a turret to the underside of Steelhaven.
"It has nothing to do with our current circumstances," Ultra Magnus finally said in what she thought was meant to be reassurance. He fidgeted some more, his digits flexing on the handle of his war hammer as he looked down. "It is more...personal information."
"Personal?" Elita-One repeated in surprise. He'd never discussed anything personal with her, even after she had bonded with his brother. Sometimes she even forgot herself that she and Magnus were, technically, related themselves.
Not so difficult since he's probably never spoken of his relation to Optimus in his lifecycle, Elita thought as she frowned at him. He's more a commander-in-law than a brother-in-law. She tried not to rev a laugh, afraid it would put him off explaining.
Ultra Magnus grumbled something abrasive under his vents and scrubbed a hand across his mouth. "I am probably making a bigger deal out of it then it is. I was very young after all, prone to more flights of fancy than I am now-"
The urge to laugh doubled, and Elita had to hide it by making her engine cough. Stray sparks shot off the Magnus Hammer and they both twitched for their weapons before realizing what it was. Somewhere in the back of her mind though, Elita would have sworn she heard a femme laughing.
Ultra Magnus shook out his hand as he went on. "But the memory is set on a loop and I can't get it out of my central processor." He looked her up and down as if inspecting her, his faceplates returning to their usual grim arrangement. "Maybe you'll know better what to make of it."
Elita-One raised her optic ridges at him and waited.
He didn't remove his hand from his chin, but pressed a digit over his mouth as he thought. Finally he lowered it and said rather slowly, "Optimus, or I suppose I should say Orion Pax, didn't come out of the Well of AllSparks."
She frowned at him. "I don't understand."
The Wrecker Commander exhaled roughly and shuffled on his feet again. "Alpha Trion brought him to my guardian when he was a sparkling. I was barely more than a new spark myself, so the memory is corroded, but I remember he was already in his sparkling frame." His optic ridges formed a thick line over his optics. "He was filthy. Dirt ground into his joints and grease smeared across his face." He wiped a hand over his cheek under one optic without realizing, to show where. He stared out across the dips and swells of junk but didn't see them as he tried to pinpoint details in the early memory file.
"I remember it was late in the lunar cycle, and the adults talked for a very long time. Magnum, my guardian, kept pacing. I can never remember if he was afraid or furious, but it terrified the oil out of me. All I can remember him saying is, 'Of course I'll take him, but if you leave him now, he'll know and come kill him anyway.'"
"Kill him?" Elita's optics sparked brighter. "You mean, kill Orion? Who would want to?"
Magnus tilted his head, self-reproof appearing on his stern faceplates. "Yes. And I was too scared to find out. After that I ran and hid under my recharge berth," he murmured, sounding thoroughly disappointed in his youngling-self for acting his age. "When I came out again, Trion and the sparkling were gone. Magnum never said anything about them. Not even when he came home vorns later with the same sparkling, only cleaner, and told me Orion Pax was my new brother."
"Vorns later?" Elita repeated. "It couldn't have been the same sparkling. That's not possible."
Magnus stared her down. "It was."
Her ridges furrowed. Ultra Magnus' certainty was hard to fight. "But how? I mean, yes there are stasis tubes and medical cryostasis chambers, but to put a sparkling in either one..." She shook her head. "More likely it would kill him."
Magnus was silent a moment before reminding her, "If someone really was searching for him, it was probably the safer option."
Elita was still shaking her head. "When was this?" she asked a moment later.
Blue optics narrowed as the mech lined up his own life with overall history. "The Croniv Plague had broken out a short time before. I didn't want to get too close to the sparkling because I thought he had it." He held up a hand and made a face. "He was so dirty."
Elita-One felt her optics flare brightly. The Croniv Plague had appeared overnight before the appearance of Prima, killing more bots than any war they'd taken part in, until now. Sentinel Prime had always believed Cybertron had been exposed to the plague by organic trading partners, and it had fed his isolationist paranoia. But something Optimus had told her once stuck in her memory. How some historians believed the plague was actually a consequence of the Purge – a reference to the Fallen's return and slaughter of the offspring of his brothers. "Of course," he'd added, "if that's true then the Council conveniently left that out of the official records in an effort to rewrite history."
It was well before her time, of course. She would have thought well before Ultra Magnus' as well. But to remember all this he must only be a generation younger than Ratchet.
She gave Ultra Magnus a speculative look and a small smile. "You've aged well, Magnus."
He huffed a dry chuckle. "Looking to trade brothers?" he muttered.
She laughed without intending to. She'd never heard him make a joke before, at least not on purpose. His shoulder guards dropped an inch as some tension left his spinal strut. She realized he hadn't been certain of her reaction.
Honestly Elita wasn't sure she had reacted yet. Too much was changing in too little time, her personal universe being thoroughly and methodically chipped away into some new state. She hadn't had the chance to assimilate it all yet, much less discover what it all meant.
Elita looked down at the pink paint of her palm, then out at the piles of scrap metal that blended in with the rest of her ravaged planet. With Optimus already on her mind, the urge to reach for him grew stronger than before. She had to shutter her optics and make herself still to keep from unshuttering the sparkbond centered in her chassis.
"So what does this mean?" she asked a cycle later, her fingers curled into her palm. "That Optimus is older than he thinks? That someone out there is still after his head?" She shrugged. "It's not like that's new information at this point." Her optics narrowed as a memory struck her. "Could it have anything to do with why Alpha Trion pushed the Council to name Optimus as the next Prime?"
"I don't know," Ultra Magnus murmured. "I just- I thought with Alpha Trion keeping secrets, you should know he's keeping one more, but I don't pretend to know what it means."
Well, at least that's one mystery solved, Elita thought as Magnus fell silent and she looked down at the shipyard to try and find an answer to the mystery her sparkmate was quickly becoming. Magnus is too straightforward for secrets, or for any bot that keeps them out of habit.
Her optics narrowed further. And with Alpha Trion refusing to leave, she had less than an orn to weasel the answers out of the old mech.
She huffed through her vents. After our last conversation I have about as much chance of that happening as Shockwave turning off the net and waving us through with a smile.
Distracted as she was by her own thoughts, she didn't notice her hazy warning sense had disappeared in time to a string of sparks trailing down the side of the valley.
...
It was hotter down in the valley below, the wind stifled by the mountainous hills of abandoned junk the sentries were posted on. Even in the thick shade of the Starlight's underbelly the air was stifling, and Nautica swept a hand under her helm. Her cooling systems still hadn't recovered from her brush with dark energon and she felt on the verge of overheating.
The sting of sparks against her light armor kept her from stepping away from the heated bulk of the ship. Focus, focus, focus... She vented a hot sigh. A girl genius's work is never done.
She stepped back up on the hulk of a rusted out compressor housing to put her head and shoulders inside the square hatchway revealing the inner workings of the ship. Something was still sparking inside, but she couldn't pinpoint the source...
"Where's it coming from?" she grumbled as she tried to track the current leaping around the tight space, sprays of electricity momentarily blinding her when they impacted on her protective visor. "I turned off the power myself!"
Her only answer was an electric finger striking a weak spot in her collar.
"Frackin-!" She stumbled backwards off her compressor and landed on the ground. The world spun around her head and she felt her fuel tank roil as the electric charge shook her already downtrodden systems like a mini-con in the grip of a metrotitan. She just managed to twist onto her side before she lost her energon.
Nautica lay there, the high pitch of her cooling fans whining in her auditors. Maybe I'll just...lay here for awhile...
"Hey." A mech's voice spoke over her, nearer to her head then she remembered anyone being. "You okay there visor-girl? You want me to get Triage?"
She unshuttered her optics a crack and looked up. The world was still revolving, only now there were two faceplates circling her with it. "Huh-hunky-dory," she told the two identical gray-brown mechs circling her like rust vultures. She managed to clear her vocorder and shove herself up to her hands and knees. "As long as you keep your bad-tempered clutch of a medic away from me."
That got a chuckle out of him as the two mechs merged into one, and he shouldered his Wrecker-sized blaster to hold out a hand to her. She ignored it, only to stumble forward and nearly land nasal-plating first in a grease stain.
"Whoa, you really are out of it," the mech said as he caught her by the shoulder and heaved her upright before she could protest. "I hope you're not here for the heavy lifting."
"I'm the quantum mechanic," she mumbled as she braced herself against the hull and reached for her favorite wrench magnetized to her belt. The feel of it stabilized her somewhat, the divots along its grip more familiar to her than her own reflection.
She caught a faintly incredulous sound, which she put down to the fact she was weaving like an addict rather than her bubbly, youthful personality that so often threw the older generation off. Not that she felt too youthful at the moment. In fact she felt old, weighed down by...something.
Slowly she realized part of it was the mech's attention pinned to her back.
Nautica straightened up stubbornly. "Keep your optics on the perimeter Wrecker," she murmured as she fixed her attention on the Starlight. She widened and shrunk her irises a few times to bring her vision back into focus, but static still lingered at the edge of her sight. When she looked over her shoulder guard again, the young mech had a crooked smile on his faceplates as he leaned his blaster against his broad shoulder. He was still watching her.
Nautica ignored him, and ducked back beneath the underbelly of the sleek ship. The sparks had disappeared, ending the lightshow that had tried to fry her system, leaving the mess of crisscrossing wires and circuits dark. They still made far more sense to her than the mech's attention.
He spoke up a handful of cycles later. "So what's it feel like?"
Nautica paused in her work. She leaned down just enough to see if it was the same Wrecker and caught sight of gray-brown legs. She rolled her optics, then winced when it made the world spin. She straightened up and buried herself in her work. "What's what feel like?" she asked as she snapped a connector into place. There must still be some charge left in it because static bit at her digits and she shook them out with a strangled curse before popping them into her mouth.
The mech's voice was right next to her now, beneath the ship. "Being poisoned by the blood of Unicron," he asked in a low voice.
Nautica froze in spite of herself. Slowly, she leaned her head free of the ship's internal workings only to find the mech bending down a few feet away, one arm braced against the outer hull. He smiled at her. The expression felt out of place with the subject matter.
She made sure to lift her optic ridges over flat optics. "Don't be archaic," she told him. "It's dark energon. Just because it's purple and poisonous doesn't make it the blood of a so-called Unmaker." She scoffed.
That made his grin grow, but only on one side, turning his face lopsided. "Ah, a skeptic. My very favorite kind of combatant."
He rested the butt of his Wrecker-sized blaster rifle against the ground near his foot, then leaned an elbow on the outer lip, chin resting in his hand. Nautica rolled her optics. "Better a skeptic than a stubborn fool. Get out of here before I find out if I can fix this broken sensor board with your annoying circuits."
She swept a hand at him and nearly toppled out of the hatchway again. "Whoa there." He managed to snag her arm, digits slipping past her light armor to make contact with her overheated protoform. Maybe it was the work, or maybe just the remnants of the dark energon, but built-up electricity arced out of her arm and into his hand, shocking him as it raced up his arm.
The Wrecker shouted, letting go of Nautica's arm and she completed her slump to the ground in a lightheaded daze. The weight bearing down on her had evaporated fast enough that for a moment she didn't feel like she was connected to her own body.
The mech was still shaking out his hand when the two visions of him finally swum together again. He was watching her again, but now his face was perfectly serious. "So why'd they let a bot as dead on her feet as you off the circuit slab anyway?" he asked her.
Finally feeling stable enough to stand without wobbling, Nautica straightened up and stuck her head back in the hatchway, her voice coming out a little muffled. "Because geniuses never get bed rest."
His chuckle was overridden by Arcee's voice. "Val, why are you annoying the one femme that can save the rest of us? Go bug your own mechanic."
Val straightened up as Arcee joined them, a wry expression on her face as she looked at the Wrecker. It took Nautica a slow cycle to realize it was because they knew each other.
The Wrecker-mech held up his hands in surrender – How'd she do that? – his blaster tucked under one bulky arm. "All right, all right. Just trying to be friendly. Sheesh."
"Yeah, and we all know what kind of friends you're after at the moment." Arcee shoved his shoulder with a grin on her faceplates. "You might want to hurry back. Leadfoot's starting to pull out more parts than put in."
Val looked over his shoulder guard and cursed before leaping away, nearly tripping over his own legs as he shouted at the Wrecker tearing wires in haphazard fashion out of the Steelhaven's wing joint. Nautica shook her head at him, but the chuckle escaped anyway. "He's rather roguish," she told Arcee with a small shrug, "for a clown."
Arcee's mouth lifted in a smile. "Yeah well, I wouldn't get your hopes too high on that front." She shot her a significant look. "Someone else set her sights on him vorns ago."
Nautica frowned, wondering why she didn't just come out and give her a name...until she followed Arcee's pointed look behind her and saw Molly standing not far enough away, her arms crossed over her chest plates in a sulk. No doubt the younger femme had seen every sly look Val had shot Nautica's way.
"Kinda washy of him," Nautica murmured as she straightened up to keep the energon from pooling in her central processor, "admiring the sheen on my paint when he's already got someone."
Arcee raised an optic ridge at her. "Oh, please. It's only washy if they were actually together." She shrugged. "As things stand now, Val's just a lonesome flirt."
"Hmm," Nautica hummed as she craned her neck and went back to work on the frazzled sensor board. "That makes even less sense. If she wants him, she should actually have him. I mean, what's she waiting for, an invitation?"
Arcee's engine revved in a low chuckle. "Yeah, well, when she realizes what she wants, I'll send her one myself." Her faceplates sobered and she nodded at the open underbelly of the Starlight as Nautica shook her head. Social conventions never had made much sense to her. Maybe if someone had bothered to write them all down for her to study...?
"How's it coming anyway?" Arcee asked her, optics watching the high rim of the valley.
Nautica sunk her arm up to the shoulder joint into the ship, searching for the haywire power source that must have started the overload that had jumped from her to the Wrecker Val. "Something was acting up a cycle ago..." She searched another cycle, but the board was dead again. "But it looks like it's gone out. Must've been a stray current." But her frown didn't lighten.
"Is that all? That doesn't sound too bad." Arcee sounded optimistic.
Nautica snorted through her vents as she retracted her arm, then had to wait for the fuel that rose up her intake to sink back down again. "Guh-uh, no. The, um, the sensor board is busted, but that's easy enough to fix. The real problem is the stabilizer it fried on its way out," she said as she wiped grease off her arm, then passed the rag across her mouth.
"What's it stabilize?"
Nautica leaned her arms against the open ship so she could rest her forehead against them. "Our quantum engines. Without the stabilizer, they'll fluctuate endlessly, sending us from Primax to Uniend between spark beats and overtaxing us to the point we'd wish it was delirium."
Arcee frowned at her. "You wanna try that again?"
Nautica groaned and shuttered her optics. Why can't they just let me lay down? "Endless spirals of death and madness," she reiterated.
The frown etched deeper into Arcee's faceplates. "Can you fix it in time?"
Nautica forced her optics online. She washed her overheated systems in cool air and then vented it again before straightening up. "I'll have to. I'm tired of feeling like a burnt out toaster."
Arcee hiccupped a snort as she turned back to the landscape of garbage. "Tell me about it."
...
Her data stream shivered as she rode the broad shouldered young mech, trying to get rid of the foul air clinging to her. Dark energon. She remembered it very well from...well, from somewhere. Where wasn't as important as the fact that she remembered it. Obviously. And the stench was unmistakable.
She shook herself out and the mech she was clinging to scratched at his shoulder where she perched in his empty weapon's mount, using the unused targeting sensors to see where they were going next.
He was jogging with purpose, and the ride was bumpy, and it took her several strides to make sense of what was going on. There was another smaller mech still far off...oh, no, wait. He was just short. They were almost on top of him where he stood clawing things out of the big ship hanging over them and flinging them out behind him.
He could be fun... she thought, but she wasn't convinced. Random destruction, while entertaining, fizzled quickly. And hadn't she come down here for a reason anyway?
"What're you doing Leadfoot?" Val shouted at the older Wrecker. "You're supposed to be fixing the ship, not breaking the parts that still work!"
She missed the short mech's answer, caught up in her own data stream as she tried to figure out just what it was she'd forgotten. There had been something, hadn't there? Something important or had she just imagined that?
"Still work? This old timer isn't even a rust bucket! Look at this! Look at this!" The short mech shoved something greasy and oiled-stained under Val's nasal plating. I think it used to be a fan belt... "And that's just the start. Stripped gears, cracked lines, more rusted circuits then I got synapses-"
Val rolled his optics and snorted. "Like that's such a stretch," he grumbled.
Leadoot growled something and waved him off. They went on arguing, gesturing so broadly that she rocked in the shoulder mounting. But her attention was fixated on a memory she hadn't noticed before tickling at the recesses of her processor. There had been a reason she'd come here. Beyond just looking for something fun to do anyway.
"What do you mean no parts? We're surrounded by parts!" Val was saying.
The older mech huffed, his outer armor scraping against itself. "Parts of parts more like. Not even scraplets would touch this stuff. That's why it's still here!"
Yes...yes there had been something... A specific something she was supposed to do. Had she heard the Old Programmer talk about the ships? Was she one of the missing parts the ship-breaker needed? Oh! Why did Programmer have to mumble so much when he talked to me?
"Look, just- can you stop tearing things out? Before the Commander sees you if at all possible, because I'll tell you now – I'm not even going to try and explain that to him."
The mech's rude answer was entertaining, but all their yammering was making it difficult to think! What had she come down here for? Maybe it was time to move somewhere quieter...
Ah well, she was losing interest in the pair of them anyway. She gave up trying to think around their clamor and slipped up the mech's arm when he gestured above his head, and then jumped into the sleeping hulk of the half-shelled ship above them in a static burst. Something...something...
She was so distracted about what it was she had forgotten to do – and so terribly important it must be too to involve her at all! – that she didn't notice the femme crawling around the ship until she smacked right into her.
"Ouch!" the stranger cried as her data stream shocked already singed fingers. For a moment, she was juggled through the redundant safety protocols of the scuffed up sea-green armor she'd run into, too confused to think. It wasn't until she finally got herself sorted and realized who she was with now that she remembered.
Oh! Yes, you'll take me right to him. How convenient.
...
Leadfoot's clanging was even more obnoxious from inside the Steelhaven. Every little sound echoed. Only he doesn't exactly make little sounds. But then what did I expect from a guy named 'Leadfoot'?
Wheeljack leaned across the bridge's secondary control panel and toggled a switch. He sat back with a vent of warm air. "Still nothing," he grumbled as he scraped a palm across his helm.
"Did that one work?" Moonracer's voice sounded tinny behind him where she shouted from down the hall.
"No," Wheeljack shouted back. He slammed his elbow joints on the dash and held his head up. Maybe if he just stared at them long enough they'd work.
"How about now?" Moonracer shouted.
Wheeljack vented a sigh, then stood up enough to reach the switch. "No, not-Ah!"
"What? What is it?" There was the sound of metal slamming into metal and Moonracer's familiar, "Youch!"
Wheeljack was on his feet, circuits frazzling as he panicked. "It's on fire!"
"What!"
"I said it's on fire!"
"I heard what you said! That was a cry of exclamation! Whoa!"
The even more familiar thump of Moonracer falling to the floor came from behind him. Wheeljack spun around, for a nano klik forgetting his ship was currently trying to burn to the ground as he worried if the femme was all right. He stopped when he saw she wasn't sprawled out on the floor of the main corridor, but dangling from the tangle of wires she'd been crawling through for him a cycle ago. The thump had been her helm smacking the deck.
Both her optics were bright when she looked at him. Most likely no concussion, he thought as he ran forward and untangled her feet from the turbo rat's nest of wires.
She took her weight on her hands with a grunt and tumbled the rest of the way to the deck. "Thanks," she gasped, one hand on her head as she stood up. "I guess it wasn't a big fire. That's good." She sighed in relief.
Wheeljack went still. "What now?"
Moonracer's optics flared. "You forgot?" Wheeljack was already running around her. "How could you forget to put out a fire?" She paused. "And on the bridge! Oh!"
He heard her following close behind, but it didn't register as he slid to a stop in the open doorway and wildly looked around for the fire extinguisher. He didn't find it before Moonracer ran into his back.
They scrambled for an extinguisher, but the old junker didn't exactly conform with safety protocols. That's what they'd been in here testing.
"This is what Ultra Magnus gets for telling us to be thorough!" Wheeljack snarled behind his face mask as he finished going through the lower storage units only to come up empty.
"Oh, for the light of the AllSpark! Get over here!" Moonracer grabbed his arm and yanked him toward the blaze. He got out a strangled shout before she triggered the emergency extinguishers in his arm. Fire suppressant sprayed out in a white stream and smothered the small fire completely.
They stood there for a klik, their systems slowly returning to normal. "Well-" Moonracer reached up and flicked foam off her cheek with a finger, "-I guess someone's still having some memory issues."
Wheeljack looked down at himself to see he was no better. Foam had sprayed all down his chest. He brushed it away as he tallied up the damage done to the Steelhaven's controls. "Actually I've been forgetting about those things for decacycles. I'm pretty sure Ratchet installed them when I was in recharge."
Moonracer shot him a look that said that explained a lot, and then leaned over the dash and craned her neck to try and see what had burned. "Looks like it only left some scorch marks," she told him. "Now if only Ultra Magnus wasn't signing off on this thing, that would be good news."
The engineer coughed a grunt and realized he was staring at her hands as she prodded aside dangling wires. She had long, slender fingers that didn't quite match the bulky width of her cheery armor. His were stocky and powerful, useful enough for loosening stubborn bolts and getting a good grip on his tools, but not fine like hers.
"Well at least we won't have to deal with him for much longer," Moonracer was still talking. "I mean can you imagine being stuck in a tin can with him and his endless war on dirt for millions of years?"
She laughed, but Wheeljack didn't laugh with her. She turned around and saw his optics had turned faintly white around the edges above his mask. "What is it?"
She hadn't made the connection, Wheeljack realized. But then why should she? He'd been so caught up in the coming attack on the drone net it hadn't occurred to him he was even going to be flying on one of these wrecks-waiting-to-happen at all.
"I was...just imagining what he's going to do when I blow a hole in the side of the Steelhaven for the first time. Can't imagine that'll be a pleasant conversation."
The understanding came into her optics. "You had to be transferred to the Wreckers when Triage took you. I forgot about that."
"Well, I'd hate to think of the typo that would get me assigned to Elita-One." Very few of the femmes had survived Megatron's purge, and in the following years they had banded together to survive the ragged hole he'd cut out of them. They were a tightly welded unit – closer than chainmail – and their cohesion straddled the gray zone between unit and family that Wheeljack had noticed before in other Autobot sub-units.
I can't just up and join with Elita-One, and I'm not about to ask Moonracer to leave them. We could always ask for a special allowance, but they'd only go for if we- well, if we were- sparkmates.
His spark stuttered in his chest so hard it nearly stopped revolving. He cleared his vocorder in a gargle of static to cover the rev of his engine.
The sudden noise startled Moonracer and she jumped as she came back to herself. "I- I guess...I didn't quite think things all the way through," she murmured, waving a hand vaguely at the Steelhaven's interior. "Pretty stupid, when we're fixing this old clunker up, huh?"
Wheeljack caught himself starting to nod and quickly switched gears. "No, no, I, erm, well I didn't realize until now either."
She raised her optic ridges at him, a sly smile pulling at her face plates. "You only just realized you're not a femme?"
His optics fizzled into a flat blue. "Ha ha." He scraped a palm down the back of his neck showing beneath his helm. "I meant that, well, I never realized that we...have a deadline coming up, I guess."
Moonracer's teasing expression disappeared. "Deadline, huh?"
Wheeljack's engine stuttered as he realized how morbid that sounded given they were due to face Shockwave and his twin hoards of metal-eating doom and whatever other horrors he had hidden away in less than nine orbital cycles. It would be just my luck that turns into a literal phrase.
He slowed his pounding spark and managed to sputter, "Poor choice of words, Luna."
Her smile was watery and evaporated quickly. "Really poor," she told him, turning away and releasing one of the over-the-head panels, pulling it down to reveal a turbo-rat's nest of colored wires. Oh, and a nest of turbo-rats. Fun.
The sudden chaos of little blue-steel rats running every which way bought Wheeljack some time to think. We're in the same place, he thought as he stomped down hard in front of a hole to keep one of the rodents from disappearing into what was left of the electrical systems. For now anyway, but that's not going to last long and then what do we do? Go on virtual dates? Eck! Moonracer likes having things in arm's reach, and I'll just miss her more knowing it's all saved holograms. We won't even be able to speak in real time, more likely than not. But if it's all we'll get...I guess I'd rather have a hologram than nothing. And this is all assuming I survive my own plan, which is...not a clear certainty.
Wheeljack vented a deep sigh, too practical or pessimistic to tell himself that it was. He looked over at Moonracer, skinny, whip-like turbor-rat tails clutched in each fist as she repeated, "Ew, ew, ew, ew, ewww!" as she tossed them under a repurposed garbage bin and sat on it with a shudder.
If she thought I missed her before then-
He came up short, straightening where he stood. He...he had told her. Right?
"I think that's all of them," Moonracer's voice snapped him out of trying to remember. He looked up, optics bright. She had gotten back to her feet with her hands above the pouches of her belt and stood as far from the squeaking bin as she could get in the close quarters. There were so many rats trapped underneath it kept scooting sideways. "How many you think got away-"
"I missed you!"
The words popped out of his vocorder louder than he'd intended.
Moonracer froze down to her joints. She stared at him, clearly confused. "Huh?"
"I said," Wheeljack found himself repeating like an idiot, "that I missed you, Luna."
She jerked a thumb at the central corridor. "I was only ten yards away. Did one of those rodents bite you in the head?" she asked.
"No," he said before he actually thought about it. "At least I don't think so." He shook his head quickly. "That's not the point. I was talking about when I was...with Shockwave. I missed you then." He watched her closely, seeing the silver under her white faceplates, the way the blue light of her optics highlighted the gentle slope of her cheeks. "I wasn't sure if I told you that before."
Moonracer watched him for what felt like a long moment, and then she smiled at him, just a little. "You didn't."
Wheeljack would have found it funny that such a slight shift of her muscle cables could send him into a spiraling response of joy and panic, if he hadn't suddenly felt so painfully awkward.
"It's just- you affect me, Moonracer. Most of the time I don't even understand why because the catalysts are so randomized. You smile at me and my spark stutters, that one I understand – it's well documented at the very least by those terrible poets I never liked – but then there's everything else. Like...like you laugh so hard your engine tries to stall at things that aren't even funny, but I want to laugh anyway. Or I want to catch you when you trip just so it isn't odd that I'm holding onto you."
Yeesh, who was he, Bluestreak? But even knowing he was a running motor mouth, Wheeljack had trouble making himself stop.
"Well, you probably won't have to wait too long for that one," Moonracer murmured, her expression so blank it made Wheeljack nervous.
He smiled behind his facemask, wishing she could see even as he was glad it hid how red his face had turned. "I know we haven't had a lot of time together, that hoping for more only feels like begging for tragedy, and I know that distance is hard on everybot, no matter how it is they, they care about another, but I hope- or, or, or to say that is, I would really like if we-" Why was this so freakin' hard?!
Moonracer shut him up with a hand on his windshield and a static kiss that bypassed his mask and popped again his faceplates. Silence had never been so welcome.
She smiled softly at him when she leaned back, but didn't walk away. There was a pleasant buzz in the armor under her palm that Wheeljack had trouble paying attention to when she was looking up at him like that—like she understood exactly what words had eluded him.
Then Moonracer huffed a laugh and shook her head, one corner of her mouth rising higher than the other. "It's a good thing you affect me too, Wheeljack," she told him, and then her eyes turned teasing. "Otherwise I would have to dump you for that awkward verbal spill."
Wheeljack revved his engine in a snort. "Makes me wonder how Bluestreak can keep it up all the time," he said, feeling easier with her standing with him. He looked down at her hand, and put his over it, keeping Moonracer close. "And the...the deadline?" he asked quietly.
She shook her head. "I've missed every important deadline anyone has ever given me." Her silver optic ridges rose to her helm. "Why should I stop now?"
Wheeljack relaxed. He was sure his smile was so wide she could see the edges of it above his mask. "I admire your consistency," he told her, leaning down as the static charge between them built.
She freed her hand not long after and put a safer distance between them, her faceplates flushed and optics a dark blue at their centers. She pointed her first digit at him. "No more distractions, Jackie. We do have to answer to Promptimus Maximus after all and I'm not about to listen to his 'timeliness is only second to cleanliness even in a scrap yard' speech again because of you, thanks. I'm going to finish checking those link-ups. You get back to wiring that control board. And no more fires!" she called over her shoulder. He noticed there was an extra sway in her step.
"I can't promise anything," Wheeljack told her as she sauntered back down the central corridor. He scratched at his chest plates as he watched her go. Her touch had left behind that unprecedented buzzing in his chest and it was now traveling up his arm to his spinal strut, where it darted around the recesses of his cranium like a gleeful greasefly.
"Huh..." He revved his engine, relieved when the buzz dimmed until it was barely noticeable. "Wonder how long she's been able to do that to me?"
In the back of his mind, he almost swore he heard laughter.