The rec room was abuzz, almost literally. Comm activity was a near-palpable tingle on everyone's receptors whether one was on a channel or not, and the low hum of multiple vocalizers all conversing in several separate and serious conversations made the normally casual room feel more like the old Senate floor just before a debate.
"— milk us for every drop of energon they can and then when they get bored with that, they're just gonna go 'nuts an' bolts to this' and start shooting again." Cliffjumper waved his mostly-empty cube to punctuate his point. "This happens every time there's a ceasefire, and every mechanism on the planet knows it. It's Decepticon for 'extort the Autobots'."
Smokescreen, leaning back in his seat and absently rubbing little circles on his abdominal plating, gave Cliffjumper a look. "Aren't we kind of ignoring the dweller in the room? The fact that no more Vector Sigma means no more new mechs?"
"Whady'a call the bitty chassis you've got forging in your middle, then, Smokey? You reformat into a symbiote carrier when we weren't looking?" Windcharger tapped his own for emphasis, then paused and frowned downward. "Hey, settle down in there."
"I just don't know." Smokescreen shrugged. "I see what Prime is saying, but... we're growing new people like the humans do? I mean, I kind of wanted to be a mentor someday, but this is just too weird."
Inferno pulled his energon ration and glanced around the room. He'd just come from having Hoist do a quick check just in case (chamber still empty, and he wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved) and he knew this was Red Alert's usual time to come to the rec room. The security chief was absent, however.
/Whoever requested Wolf Rilla's charming classic film Village of the Damned for tonight's movie night—/ As if on cue, Red Alert's voice over general comm told Inferno he was holed up in the security center. /— I would like to thank you for entry number five on the list of banned movies and for your utter lack of sensitivity towards our situation./
Cliffjumper laughed. "Oh, come on! That was funny!"
"Somewhere there's a bridge missing its troll," Windcharger muttered, whacking Cliffjumper in the back of the helm as he got up.
With a sigh of vents Inferno drew another cube, stashed them in subspace, and left the rec room. There was a nanoscopically fine line between Sarcastic Red Alert and Panicking Red Alert, and the chief was sounding a little sharper than usual. Probably hadn't emerged from his den of vidscreens in a while. Inferno was relieved when the security office door opened to him without delay. He was on the very short list of mechs Red Alert allowed to just walk right in with impunity; if he'd been unable to enter, Inferno knew that things were really bad.
"Brought you a cube, Red." Inferno came up beside Red's platform and nudged his arm with the energon. "Off your schedule today."
Red Alert took the cube without looking away from his ever-changing bank of security feeds. "Yes, well. The clockwork's well and truly gummed up. Thank you, Inferno."
"Probably should take a break," Inferno prodded gently. "Teletraan and the 'Bots at the helm can keep an optic on things for a bit."
"Ceasefire protocol to establish, negotiations to fine-tune, security measures to revise— did you know that jumped-up hack artist Hook is going to be here? Access strictly limited, of course, but here. Medical information exchange, my shiniest axle."
Inferno nudged Red more firmly. "C'mon, at least cycle down for an hour or two, while things are still hanging. You're getting all anxious... might not be good for the lil' bit."
Red Alert fixed him with a sidelong glare. "The 'lil' bit'. You really think Prime's right about this?"
"Well, yeah," Inferno shrugged, half-grinning. "Ain't steered us wrong yet. Actually kind of exciting! Haven't been any fresh faces around since the Aerials were sparked."
"Auuuuggghhh." Red Alert got to his feet and paced over to the fold-away berth (that was supposed to not be there, per Ratchet's orders) at the corner of the room behind his security station. "I can't do this, Inferno."
"Sure ya can!" Inferno gave his friend's shoulder a companionable shake. "You can handle ceasefire protocols in recharge, you've done it before."
"I appreciate the vote of confidence, I really do, but that's not what I meant." Red Alert paced the room aimlessly. "I can't mentor a new mech. It's impossible."
"Oh. Well, you won't be doing it alone, and—"
"Inferno, you don't understand," Red said, pacing in a little tighter a circle. "I am disqualified by virtue of my glitch. The priests at Simfur denied my petition to be eligible to foster a newspark."
Inferno frowned. "Now, Red—"
"I'm testy, impatient, rude, and— and paranoid, besides— and if anything the war has made my processor defect worse—"
"Red." Inferno started to cross the room towards him— Red Alert was, fittingly, going to trip the very condition he was ranting about if he didn't calm down.
"How could I possibly be fit to— to... oh." Red abruptly stopped pacing, grabbing at his chair for support.
Inferno came up beside him, carefully, watching for the telltale sparking of his friend's helm. "You okay? Need me to call Ratchet?"
Red Alert shuttered his optics and pulled in a long vent of air, shaking his head. "No, no... just about to h-have a— oh my."
Inferno couldn't help but grin. He guided the now-trembling Red Alert back over to the berth and pulled the smaller mech into his lap. "See, even your litl'un wants you to relax and stop worrying."
"Seditious scraplet," Red Alert muttered, half-groan, half-chuckle.
"Old rusted cogs at the temple. I'm glad they're gone." Inferno drew Red closer, embracing him from behind.
Red Alert stilled momentarily at what once would have been near-blasphemy. Inferno's hand wandered down to Red's codpiece and found it warm and vibrating.
"The old system was broken, even you gotta admit that." Inferno stroked the plating in time to the slowly-building rhythm of Red Alert's hips' rocking. "Know who else got turned down? Me. Didn't have the right friends, y'see."
"The— ah!— there were rumors about corruption, but... I... never guessed—" Red Alert gasped and thrust into Inferno's hand, as if trying to will the gestational array to speed up.
"You're not glitched. You're not defective. And look at how well you take care of all of us miscreants. You are gonna be a fantastic... parent."
Inferno had taken two glyphs in Cybertronian— 'creator' as in an artisan or inventor, and 'mentor' to denote an experienced, older mech who would guide and teach a new-sparked individual in his first decivorn of life— and had neatly portmanteau'd them together. Cybertronian was a language well-suited to adaptation, like its people, and Inferno's Urayan drawl had made the new word sound tender and familiar, even though mentoring and human-like parenting weren't really quite the same.
Red Alert squirmed and rocked in his arms, making a strangled noise. "Inferno, I'm not ready, I'm—"
"— not doin' this alone. You got all of us, right here with you." Inferno bent down, right over Red Alert's thrown-back head. As Inferno caressed the hot metal of Red's codpiece and abdomen, he kissed the upturned face.
"You got me," Inferno murmured, and Red Alert went rigid with overload.
"Unbelievable!" Starscream stalked into the command trine's hab suite, wings hitched high. "Smelting fragging pit rusted dross."
"Someone's in a mood," Thundercracker remarked mildly into his energon.
"Don't you start. Where's Skywarp? Stupid ceasefire. If we can't blow off steam taking potshots at the humans, we can at least go fly maneuv— oh, come on, really?" Starscream only had to turn around to find his other wingmate, sprawled out on his berth, languidly stroking his cockpit canopy.
A wide, lazy smile was plastered across Skywarp's faceplates, optics half-lit. "Sorry, Screamer. Not much in a flying way right now. Heh."
Starscream raked a hand down his face and skulked over to the energon dispenser to grab a cube; now that rationing wasn't going to be a problem for awhile, he might as well indulge. "And how long has he been at it now?"
"About a quarter-groon or so." Thundercracker shrugged. Skywarp's involuntary pelvic episodes were at least consistent, if not predictable: long, slow, and invariably putting the seeker in question in the most mellow, easygoing mood of his existence.
"Oh, good, only another quarter to sit around and watch him fondle himself," Starscream muttered sarcastically.
Thundercracker spared a sour look for his commander. "Get sand in your gears, Star?"
"Megatron." Starscream made a sweeping gesture with his cube as if that should explain everything. "I don't get him at all these days. He won't even argue with me. He just stomps off to his quarters— while I'm talking to him, no less! I haven't gotten a good 'face in weeks!"
"I can help you with thaaaaaaat," Skywarp singsonged from the berth.
Thundercracker put down his cube and crossed his arms. "Maybe if you just asked somebody instead of waiting for Megatron to get all hot 'n bothered and throw you to the deck..."
Starscream scowled. "Everything's gone glitched insane around here. This whole business with these glorified little space barnacles—"
Skywarp giggled. "Don't be mean. You'll hurt Skywarp Jr.'s feelings." Starscream gave Thundercracker a narrow see-what-I-mean look and the blue seeker shook his head, sighing.
"C'mon, Star, let's just join in. Nice and easy trine merge... you'll feel better."
Starscream's armor rattled in mild irritation, but he gave in, chestplates parting as he and Thundercracker crossed the room to an utterly delighted Skywarp. "Might as well. Things can't get any weirder."
It was the strangest ceasefire in the long history of the Cybertronian civil war. It wasn't, of course, the first time a common problem had bridged the faction gap, but heretofore these had always been outside aggressors or threats of some kind. Quintesson slavers, Ammonite infiltrators, the odd mega-swarm of spacegoing metallivorous worms... the usual.
This time there was nothing to shoot at, no joint battles to plan, no hostile but grudgingly respectful inter-faction camaraderie. There was no common threat, only common anticipation. Neither Autobot nor Decepticon quite knew what to do with themselves.
Except the medics, engineers and scientists.
A neutral site was set up just off the edge of Autobot territory, consisting of a single building hastily thrown together by the Constructicons, Hoist, and Grapple. Autobot command had watched the collaboration rather nervously, expecting it to result in a pile of rubble and more work for the medics, but surprisingly, other than a few snide remarks feigning surprise that their respective enemies weren't using abaci and slide rules, the Cooperative Cybertronian Gestational Research Center was up and running in just a few days' time with no incidents... barring the revival of a few old professional rivalries from long before the war.
"That's an awful name," Starscream groused upon hearing it, looking over the simple tridecagonal structure as the finishing touches were being made. "Awkward, clumsy. Should expect as much from grounders, I suppose."
"Then perhaps we could give it a moniker worthy of a seeker's flighty charms," Perceptor replied brightly. "Is 'Nest' to your liking?"
Starscream loomed over the much smaller mech. "Just what are you insinuating, Autobot? I'm some common organic bird?"
"Only that it might be apropos should you decide you'd rather have your little one away from your more unstable comrades," Perceptor replied genially, as if he didn't have the famously mercurial Air Commander staring him down.
Starscream hesitated for a moment. "I'm not... I don't have a..."
Perceptor actually had the audacity to reach out and give Starscream a friendly pat just above the codpiece. "Are you certain? You haven't experienced any twinges, twitches, knocks or oscillations? Statistically chances would seem to be in favor of it. Well! Good luck to you all the same." And he strolled off, humming a tune to himself.
It took Starscream a few seconds to work past his shock; then he was screaming over the public comms for Hook.
When it was confirmed that the Air Commander was indeed 'in a family way' as Sparkplug put it, Perceptor offered to host him a 'baby shower.' An hour later Prowl disseminated a memo to all Autobots with a polite but firm plea not to bait the Decepticons.
The... well, Nest (because of course it stuck)... was a large central main room, big enough for a dozen mechs comfortably, ringed by ten smaller rooms to be used as laboratories, infirmaries, or any purpose that the situation required.
Starscream and Skyfire fell in together in a lab by themselves as if the intervening ages and animosity hadn't happened at all, to everyone's surprise. Or at least that's what Skyfire assured everyone was the case; the pair disappeared for great lengths of time in their lab to examine the process and chemistry of the gestational nanites.
"Science talk for having lots of overloads," Ironhide snorted.
Drag Strip sidled up to him, leering. "Feeling left out, Autobot?"
"You keep your chestplates away from me, you—"
Subsequently Megatron issued an edict that no Decepticon shall proposition an Autobot, do-I-really-have-to-say-it-you-smelter-fuel-Stunticon.
Swindle coincidentally turned up AWOL at about the same time, only to later turn up on the coast of northern California forlornly picking seaweed out of his seams. Hook, after comparing notes and timelines with Ratchet, had discovered Swindle's indiscretion, whereupon the rest of the Stunticons had punted him out of an airlock at the bottom of the ocean and told him he could walk to the Nest and fragging-well just recharge there 'till all were one.
Once that scandal had come to light, it didn't take long for Prowl and Red Alert to suss out who had been on their side of the illicit affair.
"You will remain in the brig until your offspring's emergence," Prowl said, as the door locked into place.
On the other side of the bars, Sideswipe sputtered. "But... but I haven't even started having overloads— we don't even know how long that'll take, Prowl!"
"This is normally the part where I'd say you should have thought about that before you interfaced with an enemy combatant," Prowl replied, "but to be absolutely fair there's not even the slightest chance you could have anticipated this particular situation."
"No fragging kidding," Sideswipe muttered, hand over his midsection in what was becoming a common unconscious gesture.
"Which is why I've brought you something to occupy your time." Prowl slipped a datapad between bars.
Warily, Sideswipe took it and turned it on. Its screen filled with multiple files. "Uh... what is all this?"
"Any and all data concerning the ongoing research of the gestational process will be remotely updated to this pad every hour, on the hour," Prowl said, looking a few shades smugger than usual. "You will review and at least attempt to understand every aspect of what is happening to us. By the time emergence happens, whenever and however that may be, I expect you to be an expert on the subject."
Sideswipe, optics filled with horror, stared at his commanding officer over the top of the datapad. "I— Prowl, I'm not a medic or anything, I don't know what half this stuff even means—!"
"There's a messaging function that will forward inquiries to the research teams. I suggest you start asking questions." Prowl turned to go.
"But—"
"A summary of your conclusions in my inbox at the end of every day, Sideswipe." And with that, Sideswipe was alone.
...so to speak.
The basic terms of the ceasefire were simple: a modest stipend of fuel-grade energon given to the Decepticons in return for their peaceful cooperation in research of the common condition. Peaceful, and in this case the Autobots were insistent, included not raiding, attacking, or otherwise harassing the humans.
One week into the ceasefire, the factions still largely kept each other at arms' length, outside the occasional salvo of snark and suspicious looks around the grounds of the Nest. Megatron had made it thunderously clear that the Decepticons were to abide by the terms of the ceasefire to the letter until the situation had come to its conclusion, one way or another.
Which wasn't to say that there weren't a few hiccups. Already two more Autobots, Fireflight and Gears, had been sent to the brig for picking fights with some of the more easily-antagonized Decepticons- or for letting themselves be provoked; it didn't matter which and Optimus wasn't about to let a few hotheaded brawlers ruin the fragile, if bizarre, peace.
Those cooperating in the research efforts seemed, thankfully, better able to compartmentalize. Mixmaster and Wheeljack got along like a house on fire, but thankfully for all within potential blast radius, their rancor was limited to purely verbal expression. Sideswipe took to transcribing the more entertaining arguments word-for-word from lab recordings and sending that to Prowl instead of the assigned summary, if he were feeling particularly passive-aggressive that day.
There wasn't much to go on in the first weeks that hadn't already been discovered. Tiny frames slowly, steadily becoming more substantive, little clusters of neural crystal gradually blooming into more fractally complex configurations. The little protoforms would twitch or squirm occasionally, but otherwise presented no discomfort to their hosts.
The 'pregnant' mechs soon reported feeling in need of a bit more fuel than usual, so energon production was stepped up, refined mostly from the readily-available geothermal source beneath the Ark itself. An additional quantity was added to the Decepticons' stipend with the proviso that it be reserved for carrying mechs, though the Autobots had to accept the possibility that energon might not be getting distributed equitably. There were a great many things about this entire business that they'd simply have to accept on faith.
Megatron was making himself conspicuous by his absence, which normally would have been a red flag during such a cooperative venture. Yet by all intelligence from passive espionage to basic word-of-vocalizer from Decepticons, Megatron was simply holed up in his quarters much of the time, when he wasn't meeting with Optimus to fine-tune the ceasefire agreement when needed.
"He's sulking," Starscream sniffed when Skyfire worked the subject of the tyrant's activities into conversation. "Either he's jealous mechs are getting special treatment and he's not at the head of the line, or he just doesn't know what to do with himself if there's nothing to shoot at. Typical of the unscientific brute, really."
"A quiet Megatron is a suspicious Megatron," Red Alert said at the next officers' meeting.
"I know, and I agree," Optimus replied, gently. "But until and unless he actually does anything, and so long as they are abiding by the treaty, we must keep to our side of the bargain."
"He's right, Red," Jazz said. "If actin' funny were all it took, well, let's face it— there'd be some of us who'd never get out of the brig."
"There are days when I'm tempted," said Red Alert, smirking at him. Jazz flipped him a jaunty rude gesture.
"Anyway," Ratchet cut in, fiddling with his ever-present datapad, the one synced to his internal monitor. "Megatron may have to go to the back of our processing queues for the near future. I have a feeling things are going to get more interesting shortly."
Prowl inclined his head. "I'm afraid to ask."
Ratchet turned the pad around. In the dark haze of the interior of the gestation chamber— dark, for the little ones' spark chambers had finished closing up days prior—
From a face mostly obscured by a curled-up fist, two points of blue light blinked back at them.
