Chapter 59 - Secrets
(OPOV)
Jacobs walked slowly toward her and sat down as she watched him warily.
"Stories," Jacobs grinned at her. Mikaela snorted and closed her eyes. Jacobs looked up at Optimus and jerked his head. Optimus smiled and walked with a calm step to sit on her left. He settled a gentle hand on her knee and sighed contentedly.
"Hey Will, you volunteered first," Jacobs grinned.
"Secrets huh? Okay," Will snorted, settling back into his chair again. "Sarah and I were married for a year before our official wedding."
"You eloped?" Mikaela chuckled, opening an eye to look at him with amusement.
"Vegas baby!" Will laughed, "Sarah met me there, I was stationed in Houston at the time, drove seven hundred miles in six hours, stayed the night and got back just in time for the morning run."
"I'd wondered where the hell you'd gotten to," Epps laughed. "Why the fuck didn't you invite me you bastard?"
"Well I didn't exactly know I was getting married at the time, I won five hundred bucks on a nickel and decided to press our luck." Will snorted.
Mikaela began laughing softly beside Optimus.
"So all of this is staying in the family, right?" Chance grinned.
"A-yep," Jacobs snorted.
"Okay, totally lost my virginity on base," Chance snorted.
"Yo! Don't tell dude!" Epps shouted with a laugh.
"Wait, that was that little biscuit Naiomi, wasn't it!" Graham snorted.
"Oh you knew her too, did you?" Chance laughed.
"Oh gods everyone knew that bird," Devon groaned. "Wonder whatever the hell happened to her."
"You didn't hear?" Chance grinned, "Jones married her, she's expecting their third now."
"You're shitting me," Graham laughed. "Who'd you lose it to, Jacobs?"
"Stephanie L'roque, prettiest little creature you'd ever seen," Jacobs sighed, "two years older than me, if ever there was a Mrs. Robinson, it was her."
"She teach the Kama?" Mikaela asked with a small laugh.
"Little bit," Jacobs snorted, "or at least as much of it as you can manage in the back of a volvo. What about you Graham?"
"Penny Jackson," Graham sighed, "A tart with a heart of gold. I swear she could make a man jizz his pants with one glance."
Optimus glanced at Kae, she was shaking slightly and blushing furiously.
"Kae?" Optimus rumbled softly. She snorted and burst out laughing.
"I'm sorry," she laughed, "trust you lot to bring up high school memories."
"Oh oh! Now you gotta tell it!" Chance howled.
"Oh come off it! A lady doesn't brag of her conquests!" Mikaela snorted.
"What an insulting term!" Arcee grinned at the girl.
"Which one?" Jacobs asked interestedly.
"Lady," Flare snorted. Mikaela burst out laughing again.
"C'mon girl, show you mine if you show me yours," Chromia smirked.
"Alright fine!" Mikaela giggled, "you want the facts or the reputation I spent years building up for the CIA?"
"Fact girl," Graham snorted.
"Alright, so the first was Tony, except of course he didn't actually do more than grunt twice and use up his only condom," Mikaela snorted, swinging her fist twice. "Reputation wise? We went twice in the back of his car. If I remember correctly, there are twelve boys who claim to have had randy teenager sex in their cars with me before I ever lost my virginity."
"How the hell did you pull that off?" Chance asked between guffaws.
"A lovely combination of fragile male egos and magic fingers," Mikaela snorted. "Actual virginity was to Trent, the guy you were constantly wanting to terrify, Bee," she grinned at her younger brother.
"I knew I should have given him nightmares," Bee snorted.
"Why?" Optimus rumbled softly.
"Cause he's a total jerk," Bee replied with a shrug.
"No, why would you allow such flotsam to tarnish your reputation?" Optimus asked curiously, looking at his Kae. "To take and not give?"
"Necessity is the mother of invention," Mikaela shrugged beside him. "Nobody would believe the daughter of a car thief who happens to be a model student ordinary. I was still honour roll, but not many people knew it. As far as the school population was concerned, I was a whore, the sort of person that people overlook. I hid out in the open."
"That's hard," Epps stated quietly. Mikaela snorted.
"No, it was ridiculously easy, the only person's opinion that ever mattered to me was Tinny's. They raised the two of us to work toward our goals, either to build a future, or to finish a mission. Tinny's future was photography, my future was hinged primarily on today." Kae fell silent and stared at the open hangar doors, where the chips she'd protected had walked out.
Optimus wound a gentle arm around his Kae, taking extreme care to not jostle her shoulder. She glanced up at him with a smile that flashed to wicked the next second.
"Alright, I've shown you mine, your turn," she grinned at Chromia.
"Oh! Oh! Here we go!" Flare laughed brightly.
"Hah! Says the femme with the same number of conquests!" Chromia shot back at her with a grin.
"Yeah, mostly because we went out together and you picked 'em," Flare grinned.
"I have a gift," Chromia stated urbanely. "But after five thousand it comes time to look for a life mate."
"It would take an Orn just to say all of their names," Flare giggled.
"That was the goal, wan't it?" Arcee murmured with a low laugh, "You wanted a list of conquests long enough to cover an Orn, just to din my audio receptors while there was nothing to see but the occasional star and comet."
The three girls looked at each other and burst out laughing again.
"Wow, they have officially put all of us together, completely to shame," Jacobs rumbled with a snort.
"They're Femmes," Ironhide drawled with a broad grin, "They've got it, and are completely entitled to flaunt it."
"Never hurts to... what's the term?" Ratchet frowned.
"Sleep around?" Kae asked with a small smile.
"What does sleeping have to do with it?" Ratchet smirked at her, she burst out laughing again. "But true, it never hurts to sleep around before choosing a life mate."
"I want to be one of them in my next life," Graham stated quietly, ribbing Lennox.
"So who was the first though," Lennox asked with a grin.
"The second," Arcee corrected gently.
"Although it's usually the third," Flare giggled.
"Oh don't be crass," Chromia laughed, giving the Femme a gentle shove.
"Translation?" Mikaela asked with a small smile, giving Optimus a gentle nudge.
"Our first interface is ideally guided by a chosen..." Optimus frowned, searching for a word. Mikaela looked up at him calmly.
"I cannot find an earth parallel," he rumbled.
"I wouldn't be surprised," she said calmly, "say it in Cybertronian?"
First guide,∂ Ratchet supplied calmly.
"For first Rites," Mikaela murmured with a half smile. "That's why there isn't a parallel, earth's current cultures are primarily patriarchal, there is a lot of credence given to virginal brides. Mmmn," she frowned, leaning her head back on his shoulder. "The only parallel I can come up with are from semi-fictional works detailing matriarchal societies."
"Which means you've got a translation for us," Epps grinned at the Femme tucked snugly into Optimus' holoform.
"Sort of?" she frowned. "Mrs. Robinson, but add a shit-ton of respect to it. Donii woman would come far closer."
"Like Clan of the Cave Bear?" Jacobs asked curiously.
"I think so," Mikaela frowned, she tilted her head to look at Optimus' holoform. "A much more experienced and trustworthy person to guide the young through their first time?"
"Precisely," Optimus rumbled, grinning at his Kae.
"So you guys have your first partner chosen for you?" Lennox frowned.
"That's just making it creepy, Will." Ratchet snorted, "think of it from my perspective. You have one penis that fits into one vagina for the purpose of trading genetic material to produce young-"
"-Which they still manage to screw up-"Mikaela murmured with a snort, Bumblebee covered his vocal processors, his optics sparkling with laughter.
"Personally? I have sixteen separate binder cables capable of sending and receiving neural-energonic pulses-"
"-For which I am grateful-" Arcee murmured smugly. Optimus snorted.
"Which aren't solely used for interfacing," Ratchet continued, unperturbed. He crouched down and offered one of the cables from his wrist. He reached out and picked up a used oil filter, "They are prehensile, and capable of doing a great deal of damage to another if not properly controlled." he easily crushed the filter in demonstration. "Our first few times are guided, for our own safety. Interfacing is not simply unity of body, it is unity of sparks as well, you saw the damage a misaligned spark does."
Kae idly reached up and rubbed her chest as the soldiers jumped.
"Mine wasn't even that badly misaligned," she murmured.
"True, yours was still within your body," Ratchet nodded. Flareup shuddered, and was immediately wrapped in Chromia and Arcee's arms.
"We are sisters now," Chromia murmured gently. Flare looked up and smiled weakly.
"Is it okay if I ask how you three wound up being sisters?" Chance asked hesitantly.
Arcee looked at Flare. The vibrant red-headed holoform nodded.
"Flare and I began as cousins," Chromia began quietly, "we were raised by sibling parental units at any rate, they were executed while we were still young. The war was all we knew so we made the best of it, staying in the Auto-bot compounds, much as the twins are now."
"We were trained for battle after that," Flare grinned, her smile faded. "Chromia and I... We wound up ambushed doing a routine cargo haul. I caught the edge of a blast to my spark..." she sighed. "I... I was..."
"When I looked back at Flare, I... I thought she'd been right behind me," Chromia whispered. "Instead, I saw her spark completely outside her chamber, her soul floating freely in space."
"I was desperately trying to get back to my body," Flare whimpered, "It hurt, it hurt so much, trapped between life and death, I didn't want to die, I didn't know the way to the Well."
"We were younglings back then," Chromia sighed. "I probably did more damage to Flare than that blast-"
"You saved me, Chrome," Flare immediately interjected, nuzzling against her sister.
"That was how I found them," Arcee stated calmly. "Chromia had bound herself around Flare, and did a rather good job seeing as it was her first time. I was a neutral rogue at the time, fate had thrown a solar flare in my path, which diverted me directly to them. Initially, I thought that they were both dead, so I came aside to see if I could find their memory chips, perhaps try to return them to their family. When I realized their sparks were still burning, I absorbed them both."
"That was how we found them," Ratchet murmured, reaching over to gather the girls into his arms. "How Arcee managed to carry two stranger's sparks in her own chamber is frankly astonishing. We didn't recognize them, at first," Ratchet stated calmly, carrying on the story for the soldier's entertainment. "Arcee had pulled their sparks into her own chamber, and was towing two mangled, tiny bodies behind her own. There was nothing left of Flare, and Chromia had all but destroyed herself trying to save her cousin."
"Then how...?" Will asked in shock.
"She split herself into three pieces, just so we could have bodies again," Chromia murmured sadly.
"I am one third my original size, but in return I have two beloved sisters. I would not have it any other way," Arcee stated calmly. Flare and Chromia wound themselves around their dominant sister. "I have traveled alone, and having them with me is far better than the isolation. Even if you managed to din my ears with two orn worth of your conquests," she teased them gently.
"Optimus was our first after that," Chromia stated calmly, looking at Kae carefully. There was silence for a moment as the femmes all looked at their potentially newest sister.
"Not prone to jealousy," Kae smiled at them wryly, they grinned at her as Optimus proudly pulled her a bit more tightly into his side. "He's a damned good first." she added, well below the human's hearing range. Optimus fought back the smirk that matched the ones on Ratchet and Ironhide's faces.
"And that was..." Lennox frowned.
"One thousand of your years before Elita was killed," Optimus rumbled softly. Kae reached out and gently caught his hand in her own.
"Physician, heal thyself," Optimus murmured into her hair. She let out a choked laugh as he pulled her a bit more tightly into the holoform's arms. She turned slightly and buried herself into him. Primus but it felt right.
"So you guys..." Epps grinned, looking back and forth at the holos.
"It's not so much sex as training," Chromia supplied with a grin.
"When Chromia saved me, she merged her spark entirely with mine, we had a pit of a time trying to figure out who was whom," Flare added with a giggle, "Optimus was the one who separated our three sparks. He's the best one to do it."
Chance stared at him for a long moment, obviously debating himself.
"You are allowed to ask why," Optimus rumbled with a snort.
"Excellent! 'Cause I was gonna be stewing forever if you guys didn't tell us what the qualifications to be a first are," the Aussi grinned.
"Optimus is the best at it, because he's so much of a pacifist it's sickening," Ironhide rumbled with a snort. Chromia burst out laughing and whacked his holoform lightly.
"Optimus has one of the... how do I describe it?" Arcee murmured, looking at Mikaela with a smirk.
"He has a combination of both the strongest, and gentlest personalities," Kae stated with a gentle smile. "He always has the potential of completely overlaying another's spark, but he's always holding himself in check. He knows how to keep his personality separate from another's." Kae unwound herself slightly to cuddle into him a bit more, Optimus smiled to hear her description, she looked up at him and he felt his spark flare in his chamber again. "He gives without thinking about it, gives more than he takes."
"Wait, that means he's technically your first interface," Will grinned at the girl. "What'd he give anyway?"
Kae promptly began to blush furiously.
"All together?" Chromia stated cheerfully.
"Agreed," Arcee giggled, "he wasn't my first, but he renewed my hope."
"Gave me my identity," Flareup trilled.
"Gave me strength, and patience," Bumblebee stated with a grin.
"He was your first too!?" Jacobs asked incredulously.
"What? It's common for a bot to interface with his or her Prime, gender doesn't really matter," Ratchet shrugged. "It's insanely rare to find a femme with enough strength to deal with an overzealous youngling, interfacing isn't simply sex, in fact, it's rarely sex, what did you think the twins and the girls are doing when they integrate into one body?"
"Oh, point," Will grinned.
"He gave me courage," Chromia added, grinning at Optimus' holoform. "What'd he give to you Kae?" she asked with a broad grin.
Mikaela blushed even more, making it obviously possible.
"Kae?" Arcee asked softly.
"He... he gave me safe harbour," the girl whispered, Optimus jumped, turning to stare at his femme. She took a deep breath and looked up. "He gave more than I can repay, surrounded me with light in the darkness. He gave me acceptance, looked at the person I have had to be and stayed regardless. Gave me the strength to face the night."
"Aw Kae," Bumblebee whimpered, his holoform crawling over to pull her into an enveloping embrace alongside Optimus.
"You know what you gave me? Bee?" she whispered. Bee pulled back slightly to stare at her. "You gave me the courage to let him." Bee grinned at his sister and laid down on the floor, tentatively resting his head on her thigh. Her hand reached forward and idly began toying with her younger brother's hair.
"The courage to face the night?" Will murmured curiously.
"If I may?" Optimus murmured, Kae looked up at him and nodded. "When Kae sleeps in my cab," Optimus rumbled quietly, "her dreams often rise on the currents of energon that seep from her. Through her eyes, I watched her cradle her sister as she died in her arms. Watched her being interrogated for hours, watched as she allowed her uncle to tie her up before the police arrived."
"Uncle stunned me, just a low setting on the gun, so that I wouldn't have to watch as the police shot him for resisting arrest," Kae whispered. "He'd tied me up so that if the stun didn't work, I wouldn't have enough time to get out of the restraints to get in front of the bullets."
"Why would he resist arrest?" Will asked hoarsely.
"Because being shot and killed outside our shop was a far better fate than what would have happened were he put in jail," Kae choked. "He chose his place to die, in our line of duty, we refer to it as the permanent assist."
"New topic?" Optimus murmured gently, feeling her reluctance to continue the topic. She looked at him gratefully and nodded.
"That's why you refuse to take naps?" Ratchet murmured.
"Eight hours of pain and terror is enough," Kae whispered, she straightened in his arms somewhat and forced herself to smile.
"So who really shot you?" Will asked suddenly.
"I don't honestly know," Kae shrugged, "We never found out if it was bloods, crips or rogues. I know I saw their faces, but all I could focus on at the time was getting to the high ground. I felt so bad for Tinny, she was so pale as Uncle Sho patched me up. She stayed though, right beside me for the entire drive she stayed and held my hand."
"I will stay beside you," Arcee whispered, Kae looked up at at the Femme and bit her lip, hard. "Not that I want the necessity," Arcee added with a small smile, "I'm just saying."
"Mind, I'll probably be at your knee," Chromia added, "No doubt Optimus will be at your head since Ratchet'll be at your other side, patching you together again."
"I call her other knee then," Bumblebee added, turning his head up to look at her with the irrepressible grin of a young man.
"So seven languages?" Jacobs asked curiously.
"Mandarin, English, Arabic, French, German-"
"Arabic! Why the hell didn't you just talk to the people yourself?" Lennox demanded.
Optimus looked down at his Kae to see her looking at Lennox with a wry expression.
"For a rather good reason," she stated in Arabic. Jacobs snorted.
"Iranian syntax," he chuckled. "You speak that and they shove you around at gunpoint."
"It comes in handy though," Kae snorted. "I don't speak, but I can still hear."
Optimus pulled his Kae closer as she began to shiver, shooting a worried glance to Ratchet.
"Kae," Ratchet began softly, "your adrenaline is being broken down, is there anything that I can give you, take the edge off?"
"Coffee," Kae groaned immediately. "It's too early in the day for sleep."
"You're sleeping in my cab tonight," Optimus rumbled quietly, reaching up to tilt her face to look at him. "Any and every night that you wish it you will remain with me. I cannot make the dreams go away, but I will stand beside you, behind you."
Kae promptly buried herself a bit more deeply into his chest, so close he could feel the tension in her muscles as she struggled to not shake.
"You're going to have one hell of a headache if you don't stop that," Ratchet stated firmly.
"It's humiliating," Mikaela immediately groused.
"Oh c'mon, we all shiver when we're coming down off an adrenaline rush," Jacobs snorted, patting her knee.
"What, that you're suffering from minor convulsions as the adrenaline leaves your system?" Ratchet demanded irritably. "I'd be worried if you weren't shaking. If you want embarrassing-"
"Not it!" Bee shouted immediately.
"Oh may as well, you know she's gonna know in a matter of weeks anyway," Ironhide snorted.
"We're ratting ourselves out," Ratchet snorted, "and here's embarrassing, I haven't had a physical in over seven vorn."
"We're scheduling you in then," Mikaela immediately stated in a firm tone, straightening slightly and promptly glaring at her hands as they shook, immediately crossing her arms.
"Mine," Optimus rumbled in her ear, squirming slightly so that she was sitting propped between his legs, his arms wrapped around hers, threading fingers together. She felt like ice, even her core temperature was dropping. He frowned worriedly, looking at Ratchet.
"Solid state," Ratchet stated flatly. "Kae, quit directing the energon to consume your adrenaline, it's only going to make you colder."
"Kae, oh my Kae I'm so sorry," Optimus rumbled in a choked tone, pulling her a bit more tightly into his chest.
"What's going on?" Will asked in a shocked tone.
"Mikaela has been directing her spark to convert the excess adrenaline in her blood into energon," Ratchet groaned, "which is stored in a solid state, you're going to become a statue if you don't stop it!"
"I c-c-can't," Kae whispered, her shivering becoming all the more violent as her body struggled to warm itself. Ratchet's holoform blinked out the next second, his metal body moving as quickly as he could toward his assistant. He extended a binder cable toward her.
"I know it's more fun to release it with Optimus," he rumbled, "you can do that later, once you've warmed up a bit."
Mikaela immediately reached a hand out, allowing the binder cable Ratchet extended to wrap around her wrist.
"How the hell!?" Epps asked in a shocked tone as the thick cable passed into her skin.
"The cable separates into it's component neural fibres," Mikaela murmured, "then passes through the skin between the cells to connect to my nervoushuhhh..."
Kae's eyes rolled back in her head even as Ratchet began convulsing lightly.
"SCRAP!" Optimus roared, immediately moving forward and extending binder cables into Kae's body.
"What's going on?" Will shouted, watching in a panic as Optimus' holoform's face blanked out and Mikaela convulsed.
"That's embarrassing," Bumblebee laughed, all of the bots' holoforms were laughing.
"Cute though," Ironhide snorted. "Ratchet connected to Kae and forgot that even as such a tiny form she's an absolute powerhouse. They basically just connected a AA battery to a nuclear reactor. Power wise anyway, she's not radioactive."
"Isn't that..." Chance started worriedly.
"Dangerous? Nah, it's only dangerous when sparks merge," Ironhide grinned. "Right now Ratchet's getting the recharge of his life. See?" he added as Ratchet's cable retracted. Kae's eyes snapped open.
"My bad," Ratchet snorted before she could open her mouth.
"I could have-"
"What? Shorted me out?" Ratchet laughed as Optimus' holoform animated again. "Optimus is over-reacting, I'm programmed to withdraw before I can get shorted. Although we can cancel the physical now, you just managed to take a good vorn off of my aging cycle. Go, take her to see the sunset and get her calm again," Ratchet added, looking at Optimus. The holo nodded.
"If you will excuse us," he rumbled quietly, lifting his exhausted Kae into the holoform's arms and delicately settling her into his hand at the nods of soldiers and bots. He transformed around his Kae, and drove up the coastal road with her curled up in his seat.
In silence, he transformed, cradling his dear femme to his chest as the sun set.