Margo had almost planned on waiting for Optimus and his soft seats and nice music and warm heartbeat that was so easy to fall asleep in, but Bumblebee informed her they wouldn't be able to, so she climbed in Bee's back seat.
His seats weren't quite as soft, and the warmth in Optimus's chassis wasn't quite the same in Bumblebee. The music wasn't classical either - it was soft rock from the 70s. She pulled out Deep Survival and continued reading.
She didn't really notice when they got to base, or when Arcee and Jack started speaking. She did, however, notice the ground bridge and Arcee and Optimus standing at the ready.
"The arctic?" Raf asked her guardian, and she snapped back into the conversation. "I've always wanted to see snow!"
"I would invite you to join, Rafael, but the conditions are much too extreme, even for we autobots," Optimus said.
"I understand," Raf said, obviously dejected.
"Nothing really special about it," Margo said flippantly in a somewhat futile effort to keep Raf's spirits up, maintaining her façade of reading, "Just some cold white powder that falls from the sky and melts into water."
At the silence and Raf's face still sporting the frown, Margo's eye-daggers subtly turned to Optimus over the cover of her book.
"But... I will bring you back a snowball," her guardian said.
Raf's eyes brightened immediately. "That would be awesome!"
Margo looked up and closed her book, keeping her index finger on her last page. She smiled at the sight of him. "Have fun, and come back safe ya shithead."
"I will, my charge," Optimus said with an almost-smile in his optics, and then walked through side-by-side with Arcee.
Margo's sensitive ears picked up the sparking at the Bridge Console handles immediately, an Ratchet's following gasp.
'This isn't normal.'
She watched attentively.
"Bumblebee! Bulkhead! Here! Now!"
'Probably dangerous.'
She was carefully keeping her nose pointed towards her book, and her attention pointed towards the remaining bots.
"I need some heavy lifting. The ground bridge is down."
Horror rushed down her spine. It felt remarkably similar to calm.
"Are Optimus and Arcee okay?" Bumblebee asked.
"Arcee and Optimus made it through just fine, it's bringing them back that concerns me," Ratchet said.
"You're just giving me more reasons to panic my shoes off here, doc-bot," Margo said.
Ratchet's optics shot over to her. "Margo!"
"Ratchet!" Margo parroted, and then turned off her instinctive bitching for three-point-five seconds. "What the fuck is happening to my guardian?"
"He's safe for the moment," Ratchet said, "but he won't remain safe if we don't get the ground bridge back online."
Her eyes darted to the bridge loops, and then back to the eldest. "What can I do?"
"Stay out of our work an-"
"FUCK THAT!" Margo screeched. Miko and Jack jolted in the corner of her eye. "Optimus and Arcee and are going to freeze their nuts and bolts off! I'm not sitting my ass down and pretending like nothing's fucking happening, so you can shove that attitude straight up your ass where you got it from and tell me how I can fucking help!"
"Whoa, what!" Jack said. "Margo, you don't know anything about this technology!"
"Ratchet didn't even know how to code well enough to stop fucking error messages!" Margo riposted angrily. "We know human computers better than these motherfuckers, so they can tell us what needs to be done and we can fucking help, or they can fucking deal with their stupid fucking prejudice and teach us cybertronian fucking technology in line with ground bridges so this doesn't happen a-fucking-gain!"
"Preferably both!" Miko added indignantly.
Ratchet sighed, and looked at Bulkhead and Bumblebee. "You two, panels off, chop-chop." He looked at the girls as a labyrinth of chips came into vision. "You two, these are the circuit pathways. I need some small hands." He picked up two small bands that couldn't even fit around his finger, and handed them to the girls. "These will allow me to see what you're doing."
Margo put hers on, and Miko did as well. Two separate feeds activated on the console, giving Ratchet their full range of vision.
The circuits board was warm with recent usage.
"One of you, go left. The other, go right," Ratchet said.
"I'm right," Margo said. "I'll raise my arm in my field of vision so you know who I am."
"Good," Ratchet said.
Margo was directed by Ratchet, while Miko was directed by Bulkhead.
"Do you see the purple G-26 circuit card?" Ratchet asked.
Margo sighed and wiped the sweat off her forehead. "Yeah. It's the purple one, right?"
"Yes," Ratchet said. "Let me see it?"
She slowly looked over to it, and then raised her eyes. She circled it, adjusting her field of vision so he could watch for damaged aspects.
"Wait!" came Ratchet's booming voice. "Is- is that a burn?"
Margo blinked, came closer to it, touched the edges, and hissed. "Yeah. It's still really hot. But why wouldn't it have burned it entirely, or in a more consistent pattern?"
Ratchet picked up G-26, looking at the marks. "This is... Quite the problem. Girls, come back out."
Margo got out courtesy of Bumblebee picking her up. Miko climbed up the delicate circuitry and walked tightrope-style until she was out of the maze.
"Hey, guys!" Raf called. "Look what I found!"
Ratchet rolled his eyes. "We're busy!" His optics adjusted to the thing in Raf's arms, and he dropped the broken circuit. "AHH!"
The three autobots jolted to their feet and pulled their blasters, Ratchet retreating behind Bulkhead and Bee since they were the only ones with long-range weapons.
"Whoa, what the fuck!" Jack yelped, standing protectively in front of Raf. Margo, on the other hand, actually pulled her knife threateningly as Miko stood in front of Raf protectively too.
"Scraplet! SCRAPLET!" Bulkhead yelled.
"What's a scraplet?" Raf asked, looking over Miko's shoulder.
"The most dangerous vermin ever to crawl upon the face of cybertron," Ratchet said, armour shuddering.
Jack and Miko looked back at the creature sleeping in Raf's arms skeptically. "This?" he asked sardonically, chuckling. "Are you kidding?"
"You're giant robots!" Miko agreed. "Scrappy here is... teeny."
Bulkhead was on the verge of hyperventilating. "You have no idea the damage that teeny thing can do!"
Margo's knife lowered. That wasn't an act. They were genuinely terrified of the little creature nestled in Raf's arms. She looked back at it contemplatively.
"Aw, he wouldn't hurt anything," Raf said.
This was the moment the scraplet chose to wake up. Its sights set immediately on the three bots huddled behind their blasters, and its face split apart, whirring furiously.
It darted away every time Bumblebee shot at it, and then started chomping through the armour on his leg. He tried catching it in his servo, but it ate through the flesh on his servo and started working its way up his arm. The yellow bot managed to brush it off. The scraplet immediately readjusted and started going back to continue his meal, until Raf hit it with a crowbar.
And again. And again. And again, until it was nothing more than a piece of twisted metal on the floor. That's when he abandoned the crowbar and darted back to his guardian. "I'm sorry, Bumblebee!"
"It's okay, Raf," Bumblebee said.
"Is he gonna be okay?" Raf asked.
"I'm fine, Raf!" Bumblebee said.
"No, you're not!" Ratchet said. "None of us are! Scraplets are infesting the base!"
Bulkhead moaned. "We're dead!"
"Not yet, we aren't! We can still leave, right?" Miko asked.
"Technically, yes," Ratchet said, "but Optimus and Arcee are stuck in the arctic. If they do not return quickly, they will surely perish!"
Margo ran her hands through her hair. "Then what are we supposed to do? The groundbridge isn't operational, and scraplets are just gonna keep eating our repair work!"
"Then we need to take out the scraplets," Jack said.
Ratchet scoffed. "They've probably come in a swarm of hundreds of thousands! It's difficult getting rid of an infestation that large!"
"Then we better start working," Raf said.
"I'm not gonna sit down and happily accept my guardian's death! Tell us how we can fucking help!" Margo shouted. "What systems could be affecting the groundbridge aside from that patch of circuit boards?"
"The energy's derived from energon," Bulkhead said. "The fuel line?"
"The circuit boards still need to be rerouted," Bumblebee pointed out. "A lot of the circuits are damaged."
Margo scratched the back of her head. "Is there anything else about them we can use to our advantage?"
"They don't like cold climates," Ratchet said. "They tend to slow down."
"What about the computers? Are they gonna be okay in the cold?" Margo asked.
"Yes," Ratchet said.
"Good," Margo said, reaching for the thermostat that controlled the cold, and turning it all the way down, past zero. "It'll take about an hour or two for us to feel the difference since the thermostat keeps the base warm enough, but after that, they'll start getting sluggish. Easy to squish. In the meantime, you bots get your asses the fuck out of base. We can talk over the phone and you can tell us what to do, but otherwise staying here is a fucking death wish."
"Agreed," Jack said. "I'll go with you can kill any scraplets we come across."
Raf jolted. "What if we made one of us the queen of the scraplets?" he asked.
"The idea was proposed by the cybertronian High Council before the Great War, but no one could get close enough to the blasted things to serve as ground zero for the link, or take one back for experimentation that wasn't destroyed," Bumblebee said. Ratchet blinked. "What? I like reading about failed experiments that we might look into after the war."
"Right. Even still, we should be able to get close enough to find the relevant information," Raf said.
"But you still don't know how the scraplets would react to having an alien organic as a queen!" Ratchet said. "They could just as easily look on you as they next meal! As I understand it, you do have iron in your blood!"
"Irrelevant!" Margo put her foot down. "You're in far more danger than us! Get the fuck out of here! Miko, go with them. Make sure they're safe."
Miko saluted and ran to keep up with the three transforming cars.
"You two, go find a scraplet. We need to take it apart and see how it works," Jack directed. "I'll set up the computer and get to work on the bridge."
Margo and Raf saluted lazily and went. Sure enough, there were tons sleeping on the walls, in cocoon-like pods.
"Breeding grounds?" Margo asked, staring at the swarm.
"Looks like," Raf said nervously.
"We'll be okay," Margo said reassuringly.
"I know that!" Raf said. "I'm worried about Arcee and Optimus."
Margo sighed and plucked a scraplet baby off the wall, and Raf plucked an adult scraplet from the floor. "So am I."
They rushed back to the main room, which was quickly becoming cold. Jack was back in his hoodie.
Raf went to work analyzing the coding, directing the other two to bring him tools. There were lapses where he was simply coding furiously. Eventually, he had a model for the transceiver done, and was working on building it with Margo's assistance while Jack was directed by Ratchet to fix the bridge.
It ended up looking like a regular headband, only more bunched-together, more metal, and less even.
"Are you done?" Margo asked.
"Yeah, but I'm not sure it'll work," Raf said. He kept it plugged into his computer.
The drilling noise was getting closer. She shoved it on her head. "Scraplets, heed me!" she called. The drilling noise stopped. "You will cease feeding at once! Those who do not obey must be killed or destroyed!"
Several scraplets charged for her. Others got in their way, and were promptly eaten.
She waited... and exhaled. No others came towards her with killing intent. All the scraplets were awaiting orders.
"Land and sleep. Wake up only when I tell you."
So they did, going into hibernation. The little raised grey dots snuggled against the wall, eyes closed. They appeared innocuous enough to a casual observer.
"Raf, if you could set the transmitter to run on heat as a power source-"
"Already on it," Raf said, thumb up He made some modifications to the machinery, and then unplugged his laptop. "If your body heat drops too low, it'll switch to room temperature. If the room temperature is below zero, the circuits will freeze up. Make sure that doesn't happen."
"Will do," Margo said. "Jack? The scraplets are mine. How's the bridge coming?"
"Better. I've rerouted main power and bypassed the central conduits, so it should be operational, but it won't receive power."
"Have you checked the energon fuel line?" Ratchet asked.
"Nope. It must be breaching," Raf said.
"Let's go," Margo said, picking up the tool kit. Jack climbed over the circuit boards and helped to transport a sheet of flexible but durable metal that would support the weight of the energon fuel line.
Sleeping scraplets littered the halls. Raf and Margo kept the sheet in place while Jack welded it shut.
"Okay, the scraplets are asleep and the energon line's repaired. You should come back in now," Jack said over the phone.
"Acknowledged," Ratchet said.
He very quickly typed in the coordinates and bridged back the two freezing bots. Bumblebee and Bulkhead similarly went though to help support them in case they couldn't walk. It ended with Optimus leaning against Bulkhead and Arcee against Bumblebee as the freezing bots struggled to walk.
Margo climbed up on Optimus's bioberth and draped herself on his arm. It was so cold, it felt like burning.
Optimus sluggishly opened his eyes. "Margo. I am cold. You will be uncomfortable if you remain there."
"I can deal with it," she shivered. "You need comfort too. You almost died."
Optimus send a pleading look at Bumblebee, who got Margo's plaid blanket from the couch and draped it over Margo's shivering from. The boss bot looked half-reprimanding at Bumblebee and was about to open his mouth until he noticed Margo's headpiece.
"I don't remember your coming to base with a headpiece," Optimus said slurrily. His body shivered as he tried to get used to the new warmth of the silo, but was somewhat aided by the fact that it was freezing cold in the room itself. His heating systems wouldn't be going into overdrive trying in vain to keep up with the sudden and violent change quite so rapidly. There was a forty-degree difference to become accustomed to, but at least it wasn't sixty.
"Because I didn't," Margo said. "This is the thing that lets me talk to the scraplets."
Arcee shot awake, a hand blearily turning into a blaster. "Scraplets?"
"It's okay, Arcee. Go back to sleep," Ratchet said, pushing the blue bot down and adjusting a few things on the energon drip. Arcee's optics drooped and she fell asleep.
"Scraplets?" Optimus asked quietly.
He felt Margo's hum more than he heard it. "That's what the pod had in it. We had to find a way to get the scraplets to stop that didn't involve eating every machine in here and then go looking for more, so Raf came up with a code that would connect me to the hive by way of this neural transceiver based on what we humans know of hive minds, cybertronian biology, interconnected computers, and human biotech, and now I'm the hive queen. They're in stasis mode as long as I tell them to be."
Optimus blinked. "It sounds like you had your hands rather full today, old friend."
"I'm only glad the humans were here to help," Ratchet said, plugging a few cables into Optimus's wrist and checking his damaged systems.
How's that for fast update schedules?