Since Wheeljack wasn't exactly comfortable with the scraplet hive living in the base, she'd spread a lot of them out. Most stayed in the rafters or under the floor, out of sight, or in her room and at school. Margo now always had at least one scraplet with her. In her rather large handbag, in her backpack, in her locker, anywhere she could fit one. There were always at least two in each room she visited regularly. During fire drills and lunch time when the teachers were out, she left the little bugs to crawl up the walls and sleep up between the pipes and the ceiling tiles.

The trouble was when someone tried poking around her locker and found the little alien bug. She panicked when she opened her locker, found no trace of her scraplet or of teeth marks on her padlock-locked locker, and desperately called for the metal-eating little flying pirhana-termite.

Vince wasn't really paying attention to the loot he planned on pawning after school until it snapped to attention, opened its mouth wide with a drilling noise, ate through the side of his car, and flew back into the school.

Of fucking course, the bully found Margo cuddling the little bug to her chest, kneeling on the ground, almost on the verge of a spark attack as the little bug chirped and whirred comfortingly.

"Hey! On your feet, Sunet!" Vince growled. "I know it was you who destroyed my car!"

Margo looked up, pale. The bully's words registered, and she stood, her scraplet lodged safely in her arms, her petting the little creature. It was back to being docile, jelly under the little fingers that knew exactly where to curl and scratch. "Then it was you who stole my personal property?"

"No! I just found it lying on the floor!" Vince said.

"I had Scrappy locked in my locker. He's a science project. I wouldn't let anyone see him, much less leave him out," Margo's voice was hard and angry. She was making a real effort not to curse his brains out, knowing she'd get in trouble.

"I want you to pay for it!" Vince demanded.

Margo jolted and her hand halted. "Vince, I'm a patient woman most of the time. I know you don't know me since I prefer to keep to myself, but I do warn you, I will not cowtow to threats. You'll repair your car on your own, and if you keep harassing me for paying for your car because of reparations and something stolen from me, I will tell the teachers who's been stealing the personal property of many, many students." Her scowl turned into a smirk. "Or get your daddy to throw another wad of hundreds at you. Everyone knows how much you love that."

Margo wasn't exactly expecting the punch. Vince wasn't exactly expecting her scraplet to go for the balls.

"Cease!" Her scraplet halted immediately, and Vince's yelling was still readily apparent and very loud. "I'll get a teacher!"

~?~

Their school, like any self-respecting American school, had a fire drill. That was Code Red.

There was a code that Jack knew should be way more unnecessary: Code Black, where if there was a violent attacker, they all hid in various areas around the classroom. His homeroom teacher kept an empty pantry cupboard devoid of shelves specifically because it would comfortably fit at least five people.

Code Green was when everything was okay again.

He'd... forgotten the meaning of Code Yellow.

His teacher obviously hadn't though, and jumped to his feet, closing and locking the door, and waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

Jack shrugged and turned back to his lunch, oblivious to Vince in horrible agony three hallways away.

Rafael, however, was in a much closer classroom. Vince's agonized yelling was very, very clear.

The roaring ambulance came rather quickly, and Vince was extracted from the hallway. An extra twenty minutes passed inside whatever classroom they happened to be in while the blood was cleaned off the floor.

"Code Green. Code Green."

Raf exited the classroom and recoiled at the stench of bleach.

Most were in the cafeteria when Code Yellow was initiated, or inside their homeroom classes. Margo was... already out in the corridor, speaking with a police officer, some blood on her shirt, and her scraplet being petted soothingly.

"I'm sorry, I think you've misunderstood the purpose of my project."

"A self-defense method?" the officer asked.

"Yes, but also something that can consume anything metal. It wasn't even targeted at humans, but more like a scrapyard assist. Erm…" Margo looked around and saw nothing. Her eyes locked with his. "Hey, Raf? Do you have a piece of metal you're not really attached to?"

Raf looked through his bag, and found a burst pen casing. He threw it at Margo, whose scraplet immediately reacted. Its eyes slid backwards to make room for the teeth, and they whirred, vibrating like a drill. The pen was consumed immediately and violently. The scraplet became jelly again in her arms and leaned back to sleep.

The officer blinked at the display and Margo went back to petting it. "Well. And you say this project of your was stolen?"

"That's right. I didn't know who had it, but it's programmed to come back to a place where it knows it can find me and wait for me if it doesn't know where it is, and take down anything that it needs to get rid of. Vince's car was in the way. Locked. He asked me to pay for the damages, and I refused. One thing led to another, and he punched me. It reacted to what I thought for nothing but a second, I swear I wouldn't actually have acted on it."

"It has the ability to read your thoughts?" he asked skeptically.

"Computers can read words through eye movements," she pointed out.

The officer shrugged and jotted a few notes. "What, exactly, were you thinking?"

"'Rip his balls off', sir," Margo winced. "I swear I wouldn't actually have done it! People think about causing violent harm or death all the fucking time - they even threaten it! I've threatened people on a regular basis and never acted on it!"

"That said, accidental nor not, assault is illegal."

"Then Vince can fucking sue me! There are fucking surveillance cameras in the halls, they'll know what happened! It was only for a few seconds, I got help, I stopped my scraplet, he stole my things first, he broke into my locker!" she started shaking violently and her grip on her scraplet became a bit tighter.

Yes, it was true. The security cameras had recorded everything. However, Margo was still suspended for the duration of the time Vince was in the hospital, which was at least a week or two.

So for the majority of the time, she was in the autobot base, coding or doing chores with her scraplets.

Ratchet was becoming somewhat accustomed to the hive's presence in his workspace, bringing him his tools or repairing them with regurgitated metals and wires. They were remarkably intelligent.

Bulkhead wasn't quite comfortable with them there, and neither were Arcee and Bumblebee. They'd spent all their lives being terrified of the things. But, at least they weren't freaking out every time they heard a little skittering sound, or try to shoot them.

Optimus was perhaps the best adjusted of them. Or he was hiding his discomfort really, REALLY well. He sometimes let them climb up his armour and sleep between his neck cabling and chest armour.

Of course, Margo mostly did her course work. And frustrated over her maths problems.

Finally, she growled lowly and all the scraplets shivered.

"Margo, do you require aid?" Optimus asked. "You're making the scraplets agitated."

"Sleep, my hive," she commanded idly. They instantly fell asleep, and she went back to scowling at her book. "This question is driving me up the fucking wall," Margo said lowly.

"Oh?" Optimus said. "Can I help?"

They spent about an hour on the problem, and were no closer to solving it.

Turns out trying to divide something that can't be divided really makes one's mind start to go.

Optimus was almost grateful for the frantic call he received from Agent Fowler.

"Prime! PRIME!"

"Agent Fowler. To what do we owe-"

"What else?" He answered, cutting off the leader. "'Cons! Some fuckface shot me out of the sky! I was transporting the DNGS when it happened, lucky it didn't melt down on impact."

"The what?" Bulkhead asked.

"Dynamic Nuclear Generation System, aka DNGS."

"I don't understand," Ratchet said. "Why would Starscream bother with such primitive technology?"

"I'm guessing to make a big, fat primitive WMD. If this baby melts down, it'll irradiate this state and the four next door."

"Erm, did Fowler say which state he was currently in?" Raf said nervously.

"I'm a sitting duck out here, Prime. Why don't you cycle up your ground bridge and get this thing to its destination before the decepticons go after it again?"

"I am afraid that sending such a volatile device through the ground bridge is out of the question," Optimus said. "If there were to be an accident during its transmission, the radiation of which you speak would spread anywhere the bridge could potentially reach - meaning, all the planet and much of the atmosphere."

Fowler winced. "You got any better ideas?"

"Yes."

Optimus described his plan. It consisted of, basically, transporting the device on foot until they reached a train. They would continue in another direction, while the DNGS would be transported by military officers on said train and they led the decepticons elsewhere.

"Margo?" Optimus said, and the girl jolted. "Would you mind lending the assistance of your hive?"

The girl smirked evilly.

~?~

The girl scowled.

Scraplets were all over the inside of Optimus, and inside of Bulkhead, Bee, and Optimus's trailer. None of the autoboots were happy about transporting her little critters, asleep though they may be.

Wheeljack adamantly refused to have the scraplets inside of him, and simply continued as if they didn't exist.

The girl was to be travelling inside Optimus, covered head-to-toe in about ten scraplets with five more all over his interiors (as the agreed-upon limit was one hundred scraplets), with Agent Fowler.

Who kept being a fucking disruption.

He was obviously anxious to get the DNGS to its destination, and she didn't blame him with such a volatile device not twenty meters away, but the sleeping scraplets weren't helping with the bots' stress levels.

She slapped her hands over her ears when Fowler started honking. The scraplets squealed when he started shouting too.

"Agent Fowler, is that really necessary?" Optimus asked.

"Oh, don't tell me you're one of those by-the-book drivers?" Fowler asked incredulously.

"Agent Fowler, you're sitting in a semi truck with a girl with sensitive hearing who can control a hive of bugs that eats anything metal. I suggest you be quieter," Margo hissed, cleaning out her ear of earwax.

Fowler didn't really seem to understand her threat.

She raised her eyebrow. "Blood has iron in it."

Now he understood for sure and chuckled nervously at the little creatures with offlined optics, cuddled in her arms and hair, a few recharging, some being petted and were veritable jelly in her hands, optics half-closed with pleasure.

"Would you like some music?" Fowler asked.

"Yes," Margo said, and reached for the disc button. Track fifteen was Optimus's favourite. A gentle classical sonata played in the speakers, and Margo adjusted the volume to something that was comfortable to her.

Fowler hit the off switch when he saw a helicopter in Optimus's rearview mirror. "That's him. The 'Con who shot me down! What's his name? Dingnut? Wingbat? Skyguy?"

"I seriously mourn for any decepticons who have names as bad as those," Margo said sardonically, and also looked out the window. "Mmm, the decepticons all have a similar formatting in purple. Deciding to reformat an entire team of ground-changers and a helicopter? And do the decepticons even have helicopters? I thought it was just jets."

"I would bet they're human," Jack said. "There's no energon reading."

"I swear, they're the ones that shot me down!" Fowler insisted.

"Then they're a threat. Boys, roll down your windows." Margo closed her eyes and reached for the scraplets in the autobots. "Go for the helicopter first, and then the grounders I direct you to. Leave no trace of them."

The scraplets darted out and ate the helicopter first. They then darted back down and ate the MECH cars. No one survived, their occupants similarly eaten for the iron in their blood and calcium in their bones.

The autobots ignored the screaming with practised ease. Fowler felt a bit sick. Margo covered her ears.

The scraplets came back and settled down rather calmly.

The rest of the trip occurred without incident.