"Heya mech. What's crackin'?"

"Go away." Draft growled, not even bothering to look up from the datapad he was reading while he walked. Whatever this guy wanted, he didn't care. He was far too busy and annoyed. Ultra Magnus had threatened to have his rations reduced again if he didn't finish the mech's fun little assignments, because clearly he wasn't trying hard enough.

"Aww, I just wanted to say hello to the new recruit. Name's Sideswipe, sweetspark."

The use of the term "sweetspark" flew over Draft's head, but the name Sideswipe didn't.

"Wait...were you the one that pranked me yesterday?" Draft demanded, the anger he held towards Ultra Magnus's datapads now directing itself at the red mech. That had been so embarrassing, especially since Silverbolt had seen him in all his glued up glory. Sideswipe grinned.

"What's the matter, wake up on the wrong side of the roof? Haha whoa-"

To be honest, trying to punch Sideswipe wasn't Draft's best moment. Whether he did it out of anger or because he'd been around the wreckers too long (the wreckers punched each other incessantly; Draft swore they didn't have pain receptors) was anyone's guess. "Trying" to punch Sideswipe was a good description however, because he missed. Sideswipe saw the swing coming and ducked, and Draft didn't have time to register the yellow mech standing literally right behind him until it was too late. Metal struck metal.

There was silence.

"L-Look ma-mech, I'm really...sorry. I was aiming at him," Draft started to apologize. The yellow mech seemed stunned for a second, before straightening and rubbing his slightly dented jaw. If the murderous look he gave Draft hadn't been so terrifying, Draft would have marveled at so good a hit. As it was, he was only now realizing how very very bad a call that had been when the yellow mech bared his denta in a furious snarl. Twin blades unsubspaced with a SHING.

"You're dead." He growled.

"Whoa, bro, he didn't mean it frag-face," Sideswipe said quickly, jumping between them. "Sunny, he was trying to hit me."

"Don't call me that." 'Sunny' snapped, shoving Sideswipe out of the way. Draft backed up.

"L-look, uh, Sunny, I d-didn't mean-" Draft began, thinking Sunny was the mech's actual name and that he had been referring to the "frag-face" bit. At his name, the yellow mech lunged.

Draft's back slammed into the wall; there was a shoot of pain, and he looked at his left wing in astonishment.

What the-

Sunny had just stabbed him. The fuck? Why? One of the silver blades was now pinning his wing to the wall, and only when he saw it, running his optics over the protruding hilt, did the pain actually hit home. He whimpered.

Sunny leaned in close, his optics nearly white with fury for some reason. Face inches away, he hissed, "Don't. You. Ever. Call. Me. That."

Draft headbutted him. Well, more like facebutted, but you get the idea. Because, well, this guy had just stabbed him, you know? He figured there was no reason to be polite since according to Sunny, he was already dead.

His yellow assailant stumbled back, and in that moment Draft kicked out at him for good measure. The kick caught the surprised frontliner squarely in the temple, and he went down. Hard.

"Sunny!" Sideswipe yelled, as surprised as Draft was by the lucky hit. Sideswipe bent down and inspected the unconscious mech before standing back up. The two stared at each other for a click. Draft, pinned to the wall, was certain Sideswipe was figuring how slowest to dismember him, if the company he kept was any indication to the mech's own temperament. But to his confusion (and relief), the mech started grinning.

"You got him." Sideswipe giggled. Then he burst out laughing. "Damn, you got him goooood! Hahahaha!"

Nervously, Draft joined in, but stopped his half-hearted chuckle when it moved his wing, which let him know just how much it didn't appreciate that.

Oh yeah, he'd kinda been stabbed.

"Woo, mech, that's classic," Sideswipe managed, apparently done laughing for the moment. Draft was starting to get tired of being laughed at while stuck to walls. "Cute and deadly. I like it. And I think proper reintroductions are in order. That stabby idiot's my brother, Sunstreaker. Isn't he a hoot? And you already know me." Sideswipe laughed again.

That said, he bent down and grabbed his friend's arms with a flourish.

"It was nice meeting you!" The red mech called, dragging the frame down the hallway like a satanic lion hauling away it's kill in the Serengeti. "And good luck when he wakes up!"

"Wait, you're just going to leave me here?!" Draft shouted back. Hello, he'd been stabbed!

"Why not?" Sideswipe's disembodied voice asked, having already dragged Sunstreaker around the corner.

"Your brother stabbed me!"

"Yeah, he does that sometimes!"

"Ughhhhhh." Draft groaned, slapping his helm against the wall; he belonged to a race of psychopaths. What had Ultra Magnus said? That they'd been fighting this war for millennium?

No fucking wonder.

...

Draft soon leaned the only thing he hated more than randomly getting stabbed was getting patched up for said stabbing. He'd seen his fair share of angry people, and he liked making the Wreckers angry (minus Ultra Magnus). God knows he'd gotten in enough fights growing up; there were still people who thought he was nothing more than an overgrown Siri.

But this Ratchet guy took the cake.

"-all the rust-slagging, half-bit, processor glitched things to do…-"

The scary medic wasn't talking to him of course; right now, an unfortunate mech with fins sticking out of the side of his head was taking it like a champ. Draft wondered what the fins were for. From the few spots of paint visible, he guessed the mech must normally be grey; it was hard to tell through the soot that absolutely covered him.

And oh yeah, he was missing his arm.

The mech caught Draft ogling him from the medbay entrance. "Don't worry, it's not as bad as it looks." He chuckled.

The statement caused Ratchet to turn around to see who he was talking to, and Draft cursed his luck as the fury the medic had been directing at this sooty guy now set its sights squarely on him.

"Who the Pit are you?" The medic barked. He noticed the knife still embedded in Draft's left wing; that had been a bitch to get out of the wall. "And the slag did you do?"

"Uh..uh...was..s-stabbed." Draft butchered. God, he sounded like such a moron. Was this how high school students felt when they went on those stupid (and overly expensive) trips to Spain, when Spanish wasn't their first language?

"Your vocalizer fragged up too? Sit down." Ratchet snarled, pointing to an empty berth; he wasn't really in the mood for more idiots right now. The CMO swore they only came out of the woodwork when he was on shift.

Draft quickly did as he was told, though that rebellious part of him that reawakened everytime Ultra Magnus was near balked at the notion of being ordered to sit like a dog. But surely Ratchet hadn't meant it like that. These guys probably didn't even know what a dog was.

Ratchet apparently deemed his condition not life threatening, because he went back to fiddling with the mess of wires attached to the finned guy's shoulder where an arm should have been. Fascinated, Draft watched. After a breem he felt a light tap his shoulder.

"Draft? What happened?"

Draft glared at the familiar mech. "Hi First Aid."

It wasn't that he disliked the smaller medic. Hell, he didn't even know him that well if he was being honest. But First Aid was one of the few mechs who knew about his situation, and thus Draft equated him to being complicit in it. And if there was one thing the Earth mech couldn't stand (besides being glued to the ceiling, or getting stabbed, or getting yelled at by Ratchet for getting stabbed because he was kind of scary but in a non-Ultra Magnus way, or Air Raid, or his stupid quarters, or this stupid war), it was the people responsible for him being here in the first place.

"Oh, wow, that's deep."

"Uh-huh."

First Aid gently ran his fingers over the embedded blade, eliciting a yelp from Draft. "Hey!"

"Sorry." He said. He knew how sensitive flyers' wings were. "I have to pull that out. Do you need painkillers before I do?"

"No." Draft said. Even if he didn't particularly like First Aid, he didn't want him thinking he was a wuss. He was a big bot.

"Okay...um, hold still I guess."

A burning sensation quickly spread in his left wing as he watched First Aid dig the knife out. Draft didn't like pain as much as the next guy, but had no qualms about watching medical procedures. His body was just a machine after all. Not to say he was; but over the years, getting repaired by human mechanics tended to desensitized you to that kind of thing. When he'd first discovered he could transform, he'd crashed at least twice a week. The guys down at the local autoshop knew him by name.

"...Draft, hey, Draft?"

"What?" He'd been distracted. First Aid was holding the knife.

"Can I have that?" Draft said, not realizing he'd said that aloud until First Aid was handing it to him.

"Uh, sure?" The medic agreed, baffled. As it passed hands he asked, "Draft, who stabbed you with this?"

"I don't know. Besides, I kinda started it. Don't tell Ultra Magnus." Draft said distractedly, more occupied with examining the eloquently forged blade than explaining himself. And it was sort of true. He didn't think he wanted to get to know Sunstreaker either.

CLANG

Both Draft and First Aid looked up, in time with Wheeljack's loud "oww!"

Draft stared. Had Ratchet...had Ratchet just hit that guy with a wrench? The heck?

"He does that sometimes." First Aid said, amused by the sparkling's expression. Draft silently thanked whatever deity was out there that he had First Aid working on him and not Ratchet.

Eventually First Aid released him, with the order to get some energon from the rec room, seeing as he'd lost some from the stab wound. Oh, Draft could definitely do that. He reminded himself to add military rations to the growing list of things to hate. On top of that, Ultra Magnus had put him on even further reduced rations as punishment for throwing that datapad at him a week and a half ago.

But hey, now that he had a doctor's approval, Ultra Magnus could suck it. Time to get some well deserved energon.

...

Standing in the door to the rec room, Draft had to refresh his optics. Twice. He'd never seen this many people in the enormous room before. Every table was full, with other groups just standing around, and the loud chatter of at least 200 people assaulted his audios. It looked like half the freaking army was in here. Was there some kind of party going on?

He nervously made to leave - guess he wasn't that hungry - when a red arm draped itself firmly across his shoulders. Draft jumped thinking it was Sideswipe (surely Sunstreaker wasn't far behind), but apparently the universe didn't completely hate him. He offered a shy smile.

The stranger returned it. "You're the new guy! Right?! Draft?!"

"Yeah, that's me!" Draft shouted back over the din.

"Name's Powerglide! Join me?! We got a table over there!" Powerglide jerked his head towards the back of the room. Draft only hesitated for a moment. Twin Twist's words came back to him. He could stand to make some friends.

"S-Sure!"

Draft weaved his way through the crowd after him, sticking close. On the way he bumped into a grey mech, who excused himself though he gave Draft a strange look. Draft was too busy staring at the various frames to notice. He'd never been around so many mechs in one place before. It was weirdly exciting, but also scary in its own way. Definitely not Kansas anymore.

"Guys, this is Draft!" Powerglide said, offering for Draft to take the inside seat at the booth before sliding in after him.

"Hey, I heard about you." A black and orange mech said. He laughed. "You know you're dead when Sunstreaker wakes up, right?"

Draft just stared at him. How-

"I was on monitor duty. Name's Trailbreaker."

Oh. Draft stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you." He quickly lowered it when Trailbreaker just looked at him.

Right. Earth customs.

"Wait, what did you do to Sunstreaker?" The purple guy sitting across from Powerglide asked, saving Draft from his awkwardness.

"He punched him in the face, then knocked him out." Trailbreaker answered before Draft could, smirking. Powerglide and the purple guy looked astounded.

"You did what?!"

"No way!"

"Mech," Powerglide chuckled. He elbowed Draft. "I swear, you got ball bearings of steel."

The way he said that made Draft slightly uncomfortable, though he didn't know why. Draft looked at Trailbreaker. "Is..this some k-kind of..uh, party?"

"You don't know?" Purple guy gasped. "We won!"

Draft smiled. "The war? Great." Everyone laughed, and Draft joined in, realizing how stupid that must have just sounded. Good thing they thought that was a joke.

"Prowl actually authorized this, can you believe it? And I heard Blaster's coming too, soon as he gets off shift. Then it'll really be a party." Powerglide said. "Hey, you want some highgrade? It's unlimited for the next two joors."

"Sure?" Draft said. Now, he wasn't a hundred percent sure what highgrade was, but the Wreckers had mentioned it a few times and it sounded like something one wanted. He bet it was like, really fancy energon. Lord knows the rest of this stuff was bland. He missed the gas and oil he'd been living off of on Earth, even if the stuff clogged his lines and tank, making his systems have to be flushed every so often like a human going to the bathroom. The Wreckers had been horrified to learn he did that on a regular basis.

Trailbreaker got up and returned a minute later with three cubes. Draft looked into his cube as Purple, who's name he'd yet to hear, regaled them with tales from the recent battle. So, it was a battle they were celebrating. Apparently it was important, and had gone well. Cool. The highgrade was sweet and left a buzzy taste in his mouth.

"So where are you from, Draft? Prowl recruit you?" Trailbreaker asked. They all looked at him expectantly.

"Actually, I'm fr-from Polyhex." Draft said, reciting the lie Impactor had concocted for him should anyone ask. "My fam-unit and I were s-separated during the...attack. On it. They didn't...survive."

"I'm so sorry." Powerglide said, laying a servo on Draft's shoulder. Everyone else at the table likewise expressed their condolences; many Autobots swelled the ranks for similar reasons. Damn 'Cons.

Draft took another swig of his highgrade. Man, this stuff was good.

"You guys hear about Blaze?" Trailbreaker said. Purple guy and Powerglide shook their heads, so the black mech continued. "He grounded twelve Seekers in this battle alone. I heard Prime's gonna give him, like, a medal or something."

"Damn, he should join the Wreckers." Purple guy laughed. And just like that the conversation shifted back to Draft. "Hey, you know those guys right?"

"Uh, y-yeah." Draft stuttered. Could they please talk about something else?

"You with any of them? People saying you got of the ship with them when they got back from that mission earlier. Don't tell me you're one of them."

"Do I look like a wrecker to you?" Draft snorted, pronouncing his Standard correctly.

Trailbreaker shrugged. "True."

"You look like you could hold your own to me." Powerglide defended with another friendly nudge. He was about to say something else but stopped. He grinned.

"Blaster's here."

That got everyone's attention. A boxy red and gold mech was setting up some kind of equipment in the corner. Draft was totally digging the guy's white visor. Man, he needed a mod like that. Despite being an army, the Autobots weren't even remotely uniform in appearance like human armies (which Draft personally thought looked unprofessional). Draft's armor was just basic flight armor the Wreckers had forged for him on the trip from Earth, seeing as before getting kidnapped he didn't wear any armor at all. Draft suddenly felt self conscious; he was pretty sure even the cleaning drones looked cooler than him.

Powerglide handed Draft another cube as he stared, noticing his first was empty. "It's about to get loud!" He laughed. Trailbreaker pretended to cover his audios, and Draft just blinked. Then a wall of sound pounded them.

"Femme's and gentle mechs, I just want to say, what a victory well done!" That had to be Blaster's voice, the speakers carrying it throughout the room the way clouds echoed thunder. "Till All Are One!"

"Till All Are One!" Everyone shouted back, minus Draft who had no clue what the phrase meant. But it seemed to be a toast, because Powerglide, Trailbreaker, and Purple each took a big swig of their cubes. Draft copied them, not wanting to be left out or come off as weird or something. These guys seemed nice and he was happy. That pleasant buzzing in his mouth was starting to spreadl. He was happy.

The sound of bass picked up, and the weirdest cacophony to ever call itself music filled the air. This was Cybertronian music? Draft pondered, attempting to absorb the sound over his table's conversation and the room's chatter. It was almost like a weird blend of techno and trap, but foreign all the same. Draft was swept up in the beat.

Hey, why was the room so spinny?

"...Draft…."

Draft looked at Powerglide slowly. He blinked. "What?"

Damn it, he'd been distracted. Powerglide leaned in really close in order, Draft assumed, to be heard over the music.

"I said, do you want to get out of here?" He said. Draft didn't answer, too busy wondering why the mech had helm spikes. Hey, he wanted helm spikes. Man, again, why did everyone else get to look cooler than him?

He absently let Powerglide lead him out of the booth.

"We're gonna go, see ya guys later." The red flyer was saying. Trailbreaker and Purple guy - ha! He looked like a flower! - bid them goodbye. The hand holding his guided him through the partying robots, and twice Draft almost lost his balance.

"Where...going." The world was getting really spinny. A firm hand on his shoulder kept him from falling, and it guided him down the empty halls. Most mechs were either on shift (sucked to be them) or at the victory party.

"We're almost *haha* there. You want to...see a real party?" Powerglide giggled. He wasn't nearly as overcharged as Draft, who felt like he was a second away from flying into space, but he was tipsy.

Powerglide palmed open the door to his quarters and the pair stumbled inside.

Draft immediately felt strong arms wrap around him in a hug. Did this mean they were friends? He giggled, returning the hug. Yay! Friendship hug!

Then something pressed forcefully against his mouth. Draft would have frowned if he could have. As it was, he tried to break away from unwanted kiss, but his feeble pushing didn't seem to have the desired effect.

"H-hey…..ssssstop." Draft slurred. He didn't like this kind of hugging anymore. Something wasn't right, but what was it? He distantly felt hands searching along his armor, and heard the audible "click" that was his right shoulder guard coming unattached.

"I don...ssstop." Something was definitely wrong. He tried pushing Powerglide off - maybe that was the source of the wrongness - and the prodding hands found his other shoulder guard.

The armor fell to the floor with a metallic ting.

Draft fell too, back onto something flat as something fell on top of him. It pinned him. His wings, he was crushing his wings! It hurt!

"Ssstop! My...my wingssss..." Draft choked out. It was hard to vent like this, and he squirmed as his friend - no, not a friend, his hazy processor corrected - stole another greedy kiss. "Ssstop..."

Thanks for the reviews!