A child disappearing in Iacon was a very serious thing, never to be taken lightly. The possibilities of what may have happened were almost numberless, and all do haist would be made by the enforcers to find the lost creation. Well, all do haist was made for some family, but not for all. Enforcers had a lot to do and children went missing all the time. It just wasn't conceivable to give all cases the exact same attention. Thus it was that Firestorm, Rainbow and Rainshower were told they had to wait 24 hours before the enforcers could do anything about it, even though Rainbow insisted that no one had seen Red Alert since the night before.
"There is nothing to be done, except search on our own." Firestorm stated, striding out of his yard. "We will start along the path to your home. Red Alert knows to stay where he is if he is ever lost, until someone he knows finds him." Rainshower and Rainbow followed the red and yellow Praxian, and although they didn't say anything out loud, they both thought it was very unlikely any mechling would wait in one place for so long.
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The moon was shining high over Iacon when Rainshower looked behind a pile of scrap metal and found the sleeping mechling. Gently, he reached around the curled frame and hefted Red Alert into his arms.
"Rainbow, Firestorm," he called over the comm line they had open. "I found him."
"Where are you?" Firestorm asked quickly. The Praxian was looking in the more residential area.
"Prime Street and Fiftieth South: behind Dice 'n' Drinks." Rainshower shifted the child to a more manageable position; although he was small for his age, Red Alert wasn't nearly as easy to hold as any of his younger creations. "I'm heading back toward your place Firestorm."
"We'll meet you there 'Shower." That was Rainbow. She'd been searching more toward Iacon's main streets, away from residential zoning.
The lanky green mech stepped out onto the road, looking down once to make sure the mechling was still deep in recharge, he transformed and drove back toward Firestorm's home. Rainshower was lucky to be one of the few Iaconians whose alt mode was actually large enough to hold a mechling, even a small one, inside og it.
It didn't take him long to make it back to where they'd all started.
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As soon as he transformed, Firestorm was pulling the now barely awake Red Alert from Rainshower's side and up in a strong embrace. The mechling was too tired to pay much attention to what was going on around him, and just tucked his helm under his father's chin, happy to be held by someone familiar after what had happened.
The pair remained like this for a few moments, until Firestorm raised his door wings back up to their typical, rigid, stance. He turned to the mech and femme standing near him. "I thank you both deeply for your assistance." His voice was back to the stiff tone he usually used in conversation. "If there is a time I may ever repay you, please, tell me." With that, he turned sharply on his heel and strode away.
Rainshower moved forward, the look on his face showing that his worry for his son's friend had not abated with finding the child. Rainbow placed a hand on his arm, pulling him back.
"Don't." She warned.
"I just want to make sure the kid's okay. Firestorm doesn't seem like the mech who's going to take Red Alert to see a doctor at this hour, if something is wrong with him." There were other things that Rainshower didn't think the Praxian would do, this just wasn't the time to talk about them.
"I know, but believe me, if we start medalling too much in his life, Firestorm is going to feel insulted that we think he's not raising his creation properly." Rainshower could recall her own creators' reactions when some of their neighbors accused them of not raising their children in the propor Praxian way. "It would not go over well. Not at all."
"But that is exactly what I think." Rainshower insisted as his bondmate pulled him out of the nice lawn and to the street that would lead them back home.
"I know." She replied as they transformed and turned down the street that lead away from the middle class housing.
"He hadn't even seen Red Alert since the kid left to come to our home!" The couple waited for a light to turn. "Does he even know how to raise a child?!" He knew he was letting his temper get away with him.
"Praxis isn't like Iacon." Rainbow murmured as they transformed and walked to the stairs leading up the the little porch before their door.
"I'm worried about him." The green mech ended his tirade, stepping inside.
"So am I." Even for a Praxian, Firestorm's views on parenting were extreme. Rainbow hadn't seen anyone that detached for many, many years.
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"My little Red." Firestorm whispered as he tucked his little son under his blanket. "How did you wander so far?" He rubbed a yellow finger over his creation's central sensory horn. "We'll talk about that in the morning." With that, the tall Praxian stood from the low bed and walked to the door. Glancing back, he saw that Red Alert had already return to sleep. With a sigh, he let himself out of the smaller room and into his own.
Red Alert had the day off from school tomorrow, some kind of teacher seminar was going on and he himself didn't have to be at the office until noon. He would have plenty of time in the morning to talk with his son about what had happened. In the meantime, he really to get some rest of his own.
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Red Alert twisted on his bed, mind active, even while his frame recharged. His young mind couldn't make sense of everything he'd glimpsed while out in the fog, and wandering around parts of the city he'd never seen before, so it coped with the memories the only way it could.
With a gasp, Red Alert jolted from sleep, hands flying to his horns as he shock in the aftermath of a horrifying dream.
He'd been with the strange femme he'd first ran into, the one that picked him up, but they weren't outside, they were inside one of the low buildings he'd glanced into. The femme with the odd armor was holding him, bouncing him up and down on her lap, while one of the darkly painted mechs he seen on a street corner stood over them both, a smile painted onto his grim face. Red Alert hadn't liked the way the mech started at him, white teeth showing between his lips, one hand resting on something bound to his hip.
The femme bouncing him had been humming something, and it calmed him down a little, caused him to not pay as much attention to the dark mech. He'd actually enjoyed the bouncing for a while, until the hands under his arms were pinching wires, and she was shaking him back and forth, snarling at him. Red Alert tried breaking free of the femme's hold, but she just pinned his arms to his sides and shook harder.
"You've been a naughty little thing, haven't you." She hissed in his audio, fingers clawing under the hood of his still developing alt mode. It wasn't the voice of the femme though. Red Alert could remember who the voice belonged to, but it was another femme who'd said those same things to him a long time ago.
"Stop! Stop!" The mechling cried, energon leaking from his mouth as he accidentally bit his lip. He thought his optics were going to fall out from all the jerking. Then dark hands were grabbing him too, yanking him out of the femme's painful hold.
The dark mech held him high over the ground by his ankle. Red Alert screamed as the femme lept up at him, clawed hands reaching for his face. The mech stepped back, kicking the wild femme away. She howled, spitting in her rage, but did not return. Gasping for breath, the mechling twisted to look up at the mech and suddenly he remembered something his father told him.
Firestorm had pointed across the plaza at a darkly colored mech. "You see that mech Red Alert?" The youngling nodded his head. "If one ever comes near you, you run as fast as you can to me or an enforcer. Do you understand?"
"Yes fathe'. But why?"
"Mechs like that do terrible things to younglings." Firestorm hadn't even bothered to correct his creation's pronunciation.
The dark mech lifted the now thrashing mechling higher into the air, opening a giant bag tied to his hip, then lowering Red Alert steadily toward the huge opening. The child screamed again.
That was when he'd woken up.
Now, Red Alert lay frozen on his berth, too scared to go back to sleep and too scared to get up and try hiding from the monster in his sire's room.
