Chapter 4: Swoop's Babies

21 July 1987

After the...Gremlin Incident, Prowl took a few days off to recuperate. He had yet to find the one who had let the little monsters in there, since all the usual suspects were locked up in the brig, and Wheeljack had no idea they'd escaped. He had wanted to question the crazy inventor exactly why he had built them in the first place, but decided he really didn't want to know.

Red Alert had yet to get all the copies he'd given out. Prowl suspected he had something to do with it, and had The Video on standby. To be completely honest, he'd been wanting to release it for a while, ever since the incident with the Aerialbots.

Speaking of, the daydreamer, Fireflight, was waiting outside when he walked through the door.

"Is there something I can help you with, Fireflight?" He'd learned a (depressingly) long time ago it was best to address troops by their name than by their rank when one on one. Helps them see him as a mech, not a cold-sparked fragger as some seem to think.

"Um...I think so. I didn't really know who I should report this to." Fireflight shuffled his feet for a second, a bit uncomfortable. Prowl raised an optic-ridge and waited. "Ah...it's Swoop." When he didn't elaborate, he just went ahead and asked, dreading the answer.

"What about him?"

"He's...he-uh..."

"Yes?"

"Me and my brothers were flying over the volcano and saw his nest. I didn't even know he had one, actually. Anyway," he went on quickly. "I saw a couple of the minibots in there. They-" Here, the kid burst into laughter so suddenly, Prowl jerked back a bit. "He put bonnets on them and was trying to put a diaper on Gears when they saw me."

Silence. Fireflight looked at him expectantly. He felt his doorwings quivering, and his sides began to hurt from keeping in the cackles he knew were trying to break out. He was never going to get that image out of his head...

"Did he say why he..." Primus, he couldn't even finish.

"He called them his 'babies.'"

...That did it.

Abruptly, he turned and walked back inside. His last glimpse of Fireflight, before the door slid shut and the laughter overtook him, was the kid looking at him like he announced he was going over to the Decepticons' base to propose to Megatron. He just laughed harder.

Rule #4 - Swoop, the minibots are not your "babies." Stop trying to put diapers and bonnets on them. You also need to bring them down from your nest. Cliffjumper and Huffer are threatening to jump.

Rule #4b - I retract my previous statement about the Dinobots not being able to read. Turns out Slag is fond of car magazines. Who knew?