Chapter 12: Solidarity
Sorry about the delay folks. Big thanks to everyone who reviewed!
Inferno and the Protectobots returned from nearly a week spent helping the humans fight one of the frequent summer wildfire in high spirits. They always enjoyed such things, working together with some of their favorite groups of humans for a common, constructive goal.
The firefighters had none of the reservations towards them that the native residents of Earth often showed their giant alien neighbors. Firefighting was dangerous, exhausting work, and the Autobot presence helped to preserve lives and land. The group was in high spirits, laughing, joking and telling exaggerated stories about their recent adventures. It had been great to leave the base, and do something other than fight Decepticons for a change.
There had been one odd thing about the trip though. The human firefighters had, as always, been happy to wash down their allies' alt modes and help to scrub off the soot, but many of them had acted strangely squirrely about doing the same when the bots were in their bipedal configurations.
The Protectobots had been very puzzled and a touch hurt by their long-time friends' behavior. Inferno, on the other hand, had had to stifle gales of laughter when firemen that they had known for years suddenly balked about scrubbing soot off of the Autobots' plating.
A smallish group of female firefighters had cheerfully shouldered their brethren aside and suggested that "You boys go find something to do for a while, why dont'cha?" They had broken out the truck washing tools and invited the bots to join the National Womens' Firefighting Association, or NWOFA. One of the firewomen had joked about "suddenly feeling a LOT less outnumbered."
Inferno had promised the Protectobots that she would explain when they got home. Silly repressive mammal gender constructs.
Cosmos was returning from a mission to deposit a couple of tiny spy drones into orbit around Earth when she saw him.
The golden, glowing seeker streaked past her in a haze of reentry friction, and she wistfully admired his sleek form. He was lovely, all streamlined grace and savage power. He didn't even bother to acknowledge her, like she was so beneath him that he didn't even need to bother with shooting at her. So like a Seeker. They always considered other fliers lesser. Less strong, less fierce, and of course less beautiful.
In her case, he was right, of course. She had been built to be small and efficient, able to maneuver in tight spaces and through challenging conditions in space, but she was not built for speed, and certainly not for looks. Once, before the war, there had been thousands of mechs with her exact frame. Her pre-Change frame, anyway. They had maintained orbital installations and communities all throughout Cybertron's solar system. Her build type had been utterly commonplace.
They were utilitarian mechs who spent long periods of time in the harsh vacuum of space. Her kind had once spent their orbital cycles chatting amongst themselves and watching all the latest from their home world as they industriously flitted amongst the many moons, orbital stations, and other projects at the periphery of the Great Machine that was Cyberton .
She was the only one of her build among the Earth based Autobots, though of course there were others elsewhere, even now. Some would even still be mechs, as there were still neutral enclaves of her build type, eking out a functioning in asteroid belts and hidden among alien moons. They were built tough, to function and thrive in conditions that that pretty seeker would never be able to handle over the long haul.
Idly, she wondered what those isolated Neutrals would make of her now. She was no Mecha Goddess like the Prime or Sunstreaker or Mirage, but her own frame kin would think she was cute.
The Seeker, who was now well below her and glowing red-gold with the flames of re-entry, wobbled a bit. She tsked to herself. Seekers might be lovely, but they took the sheer power of their engines too much for granted. That kind of sloppiness could get a mech killed out in the Kuiper Belts in this solar system, never mind some of the wilder places she had seen over the years.
She knew which one he was, of course. They had all been warned about the deadly radiation he gave off, that could fry a bot's circuits through mere proximity. Rumor had it that he was madder than a box of un- defragged game drones in a youngling school toy box besides.
A shame. That was a gorgeous wingspan, down there.
She entered the Earth's atmosphere with considerably less fuss than the Decepticon. She was heavily shielded against all sorts of radiation, from cosmic rays to solar flares. She could shrug off levels of radiation that would melt most bots.
Wait a click.
Cliffjumper and Bluestreak had been patrolling when the Decepticon triple changer had attacked. Fortunately for them, Blue was considerably more observant and alert than most beings would give her credit for.
Bluestreak had suddenly lunged at her, grabbing her and diving for cover behind a rocky ridge as the ground exploded where they had just been standing. The ordinance wouldn't have been enough to kill them, which probably was a worse sign than if he had been using the big guns.
It was never a good sign when the Decepticons wanted you incapacitated but not deactivated.
Astrotrain circled around again, firing at them in a wide-spaced pattern that seemed more designed to flush them out of cover and into his grasp than actually hit them. Cliffjumper was hardly going to fall for that. He wanted to play silly buggers with them, he was going to slag well reap the consequences.
With the precise coordination of long practice, she laid down covering fire while Bluestreak sighted her rifle, her body very still in the gloom of Earth's twilight. The femme was as steady as any of the rock formations that surrounded them as she took careful aim at their adversary and squeezed off a precise shot.
There was a shriek of pain, overshadowed by the shriek of overstrained engines as the Decepticon wheeled, one wing trailing smoke.
Bluesteak and Cliffjumper opened fire in earnest, trying to bring the Decepticon down. Despite having part of one wing on fire, the fragging Con managed to evade them and chart a lumbering course in the other direction, trailing smoke the whole way.
Cliffjumper sneered after the departing triple changer and checked on Blue. The kid was already starting to babble again, a sure sign that she was no longer running her targeting program.
"Wow 'Jumper he really came out of no where, didn't he? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because it isn't like we have a formal cease-fire with the Decepticons or anything, even though Megatron and Optimus want to blow each other's circuits so badly that even I can feel the tension and I'm not the most observant Autobot in the world and half the seekers are regularly interfacing with Autobots and don't seem at all interested in fighting right now but I suppose that makes sense since Seekers were actually originally programmed to protect femmes and Sparklings a really long time ago or that's what Ironhide said anyway. I guess she would know, since she's the oldest Autobot on Earth right now and was around back when there were more femmes on Old Cybertron."
Cliffjumper interjected. "Good shot, kid. I called it in to headquarters while you were targeting mean and ugly there. Orders are to head back for debriefing. That was the first time in a while a Con attacked one of our patrols. The brass want to know if the Cons are planning to reopen hostilities."
Bumblebee was getting a wash from her human friends, who were diligently scrubbing her plating clean with large (for humans) sponges and soapy water. The sun was warm and wonderful on her armor, and she was practically purring under the organics' ministrations.
She dozed lightly, lulled by the pleasant sensations. He sensors picked up a bit of interference, and she shifted on her tires, tensing slightly. The cons had been quiet lately, but that didn't mean that she should drop her guard, out here with no backup but her humans, who while great company, were unfortunately not much use in a fight.
She alertly searched her surroundings with her Scout's augmented sensors, but there was no indication of a nearby threat.
"Ya think she's doing this to tease us?" Asked Rumble.
"Beats me." Frenzy replied. "For all I know, she did this every week back when she was a mech. Lazerbeak or Buzzsaw might know if it's a regular thing. 'Course, maybe she knows we're watchin her and is taunting us for being stalkers."
Rumble sighed longingly, watching the soap bubbles sliding down that cheerfully colored armor. "We could go and steal those sponges from the squishies, kick em out of the way and see if she'd rather get washed by someone who knows his way around mechanicals."
"She'd be pissed if we hurt her pets, bro."
"We don't have ta hurt em. They're her sidekicks, right? We could just sort of carefully kick em to the side, so they don't break."
Frenzy took an artistically composed still shot of the small, bright yellow Earth vehicle that was the focus of his admiration. "Primus, she is SO hot. Why can't she have the squishies wash her in her root mode? I'd love to see that."
Rumble looked uncharacteristically thoughtful. "Maybe it's the alt mode that's dirty? I know, if we can get her root mode covered in road dust and crud, maybe we'll get to see her getting washed that way too!"
"Um, bro? I 'd like to see Bumblebee in femme form with lots of shiny soap bubbles sliding down her armor as much as anyone, but I'm pretty sure you're supposed to say you care with energon, not by hitting someone with a truckload of mud."
Rumble stared at his twin. "I am not the one who just put Bee-babe and a truckload of mud in the same sentence. Perv. On the other servo, if we're going to go that way, I'd say we should go for a pond full of mud, and include the other cute little mini femme."
"What, the really belligerent one?" Frenzy asked, optical ridges rising. "Sure she's cute, but I think she likes mechs with wings, if that thing with Dirge is anything to go by."
Soundwave had just had a most enlightening conversation with his leader. It been startling to see Megatron looking so uncharacteristically relaxed. The warlord had never looked so well shagged in Soundwave's memory cache. Ravage had reported that he and Starscream had stumbled in this morning smelling strongly of transfluid, femme, and a lot of overloads.
The Air Comander had been humming in the commissary earlier. It was either a sign of the Apocalypse, or Starscream had been fully satiated for once. Probably by a certain overly pacifistic but (according to his spies' reports) utterly voracious shuttle.
The Coneheads had been so alarmed by their commander's behavior that they had quietly fled the room. Unfortunately for said mechs' peace of mind they had encountered a smiling Megatron in the hallway. And his face-plates didn't even crack!
The quiet panic among the troops had been highly amusing. Soundwave made sure to get plenty of footage. He wished he could bottle the effect. Besides the sheer entertainment value, having two of the most volatile personalities on the Nemesis walking around in a happy post-coital glow was extremely good for the general atmosphere. Like a morale booster-shot, with nutritious trace elements of sex cyber-pheromones.
Megatron had summoned Soundwave into one of the seldom-used conference rooms for a cube of energon and an "informal discussion." He had then proceeded to grill him on his knowledge of female Autobots.
"Soundwave." Megatron said. He didn't waste time with pleasantries, even when mellowed out by the remnants of a happy post-orgasmic haze. "I need to know about femme habits, their maintenance requirements, and what they did on Cybertron before the war. Shockwave has been locating records, but they are scarce. I know you and your symbiotes maintained communication satellites once, and I want to know what intelligence you can provide."
It was fortunate that the telepath had been doing research on femme culture and systems ever since the Autobots' Change. This had mostly involved a lot of spying on the other faction and sending his casseticons to hack into some of the peripheral databases in the Ark. Apparently one of Blaster's cassestes had been female even before the change, and there were enough female Autobots that they had general information on their systems in a minimum-security console in the med bay.
Besides, Megatron thought he was asking about femmes, but he was really asking about Autobots. Well, Autobots who now had femme hardware and software installed, which was not precisely the same thing. Soundwave did his best to both inform his leader, and plant a few more suggestions about how to handle the opposing faction. He took pains to remind Megatron that simply chaining an Autobot to his berth would result in a miserable, and therefore infertile femme, no matter how many overloads she had there. Besides, even if the femme in question (he carefully did not say the Prime's name) sparked, who would build the protoform? Who would do the required upgrades? There was no-bot in the entire Decepticon army with that skill set.
That aside, there were only a double handful of Decepticons that he would trust unsupervised around new-sparks, and two of them were Soundwave himself and Ravage. To his surprise, Megatron seemed to have already thought of some of the points himself.
It was most unexpected. Not so long ago, Soundwave would have said that Megatron cared far more about personally defeating Optimus Prime than he did about Cybertron or even the survival of their species. Perhaps he had misjudged his leader. Or perhaps his rivalry with Prime had been more of a hobby than an actual goal…and now his focus had changed.
Soundwave considered it his duty as a Cybertronian to do his best to steer his leader in a productive direction regarding the future of their species. Preferably a direction which also lead to Soundwave sharing quarters with a couple of the Prime's higher ranking officers.