Feminine Troubles 15 Makeshift
I'm not quite sure where Stopgap came from, other than me wondering who the femme contingent's version of Wheeljack might be. She's heavily inspired by Florence Ambrose from the excellent Webcomic Freefall. Only she's a Cybertronian instead of a genetically engineered super intelligent wolf, of course.
Femme! Cosmos, and the female Autobots in general have spawned some AMAZING fanart. I squeed loudly.
Torchweld and Stopgap, one of the femme contingent's few engineers, were consulting on the problem of contacting their Prime. Truthfully, the Cybertronian based Autobots were short on energon and engineers both. They were a small group, and were heavily geared towards intelligence, infiltration and sabotage.
Stopgap was, by her own admission, more of a technician than a scientist. She had her position by dint of being absolutely brilliant at making working components and useful machinery out of pieces of slag and scraps of other objects.
The gray and dusky lavender femme sighed, dusting her servos on a well- worn piece of nanofiber cloth.
"Honestly, 'Weld, we do not have the stuff to make a mini-bridge. We need a whole lotta parts, a bunch of energy, and a ton of superconductor. None of which we have."
"None of which we have the resources to make from scratch, either." Torchweld said with a sigh.
"Well, ya know there's one place we could get the stuff." The engineer answered.
"Humph. Elita is going to love that. She's the one who has to play Nexus with Shockwave and make polite conversation to distract him while we do a raid."
"Look on the bright side. At least that's all she has to do to distract him. Though at this point, I'd be willing to take old one-eye for a spin. It's been a long time since I had me a little action of the mech kind. Shame he likes the classy charismatic type, instead of the plain but crafty sort of femme."
"Stopgap! Leader of the Cybertronian Decepticons!"
"Oh, don't be a prude, Weld. I want a roll in the solar-collector fields, not a relationship. Don't tell me you've never coveted Decepticon equipment."
The medic's silence was telling.
Sunstorm was terrified. He was afraid to move, and scare his adorable rescuer away. He was also afraid of losing control of his radiation output, and hurting or killing the little space farer.
She was currently elbow deep in one of his engines, picking out bits of organic matter that made him wince in mortified disgust. The pretty Autobot femme must think him an inept fool, unable to manage a simple atmospheric reentry. Besides which, the semi-carbonized, feathery remains were awful, sticky and unpleasant to the olfactory sensor.
He didn't know much about femmes, but he was pretty sure that this wasn't the recommended way to meet one, especially one he would like to know better. She was so pretty, and tiny, not to mention compassionate towards an enemy mech. Why, she hadn't even made any nasty comments about his mishap or his current state, which is what any of his fellow seekers would do.
He privately cursed himself for promising not to abduct the sweet little Autobot. What in Pit had he been thinking, forgetting to put a time limit on an oath like that? It would be much easier if they met under other conditions, where he could fly and display properly and show off his wings and engines like a proper Seeker. It would be nice to scoop her up and preen her a bit, maybe get to polish those curves and listen to that powerful space-going engine purr. Now he was going to have to actually get her permission if he wanted to do those things, and that could be difficult. He probably didn't have a very good reputation among the enemy faction. In the mean time, there were some things he very much wanted…
"What is your designation, little Autobot?" He blurted.
She turned her big, blue optics to him, looking surprised. "My name is Cosmos." She said.
"I'm Sunstorm." He said, trying not to sound breathless. Must forbear from making any further gaffes in front of the cute, obviously compassionate little femme. "A…are you in any discomfort from my radioactive field?"
The little flier looked surprised. "Of course not. My radiation shielding was made to withstand thousands of cycles in space, with no atmosphere to protect me from cosmic radiation or solar winds. You would have to be really trying to penetrate it with your fields."
He stared at the beautiful little bot, and he was only mostly sure that the strains of Anvil's Third Symphony, (the one in praise of Primus's subtle glory) were playing in his imagination.
Obviously, this was meant to be.
Skyfire stumbled out of Optimus's office, happy but tired. She was glad to have been able to deliver good news to her leader. She was also glad that the Prime hadn't been angry with her for fragging her suitor.
Mostly though, she was really happy to have finally gotten to tap the Prime's magnificent aft. Good thing she was a flier though, or she wouldn't be able to make it back to her quarters. She had the presence of mind to text the other science staff, telling them that her meeting with Optimus had gone uh, long, and that she would make up her shift time at a later date. Thank goodness she didn't generally have to do patrols.
"Skyfire! Are you all right?" Bumblebee asked, concern written on her face-plates. Skyfire smiled woozily down at the adorable, itty bitty yellow femme, and just barely stopped herself from scooping her up and cuddling her.
"I had a really long, but really good couple of days, Bumblebee." She answered.
"That's good to hear, but oh! You've got marks all over your wings, and your paint is scraped, and…oh." The little scout said. "You went off to meet with Starscream! And you just left Prime's office!" She smiled in a charmingly naughty way. "Did you get to frag Optimus? I bet she's amazing."
Skyfire grinned at the sunny little bot. "I can in fact report that all rumors of Optimus's amazing-ness are entirely accurate."
"Bumblebee?"
"Yeah, Sky?"
"Do you ever think the Autobots and the Decepticons might make peace?"
The diminutive femme looked solemn. "I believe they could, but it would take a real change of attitude from the hard-liners. Bots like Optimus or Prowl or even Soundwave or Thundercracker or the Constructicons…They'd hang up their cannons in a nano click if they could. The problem is Megatron, and Starscream, and on our side bots like Ironhide and Red and the twins. "They hate the other faction, or they fear them. And they like to fight. It would take something really fragging different to ever make them give up war."
Bee looked up at the white and red shuttle, a hint of darkness in her expression. "You're lucky, you know. You missed the whole war, and you remember things the way they used to be. The rest of us, we're soldiers now, no matter what we started out as."
Skyfire nodded. "You may be right. For all that it was a terrible shock, waking to this strange new world, at least I wasn't there to see our civilization crumble. But you know, there have been some really major changes, and not all of them are immediately obvious. There's not that many things that can top a breeding Prime when it comes to motivational force."
"Breeding? What do you mean? The Allspark is gone."
Skyfire grinned conspiratorially at the little yellow scout. "I have some Golden Age novels that you really must read. The plot lines are kind of silly, but they do depict historical people and events fairly well."
Soundwave attempted to not loom over the Autobot Second in Command. The brilliant, golden afternoon light gleamed off the femme's elegantly monochromatic armor, lovingly highlighting her magnificent curves. He wanted to present himself as a dependable, logical, reasonable choice for a potential mate and sparkling sire, not as a hulking Decepticon threat.
He had waited for a time when Jazz was away from the Autobot base on a mission. She had been gone from her mate's side for several days, on a goodwill trip to the US Pentagon for her Prime.
This meant, of course, that the head of Autobot Opps was thousands of miles away. Leaving Prowl with a cold, empty berth and without her deadly companion.
Truthfully, Prowl was more Soundwave's opposite number than Jazz. Reserved, logical, seemingly more cold than passionate. Each of them had a more flamboyant co-commander, though Soundwave certainly did not have the kind of close relationship with Starscream that Jazz had with Prowl.
But more importantly, Prowl was not a killing machine with a hair trigger temper where protecting her companions was concerned. She could be reasoned with, even if one happened to be a high-ranking Decepticon. He knew how Jazz had courted her, having watched it with fascinated envy at the time. It involved a lot of persuasion, and also a large amount of weapons-grade teasing. Fortunately, that
happened to be his specialty.