Chapter 3
"Boy works fast," admitted Jazz after Bumblebee left with Sari and the waitress.
"Little too fast," came a voice from the right, "I thought that femme was better than that."
"Bee's a good kid," said Ratchet in his defense, "not a smart kid, but a good kid."
"Well, I hope so, for his sake," muttered the femme, "not to mention my sister's."
"Lick's your sister?" asked Jazz, "I knew you looked too young to be her caretaker."
"Uh, thanks?" replied the femme hesitantly, "anyways, the name's Lightbright."
"Nice to meet you," said the beatnik, "name's Jazz."
"Nice to meet you too," responded the femme, "so what brings the greatest heroes in cybertronian history here?"
"What else?" replied Ratchet, "Even before the Great War, this has always been my favorite greasy valve."
"Oh yeah, you're a veteran aren't you?" she remembered, "Hatchet was it?"
Wheeljack snorted into his energon, earning a glare from Ratchet.
"It's Ratchet actually," he replied, "the glitch-head wiping Energon off his grill is Wheeljack."
"Pleasure," she responded flatly.
"Pleasure's all mine," he replied before grumbling, "get rid of the mouth he says, the grill's more convenient he says, I should have asked Percy why he didn't try this on himself."
"You've been grumbling about that for stellar-cycles. Why don't you just get a new mouth?"
"They don't make parts of my model anymore," he groaned, "makes repairs a serious pain in the afterburners. I had to pay 6,000 cubes for a pinkie the last time I blew up. A pinkie!"
"There's one way to lower your medical bills," pondered Arcee.
"What's that?"
"Stop blowing yourself to powder every other decacycle!" snapped Ratchet.
"But that's the fun part! Explosions are a part of science, I always say!"
"Ehem," came the sound of Sentinel clearing his vocals, "if you malfunctions are quite done, the megacycle's up. Time to get moving."
"How can they stand being so… squishy?" pondered Lickety as she examined the half asleep technorganic on her servos, "It'd drive me crazy, being so vulnerable. They don't even wear armor!"
"I think they're used to it since most other organics are just as squishy," replied Bumblebee as he rummaged around in a drawer, pulling out spare armor and popping in back in with a clatter, "we once got this real scare with a 'con named Soundwave. He sent our processors into a virtual reality program that made us think we were humans." He shuddered, "not an experience I want to repeat. Driving stinks!"
"What are you looking for?"
"Humans are picky about what they recharge on," explained the scout, "they prefer soft things since their skin, that's their outer layer, is pretty sensitive. I was looking for something soft enough for Sari to use."
"Sorry?"
"No, Sari, that's her name."
"Humans are weird."
"Tell me about it," he replied as he overturned a drawer, only for several rims to spill out, "but they're pretty cool too. Since they're so squishy, they like to make things that help them out. They don't have any built-in weapons like other organics so they compensate by making some."
"Other organics have weapons?" asked Split as she looked into a drawer for something soft as well.
"Sorta, Prowl explained it to me once, but I wasn't really listening," explained Bumblebee before sadly adding, "I really should have listened, now that I think about it."
After a few nanoclicks, the younger femme called out, "Bee?" snapping the yellow bot out of his thoughts.
"A-anyways, if I remember correctly humans are smart so they don't actually need any claws or big teeth like other organics."
"So none of them shoot slime or acid?"
"I think some other organics do," replied 'Bee from a closet in which he kept spare plating, "Sari even told me that there's a shrimp that uses guns or pistols. Anyways, most of their weapons are built for defense against other organics, from what Sari told me they would just send us to the wash racks."
"Huh, so all that Sentinel said-,"
"Is complete driller slag," confirmed the yellow scout, before popping out from behind a closet holding a large buffer, "this is all I got. Well, at least it's new so it's clean."
He took the buffer out of its bag and put it on the table. He then called Lickety over to put Sari on the soft buffer. It was made of synthetic fibers, but it was also the only non-metallic object he had and was pretty soft.
"I'm not twired!" she whined before she opened her mouth in a yawn.
"You were saying?"
"Would it be a bad idea to keep one as a pet?" asked Split, "they're kinda cute."
"The humans probably wouldn't like that," responded 'Bee, "they're very protective of their young. Maybe even more than we are."
"Um, 'Bee, she's leaking."
"What?" he looked back at Sari, who had suddenly sat up and started crying, "what's wrong Sari?"
"I'm swowwie Bumbybee."
"Why?"
"I din meen to *hic* to huht yoo," she sobbed, "I'm swowwieeee!"
She was bawling at that point. Leaving Lickety utterly confused about the situation.
"She hurt you?"
"She must be talking about that time she lost control of her body," explained 'Bee, "she upgraded herself with energy from the Allspark to take out a rock lord and lost control. Next thing you know, I'm on the ground with a stab wound next to my spark chamber and a fried CPU."
Sari only cried louder, making Bumblebee curse himself for telling that story near her to begin with.
"It's all right Sari, I'm not mad. Really."
"Pwomise?"
"Promise."
The small femme finally smiled and curled up in the middle of the buffer to sleep. Bumblebee then picked up the buffer and carried it to his room to let Sari sleep peacefully.
"I hadn't taken care of her like that in a while," he explained as he came back, sitting down on the metallic couch, "I have to admit, I kinda missed it."
"How did she become half organic?" asked Lickety-Split, "You said something about the Allspark, did that have something to do with it?"
"Sorta," he replied as he took out a bottle of coolant from the fridge and served it into two rectangular glasses, "she was smaller when we first met her, maybe half her current size and she was always technorganic though even she didn't know that. No one was more surprised than she was when we found out."
"How did she not know?" replied the femme as she took the glass 'Bee offered, "I mean, I'm sure I'd notice if I was half organic."
"Except that organics have skin and other squishy parts to cover her cybertronian parts. She didn't even need energon up until recently."
"So how did she find out?"
"It was during a raid to Megatron's base," he explained, "he was trying to make a space bridge to transwarp to Cybertron and even captured Sari's dad and Bulkhead to help him build it. Anyway, when the whole thing went to the pit, the cave collapsed and crushed the space bridge. Next thing we know, Sari had cut her elbow open on a rock and had exposed sparking circuits."
"So which came first, the techno or the organic?"
"The techno, I don't know the details but apparently Isaac, that's Sari's dad, found a protoform. It scanned him and boom, instant Sari. Eight stellar cycles later, we meet her and two stellar cycles after that she upgraded herself into her current form. She's actually pretty tall for a human her age."
"Okay, one last question."
"Shoot."
"What's a dad?"
"We are here to discuss the protective measures that will be granted to the technorganic, Sari Sumdac," stated Ultra Magnus stoically to Optimus and his team, "Botanica, your proposals?"
"She will obviously have to maintain her organic half a secret," she stated, "but we will also need a cover for her size."
"We already came up with one," cut in Optimus, "she's a Minicon that we stumbled across during a maintenance run before we found the Allspark. She was accidentally activated a few days prior to the rock lord attack on Detroit."
"A Minicon would be the only thing that size that could injure a rock lord," confirmed Wheeljack as he scratched his chin in thought, "Though I'm not sure they could kill one."
"We could always say that she bonded with Optimus." Proposed Cliffjumper.
The room went silent.
"But I-she-," gasped the aforementioned Prime as the rest of the councilors (minus Perceptor) stared at him with some fairly realistic fish impersonations. Sentinel only did a gagging motion as his tanks threatened to purge themselves.
"For the love of-! Not THAT kind of bonding!" he clarified, "the thing that Minicons can do! You know, where they become upgrades for their host? Honestly, get your processors out of the gutter!"
"Powerlinking?" proposed Wheeljack.
"Yeah, that!"
"Would you mind saying that first!" yelled Sentinel, "I almost purged my tanks!"
"That would explain things," agreed Bulkhead with an optic twitching at Sentinel, "but what if someone asks for a demonstration? Sari's not symbiotic or a Minicon!"
"We'll have to cross that bridge when we get there," sighed Botanica, "where is she staying?"
"She's sleeping over at Bumblebee's apartment for the time being," replied Optimus.
"We will provide a home for her, but she will need a cybertronian designation," proposed Alpha Trion, "her human designation is too conspicuous. She looks like a Goldburst to me."
"Nah, Goldstreak is better," countered Cliffjumper.
"Sunstreak?" pondered Botanica.
"Too close to Sunny's name," pointed out Cliff, "how about her powers? How does Orb sound?"
"Orb? Really?" asked Arcee with a raised optic ridge, "maybe Ariel… Lumina? Nah. I got nothing. Ratchet?"
"Yeah, how about we ask her later," he said with an irritated tone, "this is really the least of our problems with Megatron's trial coming up."
"Uh, yeah, good point," agreed Botanica, "sorry, it was too much like naming a new protoform."
"Optimus Prime, you have an urgent call from Bumblebee," stated the PA system.
"Patch him through," he replied as he turned away from the council members to take the call to his com link, "Optimus Prime here, what's going-?"
The energon in his veins froze.