Chapter 11

"Do you have to lock them back up?" asked Sari from the operating table.

"Hmmm, let me think," said Ratchet as he looked around at the wrecked room, a light fixture fell from the ceiling as it lost its futile battle against gravity, "YES!"

Shortly after leaving Vector's home, Sari had begun complaining about her sore arms. A quick trip back to the hospital and a jab at her transformation mechanisms had revealed that Perceptor had removed the restraints on her upgrades, hence the recently trashed room, the irritated medic, and the nurse hiding under the table with coolant foaming from her mouth. One day in Cybertron, and Sari already had a fairly large debt to her name and had traumatized a poor femme.

"Perceptor owes me," she concluded, "who takes parts out and forgets to put them back in?"

"We'll send him the bill," agreed Ratchet as he placed the first tool under the skin on her wrists, "now hold still."

"Owowowowowowowow!"

"Quit whining!"

"Quit sticking me with screwdrive-OW!"

"It's not a screwdriver! I'm severing the nerves leading to the weapons."

"Um, isn't that… dangerous?"

"Transformation mechanisms don't atrophy." He replied, "besides, at the rate your nerves regenerate, they'll be back within the stellar cycle."

"Okay th-oW!"

"Don't move!"

A few moments later he moved on to her calves.

"Wait, do you think I can keep the skates?"

"Definitely not," he snapped, "I'm pretty sure it was the energon ion blades that triggered the first attack."

"Okay then… the jump jets?"

Ratched sighed, she just wasn't letting this go. "We'll see."

"Well, I guess that's- OW! Can't you use the EMP!?"

"It's a small surgery," replied the medic, "not even a particularly painful one. Besides, we still don't know the right calibration for your systems. Last thing we want is for you to fall into stasis for a week again."

"Yeah, that sucked. Diapers are humiliating."

"I can imagine," he agreed, "I imagine it would be like waking up with a hose running out of your waste pipe."

"Do you end up with it clinging to you?"

"Do diapers go inside your exhaust port?" countered the medic.

"Ok, ew. Ugh! I don't even want to think about who changed them," moaned Sari at the embarrassing memory, "dad said he hired a nurse. That means somebody I don't even know saw me naked!"

"A professional wouldn't hold it against you," said Ratchet dismissively, "there, try to stand."

She did so shakily like a newborn, letting her servos recalibrate.

"Transform and try the boosters at their lowest setting."

"You left them on? Cool!"

She transformed to the best of her ability, trying not to yelp when the nanoservoes in her freshly-reassembled body caught and seized, generating a loud grating noise instead of the normal beeping sound.

"What was that?" asked Ratchet, "You used to transform in the blink of an optic!"

"I've been having trouble transforming since the thing with Perceptor," replied Sari, "how long did I take?"

"Ten seconds," he snapped and he tapped her chest, "Open."

Sari's chest plates slid sideways, exposing the Matrix of Leadership momentarily before it slip upwards to cover the spark chamber and expose the biomechanical organ. Ratchet noticed that while the T-cog was in good condition, its casing had been lightly damaged during the operation.

"Well, you should be fine eventually," he noted as he added some extra lubricant to the housing, "though it will be a few thousand stellar-cycles before you're able to transform at your old speed."

"I'm totally super-gluing Perceptor's mouth shut," she whined as her chest closed back up, "I mean it's not a huge inconvenience, but now it hurts when I transform."

She blinked when she noticed a particular word in Ratchet's sentence. "Wait, thousand stellar-cycles? Am I even gonna live that long?"

"I don't see why not," he replied, "we don't really know whether cybertronians have an upper age limit. I don't think I've ever heard of anybot that's died of old age. Now then, don't transform yet. Let the lubricant seep in properly."

She didn't answer.

"Kid!"

"Huh? What?" yelped the overgrown ten-year-old, "Sorry doc. I was just thinking."

Ratchet raised an optic ridge but decided not to comment. If Sari wanted to share what was bugging her, she'd tell him.

"Don't transform, just use your boosters to hop a little."

She complied…

And promptly crashed into the wall.

"Kid! I said hop!"

"I need more practice with these things," she moaned back as she comically slid back down with the faulty paint chip flickering her dress' colors on the way down, "I think I broke my nose."

"Let me see," he replied as he took out a small light and shone it onto her face to look for damage, "meh, you're fine. But I recommend you change the settings to automatic power balance. Just access you system controls."

"My what?"

"Just think about it and the options will come out," he sighed, "you should be able to do it instinctively."

"Well excuse me but I'm kinda new at this."

She concentrated on her systems and a menu popped out in her field of vision.

"You're kidding," she said, "I have a main menu?"

"Sure. It's useful. I'm more surprised that organics can manage without it."

"Let's see… color options?"

She accessed the file.

"How do you think I'd look in… red!"

"Terrible."

Sari looked down at her crimson dress.

"Yeah, back to default. Maybe I can change my hair color too?"

"Try it later. For now, just put your booster potency setting on automatic and you're good."

"Lessee, weapons, paint, optics…"

Her optic colors switched to green, red, purple, and yellow before she settled back to the default.

"Just get to the boosters!"

"Fiiiine! Software settings, wetware settings, ah! Hardware settings."

She paused.

"I'm missing a lot of controller software."

"I uninstalled it to keep you from trying the weapons."

"Says here my hammer's still here," she noted, "just uninstalled, but I think this is the backup."

"Don't!"

Ratchet's warning came too late and Sari's left arm transformed, opening her storage transwarp dimension to let the collapsing hammer out.

"Doesn't this thing work with energon ions?"

"Exactly," replied Ratchet with an exasperated tone as he readied his EMP, "stay still kid."

Sari watched warily as the engine block was carefully aimed at her. She did not fancy waking up in diapers again.

"Wait, shouldn't something have happened by now?"

Ratchet blinked, she was right.

"Maybe the hammer's safe," she said.

"Maybe," he replied, "I'll run a scan just in case. Don't move! We don't know what might trigger another attack."

Sari wisely obeyed, noting the new crevices her earlier attack had caused. She held back a giggle as the scanning laser passed over her, tickling most of her nerve endings simultaneously.

"Huh, no energy overload," he concluded, "looks like you're fine with these two. Though it looks like it'll be some time before you can use the blades and skates."

He frowned.

"It also looks like First Aid was right," he noted, "you're in the middle of your pulsing cycle."

"My what?"

"It's an excess of energy that femmes produce to provide energy for the sparkmate bond," he replied, "you'll be easily aroused whenever this happens until you find a mate."

Sari looked at him with a bemused expression.

"You do know what that means right?"

She shook her head.

"I'm too old for this," moaned the old mech, "visit Red Alert after you come back from your trip. I'll get you an appointment with her to have the excess energy drained away."

"Isn't that bad?"

"Actually, your spark will burn through your chassis if you don't drain it away."

The small femme paled, "Who came up with that!?"

"Doesn't sound too smart, does it? I still wonder what Solus was thinking when she added that. Red Alert should fill you in on the rest. In the meantime, did you find the booster settings?"

"Oh right," she said as she accessed the menu again, "Auto mode right?"

She leapt again, this time only taking an extra ten feet before falling back down to the ground.

"That was a lot better."

"I wonder if I have some other stuff here."

"I can't imagine fitting much more into that tiny frame of yours," snarked Ratchet as she hopped onto his hand.

"Say, what do you think these are for?" she asked as she wiggled her pigtails with her hands, "I mean, I know I have pigtails and all, but I refuse to believe that the Allspark decided to stick bananas on my helm as a decoration."

"Just look around in your hardware settings when you get the chance."

Sari's pigtails split at the front near the head joint and slid forwards to reveal two rounded glass triangles inside.

"What are these?"

"Headlights I think," she turned them on, "yep. Turn those off. Its bad manners to flash bots like that, especially indoors."

Sari snorted.

"What?"

"Flashing," she giggled, "it means something else back home."

Ratchet raised an eyebrow but decided not to comment.

"All right, she's good to go," called out the medic as he reached the waiting room, "Perceptor decided to remove the restraints on her upgrades and the sudden release of energon was catching up to her. She also took some damage to her T-cog housing so don't ask her to transform for another six or seven megacycles."

"What was that noise from before?" asked Bulkhead.

"That would be her attempt at decapitating me when her upgrades went wild again."

Sari blushed and looked away. "Sorry."

"Anyways, it's fine now. She even got to keep a couple of mods this time."

"Well that's good," piped Bumblebee, "Glyph was going on about this thing she wants to show us in the Rust Sea. We're just waiting for Splits to end her shift."

"Aren't the rest of you coming?" asked Sari as she looked over to Optimus, Ratchet, and Arcee.

"We have a… personal matter to take care of," said Arcee.

"Oh, okay," she replied before making the question that had been bugging her for the last several megacycles, "How does a planet made of metal deal with having a sea?"

"This is a sea?" asked Sari with a skeptical look on her face, "looks more like a desert to me."

It had been eighteen hours since Sari had come back from the dead, and she was dead set on enjoying herself now that she had finally caught up on her sleep, although she still had bridge-lag.

After a healthy breakfast that made Sari swear off astronaut food forever (she had forgotten to tell her dad about the artificial gravity in the Ark), she was now primed and raring to go. Oil, battery, coolant, oxygen, and energon levels were all topped up, though her paint was still flickering even in her human mode since they hadn't been able to find a chip her size, a drawback of being a custom protoform she figured.

"Did you not hear us complain about the rust on earth?" asked Bumblebee, "There's no water on Cybertron."

"Well, that explains the dry skin," she complained as she scratched her thigh for the tenth time in as many minutes. Sari was in no way vain but if she'd known having dry skin made it this itchy, she'd have brought the lotion her dad had tried to sneak into her bags.

"Anyways, this was a city before the war," said Glyph, "a strain of a new virus called cosmic rust turned it into a massive rust trap. The virus is burned out," she assured her once she noticed the look on Sari's face, "but it works as a driller breeding ground, so it all works out."

"What's a driller?" asked Sari.

"You'll see," quipped Bumblebee cryptically, "not much of a wildlife bot, but I have to admit that those things are awesome! They could kick Meg's aft up a wall."

Sari was getting more confused by the nanoclick. The five had been driving through sand for megacycles with nothing to show for it save for sand getting into places Sari didn't even know she had, she could only imagine that the rest of them would be getting a very thorough oil-bath later.

"Is it gonna be far? I'm getting sand in my undercarriage," complained Lickety-Split, "where's this nest anyways?"

"Two more kliks or so," replied Glyph, "I know it's a pain, but trust me it's worth it."

"I certainly hope so," quipped Sari, "I dunno about the undercarriage, but I'm getting sand in my undersomething."

"You're sitting inside!" noted Bumblebee.

"And you have the window open!"

"My interior gets hot!"

"Oh really? I hadn't noticed."

"They fight like old sparkmates," noted Glyph, ignoring Lickety-Splits' sudden backfire.

"More like siblings really," said Bulkhead, "Bee's the first autobot Sari ever met, so they're pretty close."

"Really? What about you?"

"Well, she's always there, y'know," he replied with a shrug, "always smiling. Even when she lost her home and when her dad was missing she greeted us with a smile every morning."

"What's a dad?" asked Glyph.

"Sorta like a creator but it has to be a mech and they all have one, even if they don't always know them."

"Huh, weird."

"Yeah, wait till you hear how they make new ones."

"Hmm, how do they make-, oh."

"What?"

"We're here."

Everyone slowed to a stop at Glyph's comment, kicking up more sand in the process. Sari got out of Bumblebee and stared slack-jawed.

"What the heck?"

"Welcome to the Driller Nesting Grounds!" called Glyph as she transformed with a touch of flair.

Scattered all over the flats were massive holes large enough to swallow Bulkhead and leave room for the rest of them. Insect-like flyers the size of eagles drifted around them. A butterfly-like creature bigger than a truck tire came particularly close to Sari, proudly displaying the four hover-turbines it had for wings. Every ten kilometers or so, massive mounds of energon-soaked metal rose in familiar-looking shapes.

"Are those giant metal artichokes?"

"Eh no, at least I don't think so," replied Glyph as she wondered what an artichoke was, "they're driller egg pods."

"Drillers lay eggs?" asked the stupefied femme, "How does a robot lay eggs? Wait, do you guys lay eggs?" Sari's eyes widened, "Am I gonna lay eggs!?"

"Well, they're not exactly eggs in organic terms," replied the aquamarine femme, "they make tiny duplicates of themselves and put them in the pods. The small ones then eat metallic rust to refine it and use it for new parts."

"They actually eat metal," concluded Sari, "here I was thinking Jimmy Neutron was bull. How do they get energy out of it?"

"They don't," cut in Bulkhead, "but they're the only cybertronian megafauna that can eat raw energon crystals. The pods are launched into space where they track down planets with natural energon deposits."

"How do you know that?" asked Bumblebee as he steadied Lickety-Split, who was having trouble standing with her wheeled pedes.

"I worked on an energon farm remember?" replied the green mech, "High grade can only be made from aged energon crystals or driller energon, so we used to follow the pods."

"How's regular energon made?" asked Sari.

"Well, there's a harvest coming up," said Bulkhead after looking at the sky for a moment, "you'll see then."

"Anyways, drillers recycle the metal into the ecosystem," said Glyph, "and they purify the energon into something that the rest of the animals can use. Once a driller dies, other animals rush in to drink their energon. Ancient transformers used to hunt them for fuel."

"How do you know so much?" asked Lickety-Split.

"Well, I do work at a museum," she replied with barely restrained smugness, "my main job is to decrypt ancient data pads that use antique operating systems or dead languages, but Vector would offline me if I was ignorant in history."

"Say, what happened to your accent?" asked Bulkhead upon noticing an oddity about his childhood friend.

Glyph's servos seized, "W-what accent?"

"Accent?" asked Sari.

"Yeah. The last time I saw Glyph she had this cute Moon Base 1 accent."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," said Glyph, slightly flustered at having been called cute, "I have never spoken in any dialect other than standard Iaconian."

Bulkhead gave her a questioning look that made Glyph blush.

"A-anyways, are we going down there or not?"

"I don't know," said Sari, "you could fit a house in those holes. What if they dig from under us?"

"Oh please, the chances of that happening are…"

She stopped, having noticed a sudden rumble under her. The rest of the group came to a stop behind her, having noticed the shifting sand.

"Don't tell me…" moaned Splits.

"RUN!" cried Glyph.

The group wisely ran, or in Sari's case leapt, away from the massive head that roared out of the ground where they'd been standing seconds ago.

Sari landed roughly in a dune (wave?) and had to fight to keep her mouth shut.

The massive creature was easily larger than any subway back home. The head bore three massive saws in each of its three jaws that cut through the compacted sand like butter. The creature's armor was covered in rear-facing spikes that it used to gain traction in the sand, using an undulating motion like a large python to heave itself forward. There was no clear "up" side with this creature. Rather, the whole thing resembled a diabolical leech, radially symmetrical from the mouth. A kilometer later, the bladed tail finally made its appearance.

"Holy cow!" she cried, "Is that a driller!?"

"Yep," said Bulkhead, "this is the first time I've seen an adult this close, though."

"Ancient Autobots used to hunt these things?" asked Lickety incredulously.

"Well, not Autobots. The ancient tribes predate the Guardians."

"The who?" asked Bumblebee as he caught up.

"The soldiers under Zeemon Magnus," clarified Glyph, "basic history."

The group looked at her blankly.

"I'm beginning to see what Vector meant," she deadpanned, "you are coming with me to the museum next chance we get."

"Sounds good to me, but what about now?" said Sari, "Do we just leave it there?"

"Huh?"

Glyph looked back to see that the massive creature had stopped digging in the sand, leaving half of its length outside.

"Oh, I don't believe it!" she said ecstatically.

"You're in for a treat!" claimed Bulkhead.

"Why? What's going on?" asked Split as the massive machine began shuddering, straightening its tail to point it skywards.

"Drillers can only reproduce once before they die," responded Glyph, "at their last moments, they straighten themselves like that and collapse their endoskeleton for their plates to make their nests. The eggs mature inside and then they shoot them out of the atmosphere!"

"Drillers are the most common interplanetary species," continued Bulkhead, "well, them and scraplets, but that's only because they hang onto the eggs."

"Actually, scraplets didn't make it off-world until the Great War," replied his aquamarine friend, "Their assembly pods were often stolen and hidden inside enemy ships. When the pods hatched, the crew was eaten alive. Now they're a plague on every known planetary system without their natural predators to keep the population in check."

"Huh, and here I was thinking the planet just made everything," said Sari, "I never would have figured I'd find something so alien look so… familiar."

"Yeah, our ecosystem is based off energon," continued Glyph, "but thanks to creatures like scraplets and drillers, even the metal gets recycled when their bodies sink into the lower levels to be smelted into new cybertronians."

"Do you have plants here?"

"Plants?"

"She means crystals," said Bulkhead, "well, they're the closest thing."

"Oh, sure. We can visit the gardens later."

"Um, guys?" called Bumblebee, he and Lickety-Split had apparently gone on ahead, "the driller's doing something weird."

They looked back to see that the driller had managed to right itself and was twisting in its death throes.

Massive plates shifted as the internal frame collapsed, making the overall shape wider and shorter, energon spraying out from the dying creature. Creaking metal signaled the driller's death as it collapsed into the "artichoke" form Sari had gotten used to. Finally, the metal settled down and the surrounding insects flew over to drink their share of energon.

"That was… I dunno," said Sari, "it was really cool but at the same time… it was kinda sad."

"I know what you mean," Glyph replied, "they're dying for the sake of their species. Pit, their first colonies became Velocitron and the Moon Bases."

She squinted in the distance and took out her binoculars.

"I think that one's about to take off!" she called out gleefully as she transformed.

The lot of them transformed back to their alt-modes and took off. Sari jumped fifteen feet in the air and landed on Bulkhead's roof to hitch a ride. She turned back to her human mode to avoid straining her scratched T-cog.

"What's Velocitron? Are there more cybernetic planets?"

"Yeah, but the technique to cyberform planets was lost millions of Stellar Cycles ago," replied their historian, "The Autobot Commonwealth is currently made up of 33 planets, it used to be 36, but Antilla, Paradron, and Goo were destroyed in the Great War."

"I see…" replied the small femme with a thoughtful look.

Bee looked over at Sari, it looked like something was bothering her.

"We're here!"

The small technorganic was snapped out of her thoughts by Glyph's voice.

"Whoa."

The mound was even bigger up close and rivalled most buildings back home. Oddly enough, it seemed to be fairly… old. It was covered in rust and the energon around it had congealed long ago. Flittering in and out of the many cracks were several insect like robots as well as some weird robot Chihuahua-crab things.

"Great, the Mexican demon dogs followed me," she quipped as she picked up the nearest one, "hey Bee! What this thing?"

"What's what thiiiiGAH! SCRAPLET!"

"Scraplet?"

She looked at the creature in her arms and scratched it behind its antennae, causing it to purr in delight and nuzzle against her hand.

"That's a scavenger scraplet you motor-head!" snapped Glyph, "They're harmless! I keep one in my apartment for crying out loud."

"Anyone here gonna clue me in?"

"Oh, right. Scraplets are little metal-eating parasites," explained Glyph, "sorta like drillers, but they're smaller and prefer their metal fresh. That particular breed is a scavenger, a juvenile to be more exact. They don't have to be as fast so they have bigger bodies and longer legs."

"What do the adults look like?"

She pointed towards a scraplet the size of a goat with an elongated skull and four spidery legs spread around it. It seemed to be enjoying itself with the metal, grinding away at it with saw-like mouth parts.

"They also duplicate themselves with the metal by making assembly pods and use the energon soaked into it," she explained, "but only the scavenger breeds can eat the nasty congealed stuff. Most scraplets can only drink it fresh."

"Can we please talk about something else?" said Bulkhead, "I think I'm gonna blow a gasket."

"Wow, you look greener than usual," quipped Split.

"Ah, remembered that time you found Chromie?" asked Glyph.

"Yep."

"Who's Chromie?" asked Sari.

"Remember that sheepacron I told you about?" asked Bulkhead, "we found it covered in scraplets after we drained the holding tank. Hated the things since."

"You two seem close," noted Lickety-Split, "how long have you known each other?"

Bulkhead and Glyph looked at each other, and then they looked away, then down, then up, and finally back at each other.

"How long has it been?" asked Bulkhead.

"Practically since we were sparked I think," admitted Glyph before turning back to Lickety-Split, "my creators and his caretaker were old friends and neighbors so…"

"I guess it just happened," concluded the mech, "we've always been friends."

"Hmm, that's nice," said Sari wistfully.

Lickety-Split raised an optical ridge but didn't comment.

"Ooh-ooh-ooh!" squealed Glyph, "I think it's about to launch!"

Indeed, the massive artichoke had begun activating what was left of its internal mechanisms and was gearing up to launch its brood into deep space to colonize the universe. The top of the massive metal veggie began opening in a matter more akin to a flower opening its petals.

"Should we be standing this close?" asked Lickety-Split.

"We're fine," said Bulkhead, "it's a pretty weak blast off."

The giant metal vegetable began to emit a blue glow from within its massive leaves.

"What in the-?"

The first blast off blew Sari off her feet.

From within the structure, pellets the size of motorcycles shot out into space. The rest of the bots watched stupefied as the glowing blue eggs rapidly reached escape velocity and left Cybertron's gravitational well.

"They stopped glowing," noted Lickety-Split.

"They only have enough energon to leave Cybertron," replied Glyph, "they usually launch in the general direction of an energon rich planet and use small bursts for directions, so they're easy to track."

"Hey Sari, look over there," cut in Bulkhead, "there at Moon Base 1. Sari?"

He looked around for Sari only to notice a tiny pair of legs sticking out from the sand some ten feet away from where Sari had stood earlier.

"Uh, Sari?"

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"You mean to tell me you haven't even called!?" yelled Ratchet.

"Well, I wasn't sure what to say," replied Arcee, "how does this sound? "Hey sis, how've you been? Sorry for bailing for the last four million stellar-cycles!""

"It wasn't that long!" snapped Ratchet, "I think. Either way, what will you say now?"

"I- don't know," she admitted, "a lot must've happened during the war. Chromia will probably beat me white and grey. She might have even requested a new sister unit."

"Um, excuse," said the third member of their small group, "should I really be here?"

"I might need a shield, so yes."

"She can't be that bad," said Ratchet.

"Trust me, you don't know my sister."

Optimus was starting to feel like a spare tire. The small group had decided to drive over to see Arcee's sister's home and let her know that she had been reactivated.

The only problem was that Arcee seemed terrified of the mere idea.

"She's your sister! What do you have to be afraid of?"

"I once spilled oil onto Chromia's diary," she said flatly, "took me weeks to get the dents out."

They pulled into a cul-de-sac and transformed into robot mode. Ratchet and Optimus began to walk to the small house decorated by a small pot with a single fading crystal when they noticed that a certain member of their team was missing.

"Arcee?"

"Oh Ratchet what will I say?" she moaned, "What can I say? I never even told Chromia or Moonracer about my final mission. I just told them I had to guard a supply run. They don't know about my involvement with Omega Supreme."

"The truth's always a good place to start," proposed the older mech with a soft smile, "let's just go in and let whatever happens happen."

Arcee merely nodded and rang the doorbell.

It took about thirty seconds for her to get cold feet.

"Looks like she's not home! Let's go and come back later!"

Ratchet magnetized her stabilizing servos to the floor before she could run away and rang the doorbell again.

"Coming! I'm coming!" called out a femme's voice before the door opened, "YES! How can I… help… you..?"

Standing in the doorway was a cobalt blue femme with the same body type as Arcee, excluding the wheels on the sides of her knees and shoulders. Her helm had two audio receptors that spanned both sides of her head like fins and a vent jutting out of her forehead.

"Arcee?" she said breathlessly.

"Hey sis," replied the pink femme, "it's been a while."

Chromia passed out.