Chapter 12
"How do they fly anyways?" asked Sari as the lot left the desert.
"They shoot out energon plasma from the sides and use an electromagnetic bubble shield to channel it downwards," piped Glyph.
"You can always trust our walking encyclopedia," quipped Lickety-Split as they pulled onto a deserted, but paved, road.
"Hey! I resent that!" snapped the other vehicle.
Sari and Bumblebee chuckled right as Sari's cellphone went off.
"Aw slag it," she cursed after she looked at the alarm, "Hey 'Bee? How far are we from this place?"
She held up the cellphone's screen to his rearview mirror.
"Um, it's not too far. We should get there in a megacycle or so. Why?"
"I have to be there in half an hour," she groaned, "I have an appointment with some Red Alert docbot."
"ARE YOU SICK AGAIN!?"
"Of course not!" replied Sari, "Ratchet got me an appointment to have my spark checked out."
Everyone inched away from Bumblebee, who was not fortunate enough to be able to do so.
"Did you catch something?" he asked, "you don't have yellow field or something, right?"
"Bee!" snapped Lickety-Split, "How can you just ask that kind of thing!?"
"What? If she has Yellow Field, I don't wanna catch it."
"Unless you've been fragging her, then I don't think that's likely!"
Sari flinched when her friend's seat warmers suddenly switched on.
"Are you crazy!? She's 300 solar-cycles old!"
"I'm ten!"
"280 cycles old is worse! She's way too young for me!"
"Okay okay, it was just a joke," groaned the trike, "So! What do you need to go to the doc for?"
"Something about a pulse cycle," replied the Pretender with a wave of her hand.
Everyone hit the brakes.
"Y-y-y-you!" stuttered Lick as she transformed, red-faced with disgust, "you protophile!"
"I didn't know!" cried Bumblebee as he transformed, leaving Sari on the floor.
"How the PIT could ya not know!?" snapped Glyph as she shifted out her civilian-grade stingers.
"Easy Glee," said Bulkhead as he put his servos on her shoulders, "technorganics don't have any noticeable energy signatures."
The two femmes blinked and looked at the confused femme on the ground.
"What the-?"
"He's right!" noted Lick, "How-?"
"Carbon," said the large green mech as he picked up Sari and placed her on his shoulder, "Earth organics are full of it."
"So?"
"Carbon deposits trap energon radiation," recalled Glyph, "now that I think about it, I could only feel her when she was in robot mode, and even then it feels… mild."
"Yeah, but I still didn't feel anything resembling a pulse," noted Glyph, "Though I guess it gets stronger near the end."
"Ugh, tell me about it," groaned her aqua friend, "I'll have to tell you about this one time Bulky and I-."
"They don't need to know that!" cut in a flustered, red faced Bulkhead.
Bumblebee and Sari merely looked at each other.
"What the heck was that?" asked the smaller member of the yellow duo.
"N-nothing! We should leave!"
He transformed and gunned the engine until he was little more than a dot in the distant road.
"Well, he's right," said Glyph, "but you're not riding in him until you're off your cycle."
"I still don't get what that means," noted Sari, "is it like that "monthly" thing the office ladies were always complaining about?"
"I don't know," she admitted, "but you know how some organics have mating seasons? It's like that."
"Wait, what!? Ratchet never told me that!"
"It's kind of a femme-to-femme type thing," said Lick, "it's probably why he sent you to see another doctor. But seriously, you're not getting in 'Bee. It's not proper."
Glyph barely held in a snort of laughter.
"Zip it."
The green femme refrained from commenting and folded down to her vehicle mode, popping her trunk open in the end.
"I'm not getting in there," replied the yellow femme, "you don't even have seats, never mind seatbelts."
"Oh for spark's sake!" she cried as she transformed back up, she turned to Bumblebee, "we have the same body type right?"
"Well, I think your model might be a few stellar-cycles newer but-."
"Doesn't matter. Transform."
He raised a ridge, but the yellow speedster complied.
"Don't read anything into this!"
Sari flinched when the older femme's optics changed to green before four lasers formed a box around the yellow subcompact.
"WHOA! Little warning next time?" he yelped as his circuits seized.
"Wa-wa-wa-wa-what are you doing!?" yelled Split as she blushed even harder.
"She needs someplace to sit down, right?" snapped the femme as the lightshow ended and her optics shifted back to their normal blue, "stand back please."
Sari had seen the bots transform before, but she had never seen this before. Metal shimmered and rippled as it reformed, blue circuitry shuddering visibly under the mesh as relays were rearranged and matter was programmed to mimic the materials the other subcompact did. Finally, she folded back down in the same manner Bumblebee did, shifting her hips beneath herself.
As she settled into her new form, she couldn't help but voice her opinion.
"Feels kinda loose, but it will do," she said, "now come on. I can't wait to see Bulky's face when he sees this!"
"If you don't mind, I'd like to be far away when he does," stated Bumblebee, "I'd rather avoid being pounded into sheet metal.
Glyph rolled her optics (not that they could see) and opened her door to reveal an interior that looked exactly like Bumblebee's, save for the new color scheme.
"Shall we?"
Sari hesitantly stepped in, noting that Glyph's seats were cushier than the other subcompact's.
"Whoa! Freaky," yelped Glyph as she felt Sari's hands in her, "can't see how he can stand it."
"You get used to it," replied Bumblebee dismissively, "Now come on! Bulkhead's gotta be halfway to Kaon by now."
"Sure," replied Splits, "Race ya!"
"Hey no fair!" yelled Bumblebee as he took off after the trike.
"Thinking back on it, I should have brought my scooter," noted Sari as the two sped ahead, "what's the big deal with me riding in 'Bee anyways?"
"You don't get your chamber that close to a femme's when she's in her pulse cycle unless you're serious," sighed Glyph, "it's just too… tempting."
"For Bumblebee?"
"For you!" replied her ride as though it were obvious, "Wait, how do mating seasons work with organics?"
Sari had to think about that for a second, searching her drives for memories of every single nature documentary tutorbot and Prowl had sat her through.
"Well, it tends to vary. It usually involves a contest by the males."
"Really? Are there more females than males?"
"Not by much," she replied, "they're more or less equal most of the time with humans."
"Well, with us, femmes are the ones with the… drive for reproduction," said Glyph, "it's probably for the best since there aren't that many femmes to begin with. We'd be guarded like property otherwise. Mechs don't really have a sex drive most of the time."
"So what'll happen?"
"Right now it should be manageable," she noted, "it's the last few solar-cycles that're Pit in the chamber. You'll feel like jumping on anybot's chest plates, male or female."
"Wait WHAT!? Girls too!?"
"Femmes can bond with each other too," she explained, "mechs can bond too, but they can't reproduce."
"Why's that?"
"Femmes were an experiment of sorts by a scientist named Solus Prime," she replied, "since designed species are more prone to flaws, she, or rather he at the time, made an attempt to replicate organic reproduction and, by extension, natural selection, hopefully allowing us to evolve like they do. We're the only ones that can safely produce red sparks, thanks to our wider chest plates. It actually takes less tries when it's two femmes."
"Tries? At bonding?"
"Yep. You need to merge the fields first to get them to accept each other. A mech and a femme need about seven field merges before they're ready to try a sparkbond, two mechs need around ten, and femmes only tree if they're both on their cycle but can't bond at all if they're not."
"Why's that?"
"Femmes are able to provide alternative designs," said Glyph, "we are able to grow red sparks that store combined personalities and designs. That's also why our chest plates are wider and why we get pulse cycles, the red spark needs room to grow and extra energy. However, they aren't sentient until they meet the Allspark. If they don't come into contact without some form of Allspark energy, they'll fade away after a couple dozen solar-cycles."
"Well that explains the robo-boobs," she snorted, "So I'll just grow an extra spark every so often?"
"Of course not. Lifeless sparks are forged by the excess energy that comes from forging or reinforcing a bond by either mates or siblings."
"Siblings?"
"Sure, it's not as… sexual for them, but its common enough. When that happens, the youngling is considered another sibling rather than a creation."
"Hmm," hummed Sari as she picked at her dress, "I guess I still have a lot to learn about Cybertron."
"Don't be so hard on yourself. You're still new at this."
"I know, but I feel like I should know this!" she groaned, "It's hard to only know about one side of yourself."
"I really can't imagine," admitted Glyph, "I was raised in Moon Base 1 my whole life before I moved here to become an archaeometrist."
"What's that?"
"Well, archaeometrists measure time by radioactive isotopes," she replied, "though I somehow ended up studying acheocryptology after meeting Vector."
"Dad always said life takes you weird places," agreed Sari, "I never thought my life would take me here."
"And I never thought I'd meet a wonder like you!"
"Eh?" yelped Sari with a blush, "A wonder? Me?"
"Of course! Just look at you! A perfect hybrid. All of the power of a cybertronian with the versatility of an organic! I've seen novels with more believable tales and yet here you are!"
"It's not that great," she replied as her blush died down, "I may look like this, but I weight around 150 kilos thanks to all the metal, I keep setting off every single metal detector in the city, and I get all these weird cravings."
"Cravings?"
"Welllll…"
A few weeks prior to her arrival on Cybertron, Sari was making dinner. Contrary to popular belief, the Sumdacs don't have a robot chef, mainly due to the constant food-poisoning incidents that had plagued the small family each time the professor tried a new prototype.
With the fear of the potential prospect of having to grow up solely on instant foods firmly cemented in her mind, Sari had tried her hand a preparing simple recipes from an early age. Starting with simple tuna salads and the like when she was five, by the time she was eight she had found other simple cookeries to expand into, burning down the kitchen only twice in the process with the toaster and waffle iron in that order.
Her recent upgrade had guaranteed that her father could now trust her to use the stove, allowed her to control the various machines with far better ease, and her heat sensors allowed her to see when whatever was on the skillet was cooked to perfection.
On that particularly hot day however, Sari wanted nothing more than a simple and refreshing tuna salad sandwich.
Problem was, the leftovers from the previous night had been cleared out by a certain hungry scientist.
Disappointed, but not beaten, the overgrown ten-year-old decided that she was getting a tuna salad sandwich one way or another. She took little time to find the cans and less to open them, rapidly mixing the contents into the mayonnaise to prepare her snack and possibly dinner's side dish.
Content with the consistency, she took out two slices of bread and smeared them with the concoction, grabbing the tins to throw them out.
Before she could throw them out however, she instinctively brought the lid to her mouth and bit down on it. Rather than yelp in surprise or chipping a tooth, she bit through it like a soft cookie and happily chewed it on her way to the garbage can. She was about to throw them out when she noticed that she had food in her mouth despite the fact that she hadn't brought her sandwich with her, and that an aluminum lid had a bite taken out of it. She looked at it in confusion before reaching into her mouth and pulling out flecks of shredded metal.
She stared at it curiously before looking at the bitten lid and licking it. Having decided that she liked the taste, she finished the lid, flattened the remaining cans, and took them to the TV to eat them alongside her sandwich.
She turned on the TV to find a rather old vampire movie from 2008, and lasted all of twenty minutes before changing the channel and dubbing "Twilight" to be the worst vampire movie of all time.
"Honestly, what kind of vampire sparkles?" she asked herself in between bites of her tuna and tin sandwich while the 2057 remake of "Terminator" played. It was an oldie based off an older oldie, but this one was relatively good. She did wonder why everyone insisted on being topless mind you.
"What's tuna?" asked Glyph as Sari ended her tale.
"You're not worried about the can?" asked the perplexed tehnorganic.
"The tin wrapping? It sounds tasty enough."
"What the heck does a robot need to eat for?"
"Servos wear down. If you don't eat enough metals, your gears can wear down early."
"Is that why I started chugging motor oil before I got here?" groaned Sari, remembering another incident with nasty synthetic oil. She'd made a note to ask the constructicons about good oil later, but hadn't gotten around to it.
"Probably," replied Glyph, "your Prime told me you make your own oils, though I guess that wasn't enough."
"Huh, I didn't know that," she admitted, "I'll have to talk with the boss and the doc later to see what else I missed," a thought came to her, "I wonder if that's why I don't get fat."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Humans don't have fuel tanks," she explained, "we break down what we eat into fuel and into what our bodies need. Normally, I'd store energy by turning the fuel into fat. Heck, with the way I eat I should be using two seats! I guess I've been using the fat as oil or to make that stuff that organic joints use for lubricant. That's also probably why I need to eat so much."
"I've never seen you eat."
"Well I don't eat all the time," she scoffed, "though I could go for a cupcake right now, I don't wanna get crumbs all over your upholstery. I don't eat too much at a time, but I snack a lot over the day since my stomach can't expand a normal human's would. Dad said it adds up to nearly five thousand calories."
"And that is?"
"Try drinking enough energon to fill two fuel tanks."
"Ugh," groaned Glyph at the thought of over filling by that much, "Wait, how much food did you bring?"
"Not enough," she moaned, "I wasn't planning on staying for more than a month and packed for that much time. I'm gonna be in serious trouble if I can't go back to Earth before two solar-cycles."
"Can't you just make more?"
"With what? There's nothing here to grow with, not even water. And even if there was, I have a black thumb. Even my plastic flowers just fell apart after a few weeks."
"Ah, right," recalled Glyph, "I guess you'll have to phone home or something."
"Welp, I guess I'm the ET here anyways," noted Sari with a chuckle, "I need to call dad anyways."
"Remind me to ask you about your family structures when you get back."
"Back from what?"
"Your appointment?" replied the femme as she stopped in front of a familiar-looking subcompact, "we're here."
Sari looked up to see a familiar looking hospital as Glyph opened her door to let her out.
"IT'S HER!" Cried a familiar voice.
Sari turned just in time to see the nurse that had helped Ratchet with her earlier run away screaming.
"What was that all about?" asked Bumblebee.
"A lawsuit in the making," was the femme's sour reply.
"Well, um… nice to meet you," said Optimus awkwardly from his spot on the couch.
Glare.
"My name is Optimus Prime."
Glaare.
"This is my medical officer Ratchet and, uh, well I guess you already knew Arcee being your sister and all."
Glaaare.
"I uh," he turned to his medic, "hey, Ratchet? Think we can demagnetize her now?"
"Say that AFTER I reinstall your arm!"
Shortly after passing out, the whole group had rushed into the house, lest they call even more attention to themselves than they already did by having a massive, flying autobot with them.
After coming in, Optimus couldn't help but notice that Arcee had decided to hide behind him when Ratchet began working on rebooting her sister.
He had just enough time to hear (1) Ratchet's grunt of victory as Chromia came back online followed by (2) Arcee's fearful squeak that made him turn for a second, before turning back to hear (3) a rage-filled roar that preluded (4) a fist flying at mach five that managed to clock him right in the face.
The last thing isn't really a sound, so it isn't counted as one of the three things that Megatron's victor heard before the femme had, in Ratchet's medical opinion, "beaten the ever-loving slag out of him".
Eventually, they managed to subdue the enraged femme at the cost of an arm and a leg (Ratchet was still grumbling about the earlier repair). The medic then proceeded to trap her by magnetizing her to the treated Lead-R ® (The Softest Metal Upgrade to your Comfort!) couch.
Which brings us to the present.
"Honestly, I thought you were exaggerating," snapped Ratchet, his good mood having left eons ago, "I imagined this to be some tearful reunion between two long-lost sisters and what do I get? A salvage team captain that's too fast with a wrench for her own good!"
That had probably the most surprising part of the whole deal. As a salvage operative, Chromia was expected to be good with a tool kit. What none of them had expected was that she'd be good enough to dismantle a shoulder joint in less than two decacycles.
If Ratchet hadn't magnetized her when he did, she'd have started on his helm.
"Okay sis, if you can promise not to bite me, I can take the gag off."
Chromia merely glared at her sister.
"All right then, I'll just get this off y- OW! What did I say about biting?"
"Get out you oversized piece of scrap metal!"
"Come on Chro-."
"No, you "come on"! We buried you, you slagging glitch!" she screamed, "do you have any idea what I've been through?! Do you know how it felt to stand by our creator as we smelted an empty casket!? Where the FRAG have you been!?"
"Smelted her!?" snapped Ratchet.
"That's right, SMELTED! Recycled!"
"Arcee's been in stasis since the Great war!"
"What?"
"I was reactivated less than a solar-cycle ago," explained her sister, barely holding back the roaring of her cyclers, "and before THAT I was kidnapped by Shockwave. I'd be scrap if it hadn't been for Ratchet and Sari."
"That is absolutely ridiculous!" snapped the blue femme.
Ratchet sighed and took a chip out of his helm.
"This is Perceptor's comlink frequency," he explained, "you might as well hear it from the horse's mouth."
The others turned to look at him with confused expressions.
"It's an Earth expression," he explained awkwardly, "just call him!"
Chromia sighed and turned her head to let him insert the chip.
"Hello? Is this Perceptor?"
"Well, you're definitely in your pulse cycle," noted Red Alert as she looked over Sari's spark, "but it's only about two solars in. It might be dangerous to try a drain right now."
Sari was, once again, naked under the scrutiny of an optic. Well, half naked. Her clothes had gotten in the way of her spark examination and she'd needed to remove them. Once she'd been left in her stockings and panties, Red Alert had attached a bundle of cables to the orb in her chest.
"Why did Ratchet's scan say I was in the middle of it?" she asked as she removed the wires.
"If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it's because of that thing," she replied, pointing at the Matrix of Leadership. Sari had removed it in her bot form, having figured that her doctor would have clearance since she already knew about her technorganic nature.
"My own initial scans showed that you were in the strongest parts of your cycle, but you're far too calm to be in the worst of it," she paused, "or the best of it. Depending on how you see it. Either way, I got the correct scan after you removed it, so I'd say it's a fairly safe bet."
"Is that why you had me strip?"
"Er, yes," she said, "Although, I must admit I was somewhat curious about your body."
"I'm pretty sure there's something unethical about that," she said while she covered her chest self-consciously. Great, now she felt embarrassed. She wasn't sure why it felt more embarrassing to have her spark checked out than to be naked in front of strangers. Maybe it was because they didn't find anything attractive about her organic form?
"I can assure you that my interest was purely academic," she replied in a somewhat offended tone, "it's not like there's anything to look at."
"HEY!" snapped Sari, "I'm naturally skinny, alright!?"
"I'm not sure what that means, but I'm fairly certain there's a misunderstanding," she groaned, "attraction involves more than just physical appearance for us, though it is a bonus."
"So I can walk around naked and I won't get a reaction?" asked her patient, "well, that explains that time Bulky offered to install a bath in his trunk if nothing else."
Red Alert raised an optic ridge.
"What? I was nine and the base didn't have running water at first."
"How old are you now?"
"Ten but I look fifteen or sixteen. Allspark growth spurt, before you ask."
"I see. That's in Earth Stellar Cycles?" Sari nodded, and let Red Alert calculate to cybertronian time units, "Well, either way you're a lot younger than most femmes are when they get their first cycle."
"Well, how old do I look?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, humans age faster than cybertronians, right?" the doctor nodded, "well, how old would you say I look?"
"It isn't about looking a certain age," she replied, "we are not as helpless when we are born as you are. From the files you brought, I see that humans can build new humans within them. As a side effect, the offspring needs to be small and helpless to avoid harming the human host once the incubation period is over."
"Mother."
"Excuse me?"
"The human that delivers the baby," clarified Sari, "she's called a mother. Calling her a host sounds… parasitic."
"I see," replied Red Alert pensively. She didn't really see the difference, both absorbed nutrients from their host after all, "either way, cybertronians have no need for this stage. When we are sparked, we already possess complete bodies and basic personalities, although both can be changed through upgrades and life experiences. It's difficult to pinpoint an exact equivalent age, but based on this information I'd say we are sparked at thirteen or fourteen years old in human age. In the beginning of adolescence I believe."
"It's kinda weird to think you guys were never babies," said the smaller femme, "everything starts life as a baby of some sort on Earth."
"Yes, but I imagine that they finish incubation at different stages depending on the needs of each species," replied Red, "it's similar to that. We have no need for an infantile stage."
"Well, yeah I got that," she groaned, "it's still weird."
"Well I find it odd that humans carry protoforms in their abdomens," quipped Red Alert with a shudder, "I mean, red sparks are one thing, but this? Well, it's nothing you'll have to worry about anyways."
"Wait, what?" cut in Sari, "What do you mean by that?"
"Red sparks? You see when you find the right mech, or femme if you prefer, you might feel the need to-."
"No not that!" snapped the small femme, "Glyph already explained that part. What do you mean I won't have to worry about getting pregnant?"
"Well, you can't," replied the medic as she pulled up a pair of charts, "see? This is a normal human femme and this is the scan Perceptor took."
Sari's eyes darted from one to the other, widening as she noticed the difference.
"Do you see it?" she asked, unaware of her patient's rising distress, "there are no organs above this area," she overlaid the reproductive organs to outline the area where cervix should be, "no ovaries, fallopian tubes, or even a complete uterus. Organic reproduction is impossible for you. This part of your design is probably on purpose. If I'm right, you wouldn't be able to transform during a- Sari?"
She was gone.