Shockwave has had enough of babies; the Dinobots are babies; Fortress Maximus and Whirl would probably prefer babies over this.
Title: Candy From Strangers, Pt. 12
Warning: Spark-splitting/newsparks, baby Dinobots, and the return of the revenge of the son of the Lost Light heat virus.
Rating: PG-13
Continuity: G1, IDW/MTMTE
Characters: Shockwave, Starscream, Optimus Prime, Ratchet, Dinobots, Fortress Maximus, Whirl, Rung
Disclaimer: The theatre doesn't own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.
Motivation (Prompt): Kinkmeme prompt/writing challenge, Shibara and her pictures, the heat virus continues.
Artist: Shibara (on Ao3 and Tumblr)
[* * * * *]
" Starscream/Optimus Prime - Spark Splitting/Cold Forging, Nesting, Energy Leeching"
[* * * * *]
There were Seekers on the ceiling again.
Shockwave only had one optic, but he could squint it most expressively when irritated. He gave the cluster of bright wings his squintiest, most disapproving look. He saw that shade of green, Acidstorm. "I sincerely hope you are not doing what my drones have reported you to be doing. Such activities have been banned from the Tower and all outlying buildings associated with it."
Fourteen mechs talking in the pitch-tuned regional cant of their home city created a distant droning natter. It didn't even hitch. The flower-like cluster of colored appendages rippled like petals in the wind as the flyers busily shifted construction to the next tier. They ignored the purple Guardian glaring up at them from far below. The ceiling in this room was perfect for the descending layers of a nest, and no mere official protest from squinty-opticked old Shockwave was going to make them stop building. Although Acidstorm had to pretend pretty hard that he wasn't disobeying orders from his direct commander, no sir, no Rainmaker up here.
Shockwave didn't need a mouth to harrumph, but he thought it would have been more impressive if he had one. "Hmmph."
More excited fluttering of wing-petals, and now suddenly the brilliant spray of welding torches igniting as five of the fourteen Seekers started securing everything into place. Six more flyers darted through the door Shockwave could swear he'd secured when he'd entered. Armfuls of new building material, some of them still painted purple on one side from where they'd been pried off the Tower, were airlifted up to join the construction site above. The lumpy armored exterior was taking on the distinctive jagged shape that anyone who'd visited Vos before the war would recognize. The inside would be a protective spiral, the Guardian knew, mean to wind around in the inside in layers of shell-like internal structure. Every layer would be lined with raw metal, ready for consumption by the forge held in the innermost chamber. Everything in that nest ultimately led to the innermost chamber.
He squinted harder, trying to focus past the swarm of wings to see if the chamber was built yet. He'd have no hope of routing the nesting Seekers if there was already a chamber. The brooding flyer wouldn't leave that forge once it was constructed, not for anything less than the chosen contributor. Cracking the completed chamber open would only inspire an attack. Vosians were so blasted protective of their newsparks, not to mention their forging process. Outside observation was allowed from a distance, never from nearby. Shockwave was only being tolerated because technically, these flyers still belonged to the Armada. Determined to forge or not, they weren't so mad as to rebel enough to attack him outright. Ignore, perhaps. Attack? Not likely, not as long as he didn't try to get any closer.
Therefore, he stood where he was, far below, squinting upward. There was an innermost chamber. Fraggit. He'd gotten here too late.
Shockwave had no lungs, yet he had to sigh.
There was a Seeker on the Prime again.
Shockwave ducked behind a console as the expected spray of laserfire hammered the room. The flock of flyers on high jeered him, but the Guardian was no fool. He'd given up throwing drones at the Autobots who kept hijacking the space bridge, because all that resulted in was pieces of drones everywhere. It was a waste of time and effort, as well as resources. Without the help of the Tower Garrison, Shockwave couldn't keep the Autobots at bay. Most of the Garrison was made of Seekers, who were conspicuously not lifting a finger unless the Autobots dared try and leave the Tower. Then they got vicious, but the Autobots had quickly learned to be content with what access they were allowed.
Not that Shockwave had allowed them anything, but he was one mech. The non-flyer section of the Garrison had been warned off, and the selected nest guards currently in the room weren't helping either side. That was making Shockwave twitch a little. The Seekers hadn't gone completely traitor, which was the only thing saving their wretched wings. Being just one mech, the Guardian of Cybertron in Megatron's absence, he kind of needed the Armada. He couldn't afford to exterminate the lot of them without actual cause.
He'd settled for attempting to lock individual nest guards out and grounding them when more obedient Decepticons could get a hold on the flighty things. He didn't particularly want them damaged. Fierce as they were in the midst of a forging, they were sane enough on their own. It was just when the nest was involved that their group mentality got unreasonable.
Take right now. The flock wasn't helping the Autobots, but they also didn't hinder. That was the part that annoyed Shockwave greatly. Disobeying his commands in order to protect a completed nest was a cultural thing. If his drones had discovered the nest's construction before it'd gotten too far, he'd have been able to transfer the whole blasted bundle of over-protective Seekers to a different location. He'd done it before. On his head was the result of not getting the building site on time, and Shockwave understood that his loss of authority over the flyers was a natural consequence.
Disobeying his commands to attack the Autobots was less forgivable. If the flyers wanted to ignore Shockwave in order to protect the nest - fine. But then they should also protect the nest from the Autobots! If not attack, at least defend the thing! They were practically inviting the enemy to waltz in for visitation!
He sourly thought that wasn't far off from the truth. The Seekers hadn't laid out a welcome mat, but their lack of direct hostility was telling.
Shockwave hunkered down behind the shelter of his chosen console and waiting for the excitement to die down. The Prime had stopped bringing so many escorts once Shockwave stopped throwing drones away on attacks. There were more subtle traps making the return to the space bridge a hazardous journey, but the Autobots and the Decepticon Guardian had come to an uneasy truce. Here, in this room, peace eventually reigned.
Peace laced by shrill bursts of Starscream's distinctive voice, and an equally identifiable baritone voice set in an apologetic pitch as the Prime answered. The Autobots had let two days pass without appearing, and Starscream was enraged. The Prime was properly remorseful, which didn't stop the Air Commander from verbally flaying him alive anyway. Of course, according to Starscream, the Prime should be doting on him every second instead of returning to Earth at all.
Shockwave tuned out the conversation. Valuable spying, this was not. Starscream started in on a well-worn rant, and the Prime went into a well-practiced, soothing spiel. Shockwave knew the words by spark, at this point. The only thing Starscream wanted from Optimus Prime was close contact and energy. Brooding had turned him into an energy leech, as it did in his frametype. Seekers sought energy. Energon, in the search for fuel; pure energy, in the search for contributors. Vosians, Shockwave had observed, tended to go after large, high-output mechs, and in Prime, Starscream had found the mother lode.
It made sense. Larger mechs required more energy to run, and the war had created energon-gluttons with powerful weaponry that drained fuel even when not in use. Those mechs attracted Seekers like magnets and iron filings. Shockwave had warned off the Rainmakers' casual advances more times than he could count when the temptation of his cannon became too much. Large mechs had the surface area for Seekers to climb, lay on, and otherwise physically plaster themselves all over in order to expedite the siphoning process.
Optimus Prime was a large mech with a high energy output. The Matrix enhanced the bleed of excess charge off him. Except for that whole Autobot thing, that made him an ideal candidate. And Starscream, headstrong and wily as he was, must have decided to grab for the temptation regardless of faction. However the Air Commander had finally managed to worm his way into the Prime's spark chamber, he hadn't wasted the opportunity once it'd been presented. Starscream had smugly gotten himself sparked, and the Prime apparently knew what it took to be a contributor for a Vosian Seeker. The newsparks sucked up energy until they would finally separate from Starscream's own spark, splintering off to begin the secretive body-forging process Vos had once been legendary for.
The other Seekers were just along for the ride. Meaning that Shockwave's flyer-infested Tower kept getting invaded by well-meaning Autobots. Attempting to kill them was starting to seem like some sort of logic puzzle instead of part of the war. It was hard to take the Prime seriously when his bodyguards all looked shellshocked, Starscream was perched on his shoulders, and there was a buzzing nest of Seekers observing from up above.
Shockwave really wished Megatron would start answering his calls.
There were Seekers on the lights again.
Shockwave knew he was craning his head like a pedestrian at a transport wreck, but he couldn't stop himself. Shadows danced all around him, reflections scattering over the walls and his plating in glints of white and blue, and the source was high above. He'd turned off the Tower lights on a whim two days ago, and this had happened. The room had turned into a dance hall. The nest twinkled like a disco ball.
Pretty though it was, the Guardian critically eyed the splashes of light. They were leaking through the shield created by multiple pairs of wings. The flyers had been filling the room with their droning speech for weeks, but recently he'd detected a worried note. He was no linguist, but the only difference between Neocybex Standard and Vos' regional dialect was the tonal shifts. From what he'd deciphered, the nest guards were concerned about the early collapse of the nest structure. Or they were hungry for fresh lubricant from the center of Cybertron. Shockwave wasn't entirely sure if he'd interpreted those high tones correctly.
From what he was seeing right now, he rather thought it was the former. The nest's assigned Seekers had been flitting in and out of the room for days now, evading half-sparked capture attempts by the Garrison in order to continually fetch metal scrounged from whatever wasn't bolted down. They'd been returning with bundles in their arms and cockpits full, and they'd shoved the whole lot into the nest. That'd been unusual. The nest was meant to be stripped and used from the inside out, hollowed gradually as the forging process consumed the metal. Adding new material didn't seem to fit the pattern he'd previously noticed in such brooding.
But now Shockwave knew why the change. The nest glimmered and gleamed from within, the fire of a forge and bare sparks visible, and that wasn't meant to happen yet. The newsparks weren't meant to emerge until the forging process finished.
Something turned about, blocking one of the major holes. From the barked order that cut through the buzz, Starscream must have turned from his work to notice the lack of light in the room. The Air Commander didn't like that at all. It exposed the vulnerable spots on the nest. The Seekers already nervously hovering in front of the holes abruptly clustered together around of the worst gaps, covering the open spots with their own bodies.
Shockwave had seen enough. The nest was near falling, ready to drop like an overripe fruit off the vine and split open to release the fully developed frames - but the newsparks Starscream had obsessively nurtured inside that nest weren't ready to leave. Likely, the Prime's overabundant energy contribution to the sparks had resulted in larger than normal frames being needed, or perhaps a bigger clutch than anticipated. If the Prime and Starscream had been ridiculously fertile together, the newsparks could still be competing for resources instead of the strongest spark monopolizing the nest's raw material. Maybe Starscream's greedy ambition had splintered true, and his brooding had produced a newspark who wouldn't be content until it cannibalized the whole Tower to forge its frame.
The alert droning from above had taken on an alarmed buzz when the lights went out. Now the Seekers were beginning to speak louder, and the buzzing roar separated into individual words instead of a distant monotone. The whine of engines and the flare of thruster fire signaled the more aggressive nest guards beginning to lunge out from the defensive huddle in threat. The flock would work itself into an attack soon. Shockwave grudgingly turned the lights back on before Starscream goaded the more level-headed nest guards into attempting to drive him from the room.
With the lights on, the nest didn't look so cored out. He knew better.
Shockwave also knew he'd regret this, but he went looking for more raw metal anyway.
There was a Seeker on the Prime again.
There were five, in fact. Shockwave was beginning to see why Megatron had bluntly told him to deal with the situation himself. He could only imagine what would have happened if Starscream had felt challenged by the warlord's presence. This was bizarre enough.
The Air Commander was apparently an overachiever in everything he did. In one brood, he'd splintered off who-knew how many newsparks to begin with. That wouldn't have been exceptional but for the fact that he'd then gone on to successfully nurtured five of them into completed frames. Five. That was the equivalent of giving Soundwave three hours and a handful of scrap metal to create a brand new Cassetticon. Shockwave would have sworn it to be physically impossible, but here the evidence was, talking fast and well above Shockwave's comfort level for newly forged soldiers as they poked at Optimus Prime.
Five brand new Seekers splintered off during one successful brood, and those five were larger than normal for their ilk. Starscream must have planned for the higher energy output a Prime contributor allowed in his offspring, because those frames bristled with flight modifications and mysterious weaponry. No wonder the nest hadn't held enough raw material.
Most mechs were wiped out for years after successfully splintering off one spark, and while Vosians were proud of their group effort when it came to the forging process, pulling off the forging of five frames at once was a tad bit beyond the ken even for them. Exhausted, drooping wings surrounded the downed, pathetic shell of a nest. Shockwave had been getting somewhat frazzled near the end there, too, but he stood tall and at the ready. He had to force his shoulders out of a slump more than once.
Starscream, however, was perky and ready for another round, if those fingers walking up the Prime's windshields were anything to go by. The Seeker was some kind of sparking machine. Shockwave had never seen anything like it, and his scientific side watched in fascination.
His Decepticon side was both horrified and amused. The Autobots awkwardly standing about the room were the cause of both emotions. It was a toss-up who felt more awkward standing there watching Starscream work on seducing his way into a second clutch. Ratchet didn't seem to know where to look when Optimus Prime's engine coughed into a higher gear. Questionable intentions or not, there was no denying that Starscream had the Prime's total attention.
Their current clutch, having met, investigated, and dismissed their contributor from their frighteningly intelligent minds, immediately abandoned the flustered mech to stream from the Tower, off to go do whatever devilry their Starscream-spawned sparks inspired them to. Immersed in his flirting, Starscream barely flicked a glance after them. The nest guards groaned tiredly and trudged in their wakes, however.
The newsparks would mature into their completed frames in a matter of days. They'd be able to handle coordinated flight and fighting after some training, and by then they could be assimilated into the ranks of the Armada like every other flyer. Hopefully. Shockwave first impression marked them as dangerous, and the Decepticons might be better off relocating entire wing to a distant outpost far, far away from the Tower Garrison. Until then, the over-large clutch had to be watched over carefully. With any luck, the nest guards would keep the evil glitches from causing any major explosions.
Shockwave gave his narrowest, most squinty-opticked glare as the last Seeker out of the room lingered just a moment too long. He saw that look at Bumblebee, Acidstorm.
If there were Seekers on anything tomorrow, Shockwave was throwing the whole lot of them through the space bridge.
[* * * * *]
Baby Dinobots
[* * * * *]
To be perfectly fair, it wasn't Wheeljack's fault. It was evidently Optimus Prime's turn in the corner of shame.
Not that the rest of them didn't belong there with him, but the other officers were willing to throw him to the wolves to save their own afts when push came to shove. Sacrifice themselves to the Decepticons to save him? Yes, of course. Get between the Wrath of Medic and the appropriate victim?
Optimus was on his own.
"All I said was, 'can you make them less dangerous,'" he protested when Prowl brought up the totally relevant point of just who was to blame. See Optimus Prime. See Optimus Prime squirm. "It wasn't an order!"
The other Autobot officers just looked at him. No, he wouldn't see it that way, would he? Their beloved leader had put his hand to his head after a hard week fighting with Grimlock and cleaning up diplomatic incidents caused by rampaging mechanical dinosaurs. He'd expressed a spark-felt wish out loud. Of course he wouldn't see that as piling guilt on the Dinobots' creator. The fact that he'd voiced his not-request to Wheeljack, of all mechs, was pure coincidence.
Yeah, that wasn't something even Swindle could sell.
"...it wasn't," Optimus repeated weakly, feeling the moral high ground slip away like quicksand under his tires. Officers continued to stare and silently judge him.
The big truck shrank in his seat as Ratchet, frigidly silent, tapped on a datapad and utterly refused to acknowledge him in the slightest. For once, the medic was taking Wheeljack's side. The Wrath of Medic fell squarely upon the Prime, today.
Hey, Wheeljack had pulled off the impossible once again. It wasn't the engineer's fault that nobody else knew what to do about it. Ratchet got stuck dealing with the aftermath and finding out what had happened to cause waste to hit the fan.
Prowl heaved air out his vents and read the transmitted message from Ratchet, since the medic wasn't currently speaking to the Prime. "He says that they are fully sentient 'bots reduced to childlike simplicity, and - ah, yes. I see." The Executive Officer sat up straight and reset his vocalizer in a burst of uneasy static, "He says he will register this as abuse of authority unless they are returned to normal within a week."
And Optimus Prime, bastion of the freedom of all sentient beings, boggled. "But - but I didn't - "
"Ya sort of did, Prime," Ironhide said almost regretfully. "Would ya have ever said that 'bout Sunstreaker? The Aerialbots? Especially to Wheeljack? Ya asked him to make 'em less dangerous. That's," he frowned, "aw, frag, that's sounding worse every time I think 'bout it."
There was a truck trying to hide under the table. If the Autobots didn't know any better, they'd have thought a sinkhole had opened under his chair. A small, guilty, "No, I wouldn't have said that," drifted from their errant leader. Big blue optics pleaded for forgiveness on his inadvertent stupidity. "I understand. This was all a grave mistake. It won't happen again."
Ratchet avoided the begging optics by glaring harder at his datapad. He tapped some more. The rest of the room might have flinched at how hard his finger rat-ta-tapped.
This time Jazz took a turn reading, and that was definitely a flinch. "Yeeeeah. We kinda do that, don't we?" The Porsche gave the medic an awkward smile - guilty as charged - and read the message aloud. "He says we got a bad habit of not seein' the Dinobots as real people. We keep going to him and Wheeljack like they gotta control 'em instead of us approachin' 'em like equals. And, uh, yeah. We don't do that." He coughed into a fist, blue visor turned away from the rest of the table as he added, "Anybody ever get around t' giving them real quarters instead of that cave?"
A chevroned helm rose, ominously slow. Had that been forgotten? Certainly not. Ratchet got protective over all the Autobots in the crew, but the Dinobots and the Aerialbots were special. A mech messed with them at his peril. Unlike the Aerialbots, the fight for the Dinobots' mere right to exist had been a long and bitter one.
Nobody dared meet that Angry Mama Bear gaze.
Prowl's doors pulled high and tight behind his helm, a defensive position against the threat looming from the other side of the table. This wasn't an easy admission. All the logical reasons he'd once brought against the Dinobots crumpled in his mind before Ratchet's flat black-and-white argument. There was no such thing as 'partially sentient.' Either the Autobots treated the Dinobots as full Cybertronian beings, or they were treating them as less than themselves. There was no middle ground.
That explained why it was so difficult to get his vocalizer to engage. "No," he mumbled. "The caves...seemed sufficient." For the dumb mechanical beasts he'd insisted they were.
"Really," Ratchet hissed. Medic, transform! Form of Sarcasmtron. "What. A. Surprise."
Sarcasmtron used Guilt! It was super effective! Prowl joined the Prime in attempting to hide under the edge of the table. Corner of shame for them both.
"I'm sure," volcanoes rose in much the same way the medic did as he slowly stood up, "that was merely an oversight. That will soon be corrected." Magma boiled up out of the Earth's core, pushing the ground up, and the pressure built up and up and up and oh Primus they were all going to die. Death by enraged medic. Megatron would laugh himself sick.
The assembled officers attempted to invoke the protective shield of the meeting table. If that failed, Prime was going to find himself standing alone as the others stampeded for the door.
Perhaps foiled by the table-shield, the volcanic temper melting their courage via glaring turned to leave. "If you need me, I'll be tending to your victims," Ratchet spat at the room in general as he stormed out.
Nobody dared move until Mt. Ratchet subsided into distant, fearsome rumbles. They'd just...stay here in the Shame Corner until he told them they could come out. Yeah. Good plan. Safe plan. Less fiery doom that way.
"I will apologize to Wheeljack. And to the Dinobots, once they, er, can understand me." The weak, hesitant voice from the leader of the Autobots would have been hilarious if the rest of them sounded any better at the moment. Ratchet wielded the Bat of Taking Responsibility For Your Idiocy hard on the deserving.
"To the Shame Corner!" (Optimus Prime and Ratchet) by Shibara
Picture available on Ao3
For all his gruffness, however, the medic turned into a gentle caretaker the second he stepped through the medbay door. "Now, how did you get out?"
The place seemed deserted, but not at ankle-height. Down there, a miniaturized Dinobot had been pawing at the door before it'd slid open under Ratchet's palm. Now Sludge waddled back, tail wagging with every side-to-side step, and he squeaked. The undersized brontosaurus was all legs and tail and fat belly where the essential systems necessary for someone who should be able to transform had been crammed in higgly-piggly.
That long neck craned backward, trying to see Ratchet's face from way down there as the towering Autobot stopped before him. A big hand came down, and Sludge's head bobbed, mouth gaping open. Blunt teeth nipped while the little wriggler tried to evade the big hand coming for him at the same time.
"Boop on the Nose" (Sludge and Ratchet) by Shibara
Picture available on Ao3
Ratchet bopped him on the snout with one finger, and the bright optics crossed to follow it. "No biting." Another squeak, and Sludge's neck whipped about as he tried to follow the finger running down the back of his neck. The medic chuckled as that ended up with the tiny Dinobot losing his balance and falling over. "Silly thing. Come here."
There was much flailing of stubby legs and overly long tail and neck as the shrunken dinosaur tried to right himself. Ratchet simply scooped him up around the middle, avoiding the moving bits and going for the pudgy torso. Sludge squealed and wriggling violently in alarm at the sudden lift. Airborn! Brontosaurus weren't supposed to be airborn!
The medic smiled down at him as the thrashing halted the second Sludge started looking around. Fear turned to staring at the room. The new perspective was apparently fascinating.
After about half a minute of looking around, Sludge contorted that long neck backward in order to stare at Ratchet upside-down. Ratchet blinked back at him. The back of his mind calculated just how physically impossible that position was for any other altmode, but the tiny mech seemed quite content. He bumped the top of his head against the back of Ratchet's hand while he chirruped a question. Curious Sludge was curious.
Curious was good. Curious wasn't a panic attack. The Dinobots had gone through three hours of panic attacks and/or temper tantrums after Wheeljack successfully shrank them. Even the relatively primitive processors that the Dinobots had started out with didn't handle being micro-sized well. It hadn't helped that Wheeljack had been panicking just as badly. Inventions that did what they were supposed to didn't necessarily produce results that anybody actually wanted.
Three hours of trying to calm down one full-sized inventor and five micro-sized Dinobots hadn't done anyone good. Wheeljack had been sedated. The Dinobots had been - clumsily, but with sparkfelt fervor - cuddled. These were not circumstances anyone had any experience with, but they were learning rapidly.
So curiosity? Ratchet had learned to encourage curiosity. Hence why he pet Sludge's neck again and settled on agreeing. "Ah...sure. I have no idea what you're asking, but sure." Carefully transferring the little guy to his right hand, he beeped Sludge's nose with his left hand. "How're you feeling?"
Sludge immediately sneezed: snit-snit. Snit!
He couldn't help it. Ratchet chuckled. "That bad, huh? We'll see about that."
"First Aid?" His quiet call brought no response. Ratchet tucked the small dinosaur into the crook of one arm and walked slowly to avoid upsetting him. The Dinobots' equilibrium chips were still set for bodies that were now far too large for their current frames, and they were prone to crying out in confusion because of abrupt movement.
Two days of learning how to Dinobot-sit had taught Ratchet how to carry his charges. Sludge seemed happy to lay on his back on the medic's forearm, propped up in the elbow joint. Stubby legs waved in the air, and the dinosaur took a few experimental snaps at his own tail. It seemed to have a mind of its own. It evaded capture by curling around the medic's thumb.
He let his thumb be entangled while he walked further into the medbay in a search for his Dinobot-sitting coworker. The cracked-open door at the end of the medbay gave him the clue he was looking for. It appeared that they'd have to start locking all the doors, if the Dinobots had figured out how to open doors on their own.
"So that's how you got out," he said to Sludge, who had caught the wily tail-tip and was chewing on it. "That's not food. No. Stop that." Whining started when he pulled the dented tail from a stubborn maw. "I know it seemed excessively long now, but trust me, you grow into it. You're going to need that, honest. No, Sludge."
The problem with so much tail and neck was that they could curl around any blockage Ratchet put in their way. Sludge wound into a spaghetti knot around his wrist and still managed to chomp onto that tail-tip again. It was either delicious or the equivalent of a comfort blanket.
Ratchet sighed and let the chewing go on. It probably wouldn't hurt Sludge once Wheeljack reversed the shrinking. Hopefully, anyway.
He slid the door open and peered in, expecting to find it empty. Instead, he found First Aid curled under the repair berth, an armload of tiny Dinobots cuddled close. There appeared to have been only one escapee. Formerly ferocious warriors still recharged, ignorant of freedom an open door away. Fortunately. Chasing down Dinobots scurrying in five different directions was not how Ratchet wanted to spend his night.
Four Dinobots remained curled into small balls composed of tucked-in limbs, tailtips over muzzles, and peacefully offline optics. First Aid's radio played a lullaby involving stars and twinkling, in various combination of words. The Protectobot had zonked out with his charges, however, lulled into recharge by the quiet music and the soft clicking of small systems winding down. A T-Rex no bigger than his forearm lay sprawled across the junior medic's side, teeth still clamped on one tire. He must have fallen asleep still gnawing on it.
"Om Nom Nom" (Sleeping Grimlock) by Shibara
Picture available on Ao3
Okay, even Ratchet had to admit that was cute.
In his arms, Sludge stirred. "Eee. Eeeeeeeep." Ratchet looked down just in time to catch the world's tiniest sleepy yawn. Four legs stiffened in a luxurious stretch, and Ratchet had to act fast to keep Sludge from falling when neck and tail followed suit.
When the stretch finished, Sludge slowly retracted back into a half-curl cradled in his arms. Dim optics blinked up at him, and there were a few satisfied smacks as Sludge opened and shut his mouth. The low purr of tiny systems slowed. The brontosaurus must have been running on curiosity alone to have outlasted even First Aid's notorious patient care.
Ratchet didn't blame the other Autobot for going down in the line of duty. The Dinobots were hard enough to keep up with normally. Like this, if it wasn't trying to pry Grimlock off someone's bumper, it was trying to coax Swoop off the ceiling or prevent Slag from headbutting someone in the tire. They went off in five directions at once, and one of those directions was usually straight up.
"Time for you to recharge," the senior Autobot medic whispered to his current troublemaker. He cupped that fat middle in his hands and lowered Sludge to the floor. The long neck nodded downward, but Sludge jerked back awake with a confused squeak when his nose bumped into the floor. "Shhh. Go on, now." He nudged the little Dinobot toward the sleeping mound of 'bots.
Sludge toddled off.
Ratchet supervised. No telling what trouble could befall the tyke before he was safely asleep, after all. So he stood right there in the door and sternly watched to make sure that Sludge climbed up over First Aid's arm and snuggled down. Yep, just the strictest doctor in the war, right here.
First Aid sighed and, without waking, gathered the whole armload closer, which accidentally up-ended the Dinobot trying to climb into his arms. Sludge's back legs paddled air desperately for a moment before the brontosaurus pulled his neck up out of the group and clambered into a spot of his own. Ratchet got a perfect image capture of Swoop cheeping and waving one wing before folding it over Sludge's head and going back to sleep.
Giving the room one last sweep for caution's sake - First Aid had removed everything possible to Dinobot-proof it, but just in case - Ratchet closed the door quietly and went on his way.
Six hours later, he regretted that. "I should have done these while you were asleep!"
Swoop fluttered just out of reach of the monitor lead and cheeped frantically. "Me Swoo! Me Swoo!"
Fraggit, he just needed one scan. One scan! "Oh, for love of Primus...yes, I know you're Swoop." Ratchet lowered his hands, trying to lull the excited flyer into a false sense of security. "And you still have errors in your vocalizer files, if you can't pronounce your own name."
"Me Swoo!" (Swoop and Ratchet)by Shibara
Picture available on Ao3
Autobots around the room began flinching as that failed to calm the smallest Dinobot down at all. Swoop's wings beat a staccato rhythm against the ceiling and walls as he jigged from side to side in an attempt to suss out an escape route around the medic who'd cornered him. "Swoo! Swoo!"
"Okay, okay, calm down! Look, no scanner! I won't scan you!" He slung the scanner lead over one shoulder and backed away, hands open to show they were empty. The little flutterer battering himself against the upper corner of the common room dropped to hover lower, which was exactly what he wanted. Slamming repeatedly into the ceiling and walls while trying to escape wasn't what Ratchet wanted Swoop to do.
"Come down," he coaxed. "No scan. See the scanner?" He bent down and put the entire scanner on the floor, never taking his optics off the scared Dinobot. "No more scanner. So you just come down here, and we'll get you fed. How about it?"
"Swoo!" Swoop screeched suspiciously. Tiny wings beat the air in a circle, and he kept above the height he knew the medic could reach. "No! No! Me Swoo no!"
"Swoop! Get down here!" Oops, the Angry Ratchet voice was not the one he'd wanted to pull out. He winced the second it was out, but too late.
Swoop zipped right back up in the corner to beat against the ceiling. "Me Swoo! Me Swoo! Me Swoo!"
Suddenly, an elbow jabbed into Ratchet's side, and the medic 'oof'ed as he was abruptly bracketed by Aerialbots. "Relax, doc. We've got this," Slingshot said, grinning insolently.
Fireflight smiled and bounced right past the group into the corner. "Aww, lookit the baby! C'mere, babykins! Silverbolt, come look at his teensy wings! Can I keep him?"
Silverbolt gave the slightly offended medic an apologetic look. "Fireflight...Swoop isn't really a baby..." He seemed to think better of correcting his teammate. "But he is very cute. You can, uh, 'keep' him for a few minutes today if you get him down for us, okay?"
The fudging of the truth earned a dirty look from Ratchet, but since Swoop had decided investigating Fireflight's fingers could be interesting, the medic let it pass. Wings fluttered and folded as the Dinobot perched for a split second on the Aerialbot's forefinger and took a curious peck. Then it was back into the air to zip in another circle before returning.
Fireflight grinned and flexed his hands in the air. "Okay! Slingshot, aww, you gotta try this. Look at his widdle wings!" Another peck, and he giggled. "It tickles!"
Slingshot subsided a bit under a withering look, and Silverbolt added, "Get him down without frightening the poor thing, please."
Squashing Slingshot was much easier than attempting to do the same with Fireflight. Fireflight was overeager but not mean-spirited in the least. Slingshot? Sometimes Slingshot could be an aft. This was not the time for aft-dom. Silverbolt would flatten anyone who made a Dinobot so much as sad today. Wrath of Gestalt Leader, quickly followed by Wrath of Medic, if the steely glare beside Silverbolt wasn't warning enough.
"Yeah, yeah, everybody's a critic." Just a touch less arrogant and a tad bit more nervous, Slingshot went forward to join his teammate in coaxing the relatively tiny fellow flyer down. But for all his bluster and callousness toward the other Autobots, anyone who could read a mech's body language could see the lack of aggression in the Aerialbot's wings.
Swoop was going to be nestled in their hands in no time.
"#$)(*&ing birdie, get down here!"
...despite all evidence to the contrary.
"Me Swoo! Me Swoo!"
"Your name isn't #$_)%ing Swoo! Who taught you to speak?! Gah! Get off my head!"
…...eventually.
Fireflight laughed and tried to teach Swoop to speak like a parrot. With their luck lately, Swoop would pick up Slingshot's profanity instead. Silverbolt just sighed and moved in to help pick sharp talons off the edge of Slingshot's helm while the other jet windmilled his arms and cursed the shrilly screeping, gleefully hyperactive pterodactyl now clinging to his head. Fireflight laughed harder.
Ratchet harrumphed and turned back toward the tables. Silverbolt could handle the antics of his own mechs. Ratchet had four more Dinobots to deal with.
At least the chaos at the other end of the common room was confined to one giant shallow bowl of energon and a group of volunteers. Volunteers covered in pink fuel, at this point, but their sparks were in the right place despite the mess. He thought he'd impressed on them the importance of keeping the Dinobots' struggling, micro-sized systems fully-fueled. It was a major priority. The Dinobots' shrunken bodies were improperly programmed and kept glitching, making fuel processing hideously inefficient at best, completely rejecting energon at worst.
Seeing tiny cute creatures drop into statis struck most of the Autobots to the spark any time. Describing how it could happen to mechs they knew and were witnessing in an intensely vulnerable state right now...well, Ratchet might have traumatized Beachcomber.
He regretted nothing. If it kept the Dinobots from collapsing, he'd describe every graphic detail of a fuel-system crash. In fact, he had.
There were so many volunteers there weren't enough chairs to go around. Optimus Prime almost hadn't been able to find a spot at the table. The mighty leader of the Autobots still kept three mechs between himself and the medic at all times, but he managed not to blatantly hide under the table when Ratchet returned to supervising.
So. Four shrunken Dinobots; eight normal mechs. Good odds, right?
"He swallowed!" Sideswipe crowed triumphantly, and the Autobots cheered. Slag made a hiccuping hork-type sound, and the cheering faltered. "...he spat it back up."
"This one, too," Cliffjumper said. The Minibot sounded morose, but that turned to alarm a second later. He held up dripping hands as Snarl started hiccuping repeatedly. "I didn't do it!"
Ratchet strode up to the table like it was a battle to be conquered. "I told you, you have to help them get the air bubbles out or they'll do that every time! Oh, scrap."
"Blarf" (Snarl tosses his cookies)by Shibara
Picture available on Ao3
The entire table watched with wide, helpless optics as the small stegosaurus barfed a glug of energon up. All four legs wobbled before dumping him to his belly on the table to whimper in pain. Cliffjumper looked like he was afraid to touch him again.
"Hold him, you idiot!" Ratchet snapped. "He's got air bubbles in his tanks, and the intakes aren't sized properly to work without jogging them open!"
He scooped up Grimlock and held the T-Rex against his shoulder in illustration, patting the miserable Dinobot's back busily. Wheeljack's invention had indeed micro-sized the Dinobots, but it hadn't done it consistently. There were parts of the Dinobots that didn't fit right, now. Their fuel processing systems were the worst offenders, requiring this.
"Pat Pat Pat" (Grimlock and Ratchet)by Shibara
Picture available on Ao3
"Grim Grim Grim," the wrigglesome little 'bot draped on his shoulder said in time with the patting. Grimlock latched onto the upper corner of the medic's altmode roof and kept whining around the mouthful. "Grim! Grim!"
Ratchet patted as Grimlock chewed away. The steady concussion right above the micro-sized fuel intake eventually jiggled it open, but there were teethmarks pressed into Ratchet's paint before that happened.
"Grim Grim Grim Grim," Grimlock's muffled protest continued, right up until the air bubbles finally released. " - urp!"
A splotch of energon drooled down the back of the medic's shoulder. But just a bit, which was a huge improvement over what the other Dinobots were bringing back up. "There," Ratchet said shortly. He roughly shook the teeth out of his armor and passed Grimlock back to Beachcomber and Mirage. "Try again."
Mirage hardly looked the image of a noblemech now, covered in projectile vomit. Not that it wasn't recyclable, but he still looked at the pink-stained, very squirmy T-Rex in his arms with much distaste. Did he have to stuff food down this mobile mess's gullet? Did he really?
That question was written all over his face right up until Optimus Prime kicked him under the table. The noblemech jerked in surprise and looked up, glancing around indignantly. Then he caught the glare being directed at him by Ratchet. Wrath of Medic. Yes. That was a thing, right here and now, glowering at certain Autobots until they remembered their own reprehensible behavior.
Back to the corner of shame with them!
Mirage meekly bent to burping Grimlock.
Really, feeding the Dinobots wasn't too difficult. Small, playful mechs who escaped and gallumphed about the common room were more cute than problematic. The Autobots had faced tougher challenges in their time than getting Swoop to stop splashing and preening in the bowl and actually drink his dinner. Even when he started shrieking the nastiest word in Slingshot's repertoire, over and over again. That was tiresome but not necessarily bad.
It was when the Dinobots' temperature regulators failed that things took a turn for bad. Patience alone couldn't solve this problem.
"I don't have anything in their size!" Ratchet's famous hands restlessly washed over and over each other, searching for a solution out of their reach. "I could rebuilt one of the Cassette's regulators, but who's going to decide who gets that one part? Who's going to make that decision?" The angry look he seared the officers with poorly covered how he'd fretted down to the spark over this. "They're dying, Prime. They're dying, and I can't do anything!"
He wasn't even blaming Optimus anymore. His voice held nothing but frantic, sad, hopeless grief. That made the Prime shrink down even more because the guilt lay heavier with every word. Prowl hid behind a datapad. The other officers stared at the table because they couldn't bear to look at the medic.
"If they stop moving, their temperature spikes to redline. If they move, it drops, but not reliably enough that I could install something to help keep them warm. They'd burn up if I put them into forced statis, but I can't stop them from playing when they're awake! I just...they're going to die."
The officers watched Ratchet turn and leave the room, and there wasn't a slagging word of comfort they could give. It'd been four days, and the shrunken Dinobots had caused chaos, panic, and disorder wherever they'd gone. They'd also instilled a deep and abiding determination to right the wrongs that'd led to the other Autobots originally - if secretly - agreeing with their Prime basically asking Wheeljack to tamper with the minds of sentient Cybertronians.
The Dinobots were cute like this. Adorable, with a side of picture-perfect moments every other second. They just weren't...the Dinobots. They couldn't really speak, beyond a few words. They couldn't eat on their own. Everything that made them sentient, thinking beings blazed in their absence, and the Autobots were left to deal with the guilt of not seeing those things until they'd been stripped away.
Grimlock had been dumbfounded by Optimus Prime's color scheme and sat there staring up at the Autobot leader for a good ten minutes before fleeing under a table and refusing to come out for anyone but First Aid. Swoop kept flying headlong into windows. Snarl had to be carried everywhere, since his balance had gotten screwed up by the disproportionate size of his back plating. Slag refused to eat. Sludge was Sludge. Small, dumber, and more roly-poly, but still Sludge.
Ratchet didn't even have to break out the Bat of Responsibility. The Autobots were lining up to put themselves in the Shame Corner, at this point.
And now the Dinobots were dying. There wasn't enough room in the corner of shame for that. The Autobots would have to dig a Guilt Hole and bury themselves in it, and that still wouldn't be enough.
Sparkplug figured out a solution, praise Primus. "It's winter."
Ratchet didn't even take his face out of his hands. "So?"
"So it's cold outside." The human mechanic squinted at the temperature fluxuations Ratchet had been tracking. "Main problem is that they'll overheat when they're inactive, right?"
"But if they go outside, they'll be active. If I put them anywhere cold enough to keep them online, their systems go into hyperdrive, and they'll start playing." Ratchet wearily looked up. "Core temperatures will drop, and they'll likely freeze with the weather we've been having. I can't keep them still, and I can't let them move. It's a lose-lose situation."
"It's temperature regulation that's the problem. Give them more insulation and a colder environment to start with!" Sparkplug pointed out, growing more excited by his words as he started changing numbers inside Ratchet's calculations. "Why do they even need an internal regulator? We've both stuck on the idea that you have to have a regulator installed! God, I'm thinking like a robot, now."
That got a slow blink. "Uh...Sparkplug - "
"I didn't mean that like it's a bad thing," the man waved a hand impatiently, "but it kind of is for this. Look, humans don't have internal regulators like you do. When our bodies can't do enough, we have to change our environment or use different clothing. When I'm cold," he explained to the medic, "I put on a sweater. When I'm hot, I take it off. Why can't the Dinobots do the same?"
Ratchet opened his mouth to reply and lost his answer before it came out. There was no reason why not.
And that's how there came to be five tiny Dinobots playing in the snow under Ironhide's guarding optics and a variety of knitted objects. The thrift stores in Portland were going to need time to recover from being raided by Autobots on a mission to save their pint-sized comrades. The mechs had trekked back to the Ark toting enough second-hand clothing to make five appropriately-sized blankets, plus a custom-fitted T-Rex sweater-vest, a hoodie meant to cover a triceratop's horns, a stegosaurus cocoon, a snuggee big enough for a brontosaurus, and an over-wing cape. Not to mention booties and hats.
Somehow the hats had all acquired bobbles. It was a scientific mystery how that had happened. Perceptor was intrigued.
It'd taken a massive cooperative effort to piece together the clothing. Grapple had thrown together rough patterns; Jazz had organized construction teams; Prowl had planned the thrift store runs. Every Autobot had done a round of emergency sewing. However ridiculous the resulting baggy, shabby, and otherwise ragged layers of cloth looked - they worked. The blankets and clothes could be taken off quickly and buttoned back on just as fast, and that was all that mattered.
The Dinobots were wrapped in shapeless swatches of cloth, but even Sunstreaker had looked down and smiled at Snarl and Sludge curled up around each other in a huge patchwork puddle of ugly colors.
Ratchet watched Slag run around in the snow, blanket flying out behind him like the tiny bitlet was Super Slag. Grimlock had lost one galosh in the snow, and Blaster had his hands full trying to wrestle the bootie back on the T-Rex when said T-Rex was much more interested in chasing after Super Slag. Swoop cheeped and hopped about nearby like a moving pile of rags. Despite his attempts to hop away, Silverbolt scooped him up and poked him in the tummy to screams of happy profanity.
Slingshot was never going to live that down.
Gears came out the Ark's front door. Ratchet heard him coming and turned. The Minibot opened his mouth, and the medic tensed.
If the fragger said one thing, one measly complaint, about the effort they'd gone through to save the Dinobots' lives, he was going to snap the mech in half and feed him his own feet!
A large, very Prime-like arm shot out of the door and dragged Gears back inside before a single word got out.
Ratchet relaxed. Turning back to the Dinobots frolicking in the snow, he resumed watching. Wheeljack had sworn he'd have the machine reversed and the Dinobots back to normal in ten hours or less. Ten more hours, and Ratchet would release everyone from marinating in their guilt over in the corner of shame.
Juuuuuust in time for Grimlock to get his revenge.
But he wasn't going to warn anyone about that.
[* * * * *]
Fort Max & Whirl versus the Heat Virus: Round Three
[* * * * *]
There came a time in a mech's life, and it was the best of times.
No, he lied. It was the worst of times. Specifically, it was the time when he agreed with anything Whirl said.
"This is a bad idea," Fortress Maximus whispered as he peered around the corner above the shorter mech's head.
"Totally." Whirl skittered off down the corridor. "It's something nobody with half a brain module should do."
"I don't see you turning back." The insult was hissed half under his breath, because neither was Fort Max. In fact, the former warden was hurrying after the ex-Wrecker. "Wait up!" Half a brain plus half a brain, and yet they were still doing this. They apparently had the sum total intelligence of a drone between the two of them.
To his surprise, Whirl actually listened. "Hurry up," the spindly mech insisted. "Who the slag knows what's down here? I haven't been down this way since, uh, well." He stopped and seemed to think that over. "Huh. Since my last session. That was Day Zero."
Meaning that nobody with a shred of sanity had been down this way since the virus infected the Lost Light. A vague sense of shame crawled down Fort Max's back, because that really only served to fertilize his imagination. Curiosity would kill someone on board this ship yet, although Steeljaw had looked healthy enough when last seen.
He tamped down shame at his lack of control by assuring himself that he was, uh, helping Whirl. Whirl, who had been tapped as emergency medical personnel by Ratchet himself. Yeah. That almost worked as an excuse. "You have more energon, right?"
The question came out somewhat plaintive, but Whirl took it at face value. "Yep." One claw patted the glass of the rotary mech's cockpit. "Stocked up on medical-grade before I busted out of the medibay last time." His sole optic looked sidelong at the larger mech jogging up beside him. "C'mon, how much energy you really think he could have expended? It's Rung. Dunno if he even knows how to frag."
They looked at each other silently, both unwilling to admit just how curious they each were about just that. Because the idea of Rung, psychotherapist and ancient orange mech, getting it on with anyone..?
Investigating was a terrible idea. But there came a time in a mech's life when curiosity overrode common sense, and this was it.
Technically, they were disobeying orders. Whirl was supposed to drag Fortress Maximus up to Ultra Magnus. Fort Max, still cuffed, had his doubts about the official nature of those orders. He wasn't objecting overly much to Whirl's insane detour to collect Perceptor and somehow trade the scientist to Drift in order to - you know what? Fort Max didn't have a clue how Whirl's peculiar brand of logic worked, because he had no idea what was going on in the first place.
The universe had gone mad while he'd been locked up. And when he'd sarcastically suggested they visit Rung's office so maybe they could get the universe some counseling, ex-Wrecker and ex-warden had stopped dead in the corridor as it'd hit them that Rung would be infected, too.
Okay, admittedly, part of Fort Max really wanted to slink into Rung's office just so he could apologize. Attempt to explain, maybe. Verbally throw himself on the floor and invite the poor noncombatant he'd held hostage to stomp on him in compensation for mangling his hand and being responsible for that whole shot-in-the-head incident. Guilt still ran cold through his fuel lines whenever Rung's name was said aloud.
"Rung's, like, as old as the war. Rung's older than the war. Rung is pre-war. Rung's gotta have interfacing equipment that predates everything but Rung. Rung can't be fragging like everybody else. 'Cause he's Rung."
He swore Whirl was doing that on purpose. "Fine, that's what you think. So let's find out." Bad idea or not, some things had to be done. Fortress Maximus scowled down at the shorter Autobot and strode off down the corridor toward the office before Whirl could invoke anymore guilt.
There may or may not have been a faint snicker from behind him.
Tall as the former warden was, Whirl could move it when motivated. The fear of splitting up seemed to be motivation enough, because the rotary mech fell in beside him after loping in his wake for a while. Together, they cautiously rounded the last corner and headed toward Rung's office.
"It's quiet." Whirl glanced back at him, optic glittering suspicion upward. "Too quiet."
"Not everyone frags loudly," Fort Max muttered. Even so, reflex had him looking over his own shoulder. It wasn't paranoia if they really were out to get him. "I can see him being a quiet one." The difficulty inherent in thinking of one's own counselor (and victim) in the midst of sexual activity broke his mind a little.
They crept down the corridor. They probably looked six kinds of ridiculous pressed against the wall and checking both ways every other step, but they'd been ambushed by overly-amorous Autobots everywhere else. It wouldn't surprise either of them if virus-crazed mechs started popping out of air vents any minute now.
Whirl reached the door first, but instead of knocking, he cocked his head and held a claw up. "Wait. Look at this."
Fort Max took another look over his shoulder before turning his optics to the clipboard the shorter Autobot took off the door. "What is it?"
"Probably nothing. Lemme read." Humming slightly, the ex-Wrecker looked through the document on the clipboard.
The humming stopped.
"Uh. Or not."
He didn't quite know what to think when Whirl silently held the clipboard out to him. Shell-shocked was not a good look on the mech. "What? What is - "
Dead-voiced, Whirl shoved it into his chest until he had to take it. "Just read it."
Fortress Maximus read it.
It was...certainly an educational read.
"This is a consent form."
"Uh-huh." Whirl nodded.
He ran a finger down the list, numbly checking off the acts he'd only ever heard of. "This can't be real."
"Uh-huh."
"It can't." His finger hesitated over a particularly sordid position. "This one isn't even physically possible!"
A claw snagged the clipboard back. "Which one?"
"That one! The one with the legs and the lever and does he even have a pulley? I never saw a pulley on the ceiling, and I must have looked at the whole thing." He'd spent enough time on that blasted couch trying to evade Rung's questions, after all. He'd know if there were a pulley on the ceiling.
Curiosity strangled caution and buried the body.
Whirl's antenna laid back, then slowly perked back up. "Pulley's not hard to install. Hey, no, I get how it'd work. See, if you bend your leg like this - "
"I can't bend my leg like that."
The spindly mech looked from his legs to Fort Max's. "Well, there's your problem."
Color him skeptical. Backward-bending knees or not, that position seemed improbable. "I don't believe you."
Even without a mouth, Whirl could snort at his disbelief. The claw holding the clipboard went back to balance against the wall, and he used the other to pull the ex-warden close enough to hike one leg up and hook the end of his heel on a tread. "Look, it's not hard, you just need to be more flexible than you hulking slabs of armament are built. Now, mechs like me? We know mobility's where it's at - "
"Don't put your foot on me, you - "
"Excuse me?"
Neither of them noticed the polite interruption for a critical minute. "Hold my shoulder! Yeah, see, that's where the pulley comes in. If you were smaller, you'd need a lever under my aft to boost me up - "
"No, c'mon, who in their right mind would try this with you?"
"I would." A relatively small hand plucked the clipboard loose, but Whirl merely used the freed claw to get a proper grip on Fort Max's other arm as the bigger mech grunted in frustration.
"You have too many joints."
"I'm not the one made of elbows right now."
"I am not!"
"Pardon me, but can I interrupt? If you lift right there, it'll help." Rung smiled as two heads turned toward him.
They looked back to what they were doing. "Thanks," Fort Max said on automatic as he adjusted his grip, and Whirl yelped as his foot slid. "Huh. You're right."
There was a beat of silence as Whirl's foot found purchase.
It was followed by another one of shocked realization.
Their heads whipped back around.
He was paging through the document, however, and took their stunned staring in stride. "Do you have any questions? I see you haven't checked any of the boxes."
Whatever questions they wanted to ask, not even mechs like them could manage to say them out loud. Ex-Wrecker and ex-warden alike gaped over the psychotherapist's shoulder into his office, and everything they wanted to blurt out got lost in transit between mind and vocalizer. Skids on hands and knees in the center of the office, gagged and tied to a bar neither recalled being there earlier? Smokescreen bent over, hands pressed flat to the wall and nothing visible holding him there? Sureshot and Blades trembling, expressions agonized as they tamely sat side-by-side on the desk?
Whirl and Fortress Maximus had questions, all right.
What eventually squeaked out had absolutely nothing to do with the topics they really wanted to discuss. "When's the last time you refueled?" Whirl asked in a high-pitched voice.
Rung's smile took its time spreading over his face. Those optic ridges did obscene things, things that shouldn't have been possible but still had the psychological impact of a hand sliding up Fort Max's inner thigh. "Recently. I have my own dispenser in here. Everyone's on a schedule, you see." He turned the clipboard around and pointed to one of the grids spelling out things better not pictured in any detail. It was under the list of acts that consent had to be given for. "Things like fueling and the like happen when they're laid out," his voice sharpened into a whipcrack, "and not a moment before!"
"Gggnk," Skids whimpered, and overloaded hard.
"Tsk," Rung chided lightly. "That does set the schedule back. We'll have to start over."
Sureshot and Blade made small, soft noises of protest even as their hands obediently went from clenching on top of their knees to folded behind their necks. Someone moaned. It could have been Smokescreen, from the way the mech's doors shook violently for a moment, there, but Whirl was a more likely culprit. A mech didn't need functioning interfacing equipment to feel something when an authority figure like this said sit up and beg.
A mech didn't need to be hooked up to anyone else, either. Skids squirmed and shivered, optics locked on the therapist. The smile turned a touch lecherous, and the optic ridges twitched. One slim hand rose. It immediately had everyone's attention. It made a tapping gesture, and every working part in the room outright stopped.
No, not a tapping gesture. A spanking one.
The little background noises resumed, in a more urgent chorus. Fingers curled against the wall, behind necks, on the floor. Skids bent forward and whined thinly behind the gag as his knees spread and his back arched down.
"So you're fine." Was that Fort Max's voice? He didn't recall having that shaky of a voice. "Everyone's fueled?"
"Of course. I have a duty of care to my...patients." Rung swept a look over the two mechs outside his office.
Who suddenly realized just what kind of compromising position they were in. Whirl flailed, and Fort Max crashed against the opposite wall as they pushed apart in one uncoordinated motion.
The slender orange mech shook his head and chuckled softly. "Do you have any other questions?"
Whirl made a muted sound as if he were stuffing words back into his vocalizer before they got out. Fort Max took his turn squeaking. "Nope!"
The clipboard extended. So many unchecked boxes, so much consent to give.
Oh, Primus.
"I really want to," Whirl wheezed, and Fortress Maximus hated himself for agreeing. The two nominally-sane Autobots exchanged a pained look. "I really, really want to."
Whirl grabbed the cuffs and took off down the hall, dragging Fort Max after. Or maybe Fort Max was pushing the rotary mech ahead of himself. Because there came a time in a mech's life...
[* * * * *]