The Diego Diaries: WHAT?! (dd3 499)
(I put Grandpa in front of Ratchet to distinguish them for you and for me. Rereading this, I saw the need.) EDIT: I am phasing in Appa for Grandpa, Amma for Other Grandpa, Nana for femme mom and Naneth for non-carrier femme mom.
-0-At the house
They came into the apartment, a little flood of colorful happy infant bots. The twins and Bluestreak had gone to get them from school leaving Ratchet, Ironhide, Sunspot, Spot and Orion to entertain the patriarch of Ratchet's side of the family. Everyone entered, then watched as the flood of infants, dogs and insects came to a stop by the cookie jar and the fam.
"HI!" Praxus said with a giant smile. Other giant smiles accompanied that one as the infants looked at everyone in the room.
Sunstreaker snorted, then put down the two detailing kits he'd made a side trip to Tyger Pax to retrieve. He looked at the spectacle on the floor, then glanced at Blue.
Blue grinned, then turned to Ratchet the Elder. "These are yours, too."
Newly amazed and overwhelmed, Appa Ratchet blinked with surprise, then looked at his grandson and son. "Oh my! Ironhide has been very prolific," he said with a grin.
"I see delusion runs in your family," Ironhide said with a smirk.
Ratchet chuckled. "I got my insanity honestly," he replied.
Bluestreak chuckled, then began to describe and attribute the infants to the proper individuals. "This little mech is Kaon. He's our son. He's our oldest. These two little femmes are ours, too. This is Uraya and this one is Iacon. They're the first twin femmes we know about in all of our history," Blue said proudly.
Appa Ratchet leaned forward, then smiled. "They're wondrous. So beautiful. I love femmes. My Docker is the prettiest femme," he said with a strain in his voice. "I love you, Kaon. You little femmes, I love you, too."
Kaon looked at the twinnies, then stepped forward clambering onto the chair. Appa Ratchet pulled him up to sit him on his lap. The twinnies glanced at each other, then moved forward. He managed to sit them on the arm of the chair side-by-side. They smiled at each other, then looked to Bluestreak.
He chuckled and continued. "These handsome little mechs belong to Optimus and Prowl. They're Rambler, T-Bar and Spirit. They were adopted in the first migration to arrive here. Rambler is quite a musician and Alor is his teacher. T-Bar and Spirit are great footballers."
"I love football. I love you, infants. You're wonderful," Appa Ratchet said as his family beamed. Ratchet himself was feeling no pain and Ravel was overjoyed in his sweet quiet way.
The little mechs smiled, then moved closer to lean against this new shirt tail grandfather's chair while Rambler sat down on Ironhide's lap.
"These little bits belong to Ratchet and Ironhide," Bluestreak said looking at the next group. "This is Praxus. He's second oldest behind Orion. This little femme is Hero. This baby," Bluestreak said taking Prowler who was pulled out of Sideswipe's hold, "is Prowler. He's named after my atar, Prowl." Bluestreak handed him to Appa Ratchet who rather expertly tucked him into his arm.
Everyone stared down at Prowler who stared back with a smile. Infants all around Ratchet the Elder grinned at Prowler, then Ratchet the Younger. "ADA!" Orion said.
Everyone in the room who was an ada glanced at him. "Which one?" Sunstreaker asked with a smirk.
Orion thought about it, then shook his helm. "She not he." He pointed from Ratchet to the other Ratchet. "WHY SHE!? I LOST!"
Hilarity met that remark.
Bluestreak squeezed Orion's ped, then the little bot grinned. "I LOVE YOU!" he said happily.
"I love you, too, spud," Bluestreak said. Then he looked down at the remaining individuals. "This is Miracle. He's Optimus and Prowl's son."
"A Prime sparkling? That's unheard of," Ratchet said with a bit of shock. "We've never had one."
"We do now," Ratchet said to his appa.
"These are the family pets," Bluestreak said looking down at a languid bulldog, a happy-go-lucky pit bull and a nervous self conscious Insecticon. "That is Dawg. He's a wonder of the world I'm told. This is Spot. He's Sunspot's pit bull and service dog, the first Cybertronian-style animal on Mars. That little thing is an orphan Insecticon. We call him Bob."
Ratchet blinked. "We have those on Cybertron. They're the worst pests ever. We kill them when we find them."
"This one is a pet, Appa," Ratchet said. "He was abandoned and left to die. Sunstreaker saved him and he's been a wonderful little guy. He's shy and scared of everything. The naturalists at The Animal Place say he won't get much bigger or better because of the lack of care and maybe even birth defects that caused them to toss him out."
"They won't keep the ones among them that are defective, that I can tell you. We find their nests down below working on things and they get destroyed. They can get out of servo. Mostly, we did our best with them around. The Decepticons keep them for soldiers. They do the worst most impossible jobs and they scare the population," he said.
Dawg who finished scratching his ear walked to the window. He flopped down and the others followed with Spot walking in a circle until he lay down. Then Bob burrowed into both of them and settled with a sigh.
"Shy little thing," Appa Ratchet said with a nod. "Just don't let him grow to full size. Even Megatron has a hard time defeating them, they're so strong and dangerous."
"He's as big as he is going to get, Appa," Ratchet said. He sat on the couch looking at his appa who was festooned with infants. Pulling his camera, he took various shots as Ravel and Sunstreaker did as well.
"Ada? Can we go upstairs to Rambler's house and play?" Sunspot said as he leaned against the side of his grand appa's chair. "We'll be good."
"When are you infants not?" Ravel asked with a smile.
They grinned at him, then looked at Ratchet. Ratchet nodded.
With a whoop, they ran for the door.
Spot jumped up causing Bob to roll like a ball. He ended on his back. Floundering, he managed to right himself, look around terrified, then scuttle back to Dawg. He dug in and settled, his many optics on the watch for anything and everything around him. He didn't settle until Sunstreaker petted his helm. Then he did with a deeply vented sigh.
"Ada?"
Everyone turned to Hero. "What, infant?" Ratchet asked.
"What is his name?" she asked.
"His name is Grand Appa," Ratchet replied. "This is my grand atar. We call a mech who is a grandpa 'appa'." He pointed to Ravel. "This is your grand ada. This is your grand ada's atar. He's your grand appa. Actually, he's the trine's infants' great grand appa but we want it simple. Just call him Appa."
Hero blinked at her ada, then looked at her ada's namesake. "You're our great grand appa?" she asked with an almost incomprehensible comprehension.
Even Ratchet blinked.
Both of them.
He nodded. "I am, infant."
She smiled. "Good. Did you know I was a good witch at Halloween?"
Ratchet looked at the others. "Halloween?"
Several moments later...
A good witch walked into the room, a tiny one with shiny sparkly accouterments. She wore her tiny hoop skirt costume, a crown and carried a wand. Walking with INTENSE self consciousness and a heavy dollop of shyness, she paused in front of her grand appa.
He looked at her, then smiled. "What a sparkly little femme you are, Hero."
"I'm Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. I love the Wizard of Oz," she said with excitement.
The twinnies stepped closer touching her gown. "I like this, Hero," Iacon said in her tiny voice.
Uraya, a quieter infant nodded.
She beamed at her nieces. "Maybe you can get one and we can be princesses."
For a moment, the group was mesmerized by the cuteness, then Ratchet smirked. "We tried to tell them that we don't wear clothing."
"I have hats, appa," Kaon said looking at his great great grand appa. "I have hats for cold."
"The weather here is very hard on sparklings," Ratchet said.
"It's not very good on Cybertron either," his appa replied. "The few younglings I saw were cold. They had makeshift wraps because we're adrift from our sun. Do you need to cover the infants here, too?"
Ratchet nodded. "We're on an organic world with very low temps a lot of the time. Covering the infants helps them because they can't regulate their internal temperatures yet."
Appa nodded. "They're vulnerable. Whatever it takes to keep them safe so they can grow up."
The femme fest continued as they discussed and investigated the wondrous Glinda. Then the femmes turned to Appa. "Do you want to see more stuff, Appa?" Hero asked with intense happiness.
The twinnies looked at her, then smiled at Appa. "More stuff, Appa," Iacon replied.
Appa looked at them with tremendous love. "Whatever you want, infants."
With that, the three ran out the open door heading for Hero's apartment and her voluminous closet.
"Oh, oh," Ratchet said watching them go. "I have a feeling there's going to be a fashion parade." He grinned at his grandpa. "Ironhide keeps them in duds."
"Little femme likes girlie stuff. Little mechs like anything. We can't have them cold. Might slow down their growth or something," Ironhide said with a grin. "I like to keep them nice and in style. Its sort of fun getting them new things now and then."
"Like playing with dollies?" Ratchet asked with a grin.
"You can't make me feel badly, Ratchet," Ironhide said with a grin.
"That's our job," Sideswipe said as he sat on a chair with Bluestreak in his lap.
Sunstreaker who was sitting on a couch grinned. "Do you want me to see what they're doing?"
Ratchet nodded. "If you would."
Sunstreaker walked out the door and into the next apartment. He walked down the hallway pausing by Hero's door. Inside the three little femmes were looking over the contents of her closet. Sunstreaker grinned.
Ironhide was as bad as he was. Hero's closet was as full as the twinnies. He watched as they put on this and that, standing in front of the little mirror that Ironhide had rigged for her on the wall by the closet door.
"You look pretty, Uraya," Hero was saying as Uraya stood beside her wearing the white coat that looked like a dandelion about to lose its little white seeds and the hat that matched. She smiled turning this way and that to see for herself.
Iacon was putting on a strange little get up that Hero liked to wear around the house. It was a unitard of some sort that was billowy and enclosed the arms, legs and peds. It was yellow with white polka dots and had a little collar with butterflies. She looked like a little round bag of infant.
Hero was shrugging on a tutu that she'd had for some time and with it a sparkly tunic that didn't really match but was shiny and therefore up her alley. She managed to put it on, then moved to stand next to Uraya. "You look pretty, Uraya."
She smiled, then hugged Hero. "I like this."
Iacon walked over to stand with the other two. "We can go show Appa," she said with intense excitement. They all squeed, then hugged each other. With that, they turned to go, then paused to stare up into the grinning face of Sunstreaker.
He knelt as they walked to him gathering into his enormously powerful arms for a hug. "You look cute. Go show Appa how much."
They smiled, then nodded. Walking to the apartment next door, they put on a fashion show for their Appa that received great applause. And so it would go for a while.
-0-At Sciences
They received the blown panel, placing it on a table in a clean room to examine.
Perceptor looked at the circuits, then made a preliminary deduction. "This panel was surged. I don't know how yet but it was. Look at the melted components, Wheeljack. Someone made this panel surge. Our system redundancies appear to have been overridden to allow this to happen."
"We have to find out how. The suspects are being watched. Unless they have supernatural powers that we haven't been able to detect we have new enemies. We have to figure out who before the migration gets here. They've had enough fear to last a lifetime."
Perceptor nodded grimly. "I agree."
They bent their formidable intellect toward the problem.
-0-TBC November 5, 2013 8-9-19
Its an old fashioned saying in America that if someone is almost family but really aren't they are shirt tail relatives. I have a lot of shirt tail relatives and so does Appa Ratchet. :D
Ratchet family tree so far:
Ratchet, Docker, Corr and Chan are the following: Grandparents to Ratchet, great grandparents to Ratchet's kids, great great grandparents to the trine's kids. They are Ratchet's grandparents so his kids -Orion, Praxus, Hero, Sunspot, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Prowler and the still anonymous Springer are their great grandchildren. Because the trine has kids, they would be the next generation, therefore great great grandchildren.
I think my head hurts. :D:D:D
Blackjack and Alor are in-laws to Ratchet, grandparents to Ratchet's kids and great grandparents to the trine's kids. Flint is an uncle to Ratchet's kids and great uncle to the trine's kids.