Notes/ Thanks a TON for the good amount of positive feedback I got for the previous chapter. It got me thinking, and still plotting more of this story, which is good.
Clearly the idea of Soundwave pairing off now, is a popular suggestion. Ohhhhh boy. More subplot within a plot…? Its an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what, if anything, I want to do with that yet.
MadnessJones – You're right about the Homicidal 'Con leader, that seems to have snuck right on out of the story. I'd noticed that too a couple chapters ago to be honest. But I just couldn't figure out exactly where Starscream had run off too. Ha, I finally caught him so I could stick him back into the plot where he belongs. And he makes a brief appearance again in this chapter.
After a while of searching every obvious place on the Autobot base, and then having moved on to some of the slightly less obvious, Soundwave finally managed to find Knockout in the metal storage locker of any and all places. Stepping into the place slowly, letting his form cast a large shadow across the floor as the sunlight outside caught him from behind, he looked around at high ceilings and wall mounted shelves which held bits and sheets and rods of metal of many sizes, shapes, and types. The red bot sat on his cart, pulled up to a work table with it's tray and armrest raised, and out of the way. His right hand sorted intently though a pile of bolts and screws, hinges and all manner of small metal scraps spread out on the surface of the table in front of him. The bucket from which the pieces had been dumped out, sat empty at the edge of the table.
Soundwave took a couple of steps forward and watched, with nearly fascinated interest, as Knockout grabbed with clumsy and not exactly coordinated finger tips, for a small red painted bolt, which he turned in his hand and then let fell discarded to the table top. Reaching next for a bent blue metal scrap, his fingers knocked it across the table instead of picking it up, but he only reached out, and tried again to grab it, failing twice before he finally did so. He held it up, and inspected it carefully, only to discard it and reach next for another similar piece. Fumbling fingers sent it sliding across the tabletop and over the edge, where it bounced onto the floor with a light tinging sound. Three small bolts followed, knocked aside in his too slowly try at catching the falling metal scarp, and each one landed with various little tings and rattles of their own.
"Suggestion – Magnetized stick," Soundwave said thoughtfully. It was only after the fact that he remembered to consider whether such advice, meant genuinely though it was, as helpful, may or may not have been seen as inappropriately singling out a disabled bot. But Knockout only nodded at the suggestion. His face-plate took on a hopeful look as he appeared to realize that may just work.
"Hmmm… I've never actually thought about that," he mused. His right hand gestured in the rough direction of where he must have thought the metal scrap landed somewhere to his left. "Soundwave, would you mind grabbing that for me?"
"Knockout – Happy?" Soundwave hesitantly formed a question after he had bent to retrieve the metal scrap.
"Sorry?" Knockout questioned in response, as he reached out to grab the scrap awkwardly with his right hand. His face-plate showed baffled confusion.
"Knockout – Happy?" Soundwave repeated. He knew he should have tried the question again some other way, using some other wording. But he didn't know how. A slight frustration began to surface at his lack of ability to fully communicate in a rare situation where he might truly have wanted to. And he forced it away quickly as he could.
"Happy?" Knockout said then, and it was clear he was more than willing to at least try to understand and answer the question. "Well sure I am. I know where you stand on the whole 'busted malfunctioning wreck of a bot should not have been saved' thing. I think you really do mean that for all the best and noble of reasons. But..."
"Soundwave – incorrect," Soundwave cut in, interrupting before his fellow defector could finish. Knockout looked quizzically in his direction.
"Assertion – that one should not exist without function and quality of life. Knockout – increasingly functional. Quality of life – presumably high, and life enjoyable."
Knockout only nodded his clear agreement and understanding, and gestured with both his optics with his functional hand for him to continue, clearly sensing quite correctly that there was more he wanted to say. Soundwave took a moment to carefully form his thoughts into a sentence that he could then speak out loud. But nothing he tried in his thoughts truly worked well as spoken language and he knew it. He tried again and still he know it would have made close to no sense if spoken out loud. Finally he gave up and simply stood where he was, silent and looking over the shoulder of the red bot, who, for all he had lost would surely still always have the wonderful gift of verbal communication that so many bots took for granted.
"You would have died at the hands of soldiers for the very faction and cause you helped to build, if anyone had ever known your optics had been destroyed," Knockout said slowly. Obviously he understood the point that Soundwave was not quite able to find the words to make, even without any real hint of what he had wanted to say. "You wonder, and probably wondered all along I would think, if maybe since you could learn to live a life the best way you could with what you had left, probably even manage to find some happiness and make it all worth it, perhaps I could just be doing the very same?"
Soundwave nodded slowly and bent to pick up the little bolts that had fallen onto the floor, and rolled a short distance in various directions. He set each one down carefully onto the work table and thought carefully about what he wanted to say next. He wanted to explain that he knew what it was like to be so close to offlining. That the memories of being shot down out of the sky still bothered him. And that he remembered still almost just as well, the day his face-plate was melted and his optics destroyed, and that that day had been the first he had truly thought his life was surely about to end. He wished he could explain that he tried not to think about any of that very much because if he did it was hard to stop again. But he lacked the verbal skills to really say any of that in a way that wold have made even a hint of sense at all. So instead he simply bent again to pick up the last of the tiny bolts from the floor.
"You know..." Knockout began speaking again and Soundwave dropped the tiny bolt onto the work table and stood listening, "Back on the warship, we all just thought you were weird. Creepy. Bordering somewhere near terrifying. Certainly completely unreachable in the way of friendship, or even a simple conversation in the hall. I've been thinking, maybe some of us should have tired harder. I wonder if anyone ever realized you had your own scrap to deal with, the same as anybot."
Soundwave only nodded slightly. He understood fully what it was the other bot was trying to get across. But he could not come close enough to finding the words for a sensible reply, and so once again he didn't try to.
"Inquiry – scraps?" he asked, having decided to simply charge the subject, redirecting it to something else in hopes he could piece together spoken words well enough in a subject far less emotionally complex.
The way he had said it was still not good enough he knew. Even when he tilted his head and wordlessly gestured toward the metal bits strewn over the table, he knew the question was far too vague. Still though he did not bother to add any greater explanation, and instead only continued to stand with his head tilted toward the scarps in question.
"I'm looking for bits to became part of a youngling's first frame," Knockout explained. Obviously he had understood the question, as it was. He reached carefully for a smooth and flat bit of shinning chrome, held it up a bit toward the light, and looked it over carefully. "Arcee told me last night about her home city and it's tradition of using all manner of metal scraps, re-cut and reshaped into decorative components, incorporated into the frames built for their younglings. These bits and pieces would have been mostly left over from the rebuilding efforts on this planet. Seems fitting I think to use a couple of these scraps in the frame."
"I'd normally be helping of course to build said frame," he continued after a moment. The red bot looked down then from the metal scrap still in his right hand and down toward his left hand, which rested in his lap, unable to rest as typical, on the control switch, given the now upright position of the cart's tray and arm rest. Soundwave saw clearly the look of momentary sad regret in Knockout's optics, before he smiled slightly and went right on speaking. "There's no way I could build a frame. Ratchet's taken on that project. Ha, he's recruited Bulkhead and Wheekjack to help him. Said those wreckers stand to learn to do more than, well, wreck things. But no way am I going to have no part at all in helping. I told them I'd find them bits and pieces."
"Knockout- news of impending creator status- unforeseen. Unexpected." Soundwave said. He was still trying his best at real conversation. And to find that he was beginning to enjoy using the skill, was pleasantly surprising.
The red bot only laughed once, loudly and with a little shake of his head, as he set aside the shinny chrome bit and then immediately, clearly as an afterthought picked it back up again. "Ha! You're telling me."
"Soundwave- recently surprised in learning of bonded status between former Decepticon and Autobot."
Knockout only nodded in response to that, and gave what could only had been a slight smile of understanding, as he continued to sift and rummage through the pieces on the tabletop.
"Probability – offspring – kept highly shiny," Soundwave said, almost before he fully took the time to consider each word he spoke.
"Well, its like I told Arcee, when she recently made a very similar comment. Never underestimate the benefit of a well buffed and shinning paint-job. It's a very useful life skill..." The red bot rambled a second, still looking down at the scraps on the table, and chucking with laughter as he did so. Suddenly though she stopped in the meddle of what he had been saying, and turned to look at Soundwave, with a look on his face-plate that surely must have meant disbelief. "Soundwave… wait. Did you just make a joke?"
"Humor – attempted." Soundwave confirmed. Any hesitation he may have felt, had he taken the time to consider what it was he had done at all before he had done it, would have faded in a second anyway, because knockout's laughter told him his try was indeed successful. Behind his face-shield, he smiled.
Laserbeak had spent the entire morning docked with him, riding mounted to his front panel. And finally after longer than was typical, she projected to him, her restless urgency to undock and move independently. Considering a second he sent her permission to disengage and immediately sensed her disconnection from his docking port as she did so. Soundwave extended an arm slowly and with well trained obedience and loyally she moved to perch on it as soon as she was free of the docking port.
"Morning," Knockout mumbled, with his head tipped down again toward the table full of metal scraps, and his optics glancing partly to the side so that, while he paid obvious attention to more than once thing at a time. Soundwave stared at him, baffled for a moment, knocking full well the other bot could not see his baffled looked behind the face-shield in any case. A second later though he inwardly laughed when he realized the red bot had been addressing the bird.
He knew well that among Decepticons, Laserbeak was most often assumed to be a simple sparkless machine, an advanced weapon that he controlled through means they never had quite worked out. But Autobots had always somehow had the sense to see that she was a living bot herself. Laserbeak had no real voice. She was incapable of any sound beyond simple chirps and beeps and buzzing whirs. But still, once in a while an Autobot would talk to her anyway. And now Knockout had clearly thought to do the same. Soundwave was not sure exactly how he felt about a team of bots that spoke to his symbiont as her own separate individual. On the warship she had learned to play the role of simple machine without free will, because the circumstances made that arraignment useful. And it was certainly safest that way.
But among Autobots it so clearly was never going to work like that. They saw her as a living bot, because they were just open minded enough to realize her independence. They had realized it quickly and seemingly without any any real thought or question about it. And Laserbeak, once so willing to play that role of simple machine, was coming to enjoy the attention and acknowledgment of her individuality. Soundwave watched her now as she sat still perched obediently on his lower left arm, turned to head to the side and whirred happily at Knockout, who had just spoken to her.
"Knockout – hold Laserbeak," Soundwave said slowly.
When the red bot looked up from his sorting and gave a look of surprised confusion over it, Soundwave spoke up again, trying hard to explain his logic, by using language in the best way he could. "Requirement based upon new circumstances – to make her used to proximity to bots aside from myself."
He watched a moment as Knockout nodding slightly, reached somewhat awkwardly to his left using his right hand, so that he could grab the carts tray, and therefore also its attached hand control. He pulled it down to drop against it's latch mechanism on the side of the cart. Then, still using only the right hand and arm, he tried with some obvious trouble to move the left hand up and onto the control switch. Twice he managed to bang the left wrist again the bottom of the tray and once he hit the right finger tips off it, during a tired try at maneuvering a barely functional limb, held in another one that was still clumsy and uncoordinated. Soundwave spoke out loud again after that, offering in simple words to help him. But Knockout only shook his head with determination in his optics and on the forth try he did what he had obviously been trying to do in the first place. And Soundwave knew he had done that before. Clearly he knew how to do it and likely he had worked that out for himself, just as he himself had worked out how to do so much, when failure to succeed at the near impossible and fast, would only have meant the end. The bot stood still and watched his fellow defector turn the mobility cart slowly to face him, and once again he felt a sense of true regret for so recently stating out loud that that follow bot would have been better off dead.
As soon as he had given her the okay to do so, Laserbeak left her perched position on Soundwave's arm at once, and with a flapping of wings, she flew the short distance straight toward the red bot. Soundwave watched for a fraction of a second, dismayed when he saw her land right onto the back of the disabled bot's very defective left wrist, where he had been sure she would land on the right, which was so clearly stronger – a fact that she herself knew perfectly well. But after another second, he laughed inwardly, without making a sound, as he watched the red bot move to carefully pat the little bird's head with the right hand, that she of course had deliberately left free for exactly that reason.
Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break Scene Break
The previous few months had, from Starscream's perspective, been a series of endless trouble and catastrophes. It only seemed to get worse and worse everyday, and no amount of screaming into the lower atmosphere, as he stood alone on the flight deck, seemed to do anything to relieve his ever building rage.
And so it happened that one day, in the early evening, he found himself in Shockwave's laboratory, slumped against a cabinet, carelessly spilling part of a container of high grade energon onto the floor. Shockwave stood in the farthest corner, back to the room, while he sorted chemical samples in little containers, and willfully ignored his commander's unending rant.
"I can't possibly be expected to believe that we are all that's left of the Decepticons anywhere on or off Cybtertron. Well, ourselves, plus seven troopers. How can we possibly be entirely without a remaining crew and down to only seven troopers. We were the force in the universe to be feared the most, and that wasn't so long ago. It makes no real sense that we should find ourselves in this position at all. Yes, the Autobots may have almost had us. But if Megatron, hadn't gone all compassion and peace and just flown off without another word, and never to return, we could have made a come back, and good."
"The computer systems are fragging shot!" Starscream continued to rant, as Shockwave continued to all but ignore him. He poured himself another drink, from the bottle he'd left sitting on top of an out of the way workable. "Practically everything on this ship is run by that computer, and all the thing is doing is causing ship wide glitches. The power is surging, the doors are jamming up, communication and navigation are down. Our top four decks had lost any access to the server entirely, and have been pitch dark and freezing cold for I don't even know how long now! Of course none of this seems to concern you in the least, Shockwave. Your laboratory here is on a lower deck and you have a back up power generator. Perhaps if you can tear yourself away from useless science that is seemingly doing nothing to help the cause at this time, you could find it in your spark to make your way up the control room in order to look at, and fix that computer."
Shockwave had apparently grown tired of the ranting. Because he finally turned around to face Starscream, and at the same time he took a couple of long and heavy strides toward him. His large frame took on a stiff and tense stance and his hands clenched into fists.
"My specialization is in advanced genetic science," he said, in a tone that was far too calm for the tension in his body. "Not in computer systems. The only one that might have been able to fix that mess of a system you've got on board is Soundwave. And he would more than likely still be here today, working for our side, if you had not decided it was a good idea to attempt to assassinate him."
A sudden power surge made the lights flicker and dim, before they went out altogether. A back up generator kicked on then and the lights came back on, until a second later the ships main power returned took over again, kicking off the generator, with a loud buzzer whir. Somewhere down the closest hallway, a sliding door opened and shut itself loudly several times. And in the other direction, a heavy clicking thump indicated that some other door's locks had been triggered, by the computer.
"Frag this glitching!" Starscream bellowed. He stopped a foot against the floor like a youngling, and glared at his second in command. "Shockwave, we need to do something. It's getting worse."
"We need to land the ship," Shockwave answered logically, a little too calm for his commander's liking.
"No!" Starscream bellowed. "Nemesis has not landed sense we got it back into the air and it's not landing now. Its a warship, you idiot. It's built for airborne defense and attack. We're safe in the sky. It's useless on the ground."
"Starscream, use your logic for a moment.."
"I had to do it," Starscream declared. Almost immediately he forgot all about the problematic computer systems and instead went off on a new tangent. "That blasted Soundwave spied on me for centuries. I would have gotten so much further ahead in so many ways if that perfect little 'can do no wrong' tail-pipe kissing hack job of a bot, hadn't spent his time constantly reporting me at every turn! And what did you expect? That Soundwave would have sat humbly by, content to be my own third in command forever. Of course not. That creepy silent demon-bot was planning all along to get rid of you and me both, so that he could lead."
"Your hypothesis is entirely illogical. Soundwave clearly had no interest whatsoever in leadership of any kind. He would never have overthrown either one of us and taken our positions. In fact, it's pretty clear that one of the few things he ever truly feared was that one day leadership would fall to him and he would have no options to refuse."
"I don't buy that for a second. Didn't want my position? Of course he did. I daresay the mute wiedro was probably inspired by my own rise to the top. He thought that if I could do it, he obviously could to. And do we even want to know how he probably glared at me, at both of us, in contempt, wishing death upon us both, behind that face cover of his. Someone had to finally shoot him..."
"Starscream. You are intoxicated."
"I am not!" Starscream snapped. But then he finished the drink and processed to pour another, the forth the poured that evening. He shrugged, and huffed and shook his head a little, before he mumbled, "well perhaps. Ha, so what if I am!"
Shockwave turned his attention once again back to his task, stepped back toward his worktable, and went right back to ignoring his colleague. Starscream huffed and grumbled and then finally he just thew both of his arms up in annoyed frustration. Finally he took a step forward with a look of decision on his face-plate and took another drink from his container.
"Well," he snapped at Shockwave, who warily turned back to face him again. "Don't just stand there…. Sciencing all over everything. Go and bring Soundwave back to us!"
"And how do you propose I do that?" Shockwave was clearly far from impressed with his latest order. "He survived your attack on him yes. His life signal was of course still online and had grown strong again, the last I was able to see before the tracking computer went down. Logical to assume he was rescued by Autobots, but that tells us nothing of his location at present."
"Has it ever for one second occurred to you, Shockwave… ask the Autobots! Demand information and the return of my communications officer!"
"That could only prove unwise. We find ourselves successful in reacquiring Soundwave, and then what? He will only fight to and kill you if he feels he has to, in order to save himself from further tries at his own life. You tired to kill him Starscream. You brought him down with little more than pure luck and good timing. You'll never manage to do it again. You might have nearly had him from the air, but he won't hesitate to kill you on the ground. Soundwave escaped and he's obvious decided to leave well enough alone instead of seeking revenge. I advise against letting your stubbornness stand in the way of good sense. Besides, he's already made it perfectly clear through is previous actions, that he will not follow you."
"So, what's he going to do then?" Starscream spat, as he finished he drink faster than he probably should have. "Join the Autobots? Soundwave would never… He's nothing like that treacherous Knockout. But then, that finish obsessed lunatic is now dysfunctional and I can only assume a step away from death, so at least we can enjoy a good laugh at his fate."
"Actually," Shockwave interrupted, turning around again to face his commander, "According to intel from Soundwave, the last he acquired before you decided to try to kill him, it would seem Knockout is getting better."
"What?" Starscream's frame tensed under his rage. He had wanted news of the defector's death, not words implying his improving health.
"Did you not bother to read Soundwave's reports? As it is, Knockout will likely never walk, never regain full use of his left arm and hand. But he is otherwise surprisingly functional. He's loyal to the Autobots. Of course he would be. His bondmate is an Autobot..."
At that news, Starscream was compelled to hurl his empty energon container across the room. It missed Shockwave by inches and shattered against the worktable behind him.
"A bondmate?" he roared, with clenched fists and a scowl of fury across his face-plate. "Do you not think, Shockwave, that this information might just have been useful to me before now. Who is it? Who is it that that self centered, mouthy, pile of living ego, could learn to love as much as himself? Which of those ridiculous Autobots could possibly devote themselves to a busted junk heap!"
"Soundwave had reason to believe it's the Autobot called Arcee."
"Now why in the name if Primus would she of any bot want to… Nevermind. Capture her! Lock her up. Tie her up! Slowly disassemble her and send a delivery of a couple of non-vital parts to that defector medic! I don't care what you do exactly. But somehow we should be able to use her as bait to convince Knockout to come back. If he truly loves that Autobot..."
"Excuse my confusion. But it was my understanding that we urgently needed to recapture Soundwave. Why now the reignited interest in Knockout?"
"In the end we'll get them both somehow, you lunkhead. Perhaps executing Knockout will allow me to clear my head enough to work out exactly how to then get Soundwave. Perhaps..."
"It's over Starscream."
At that, Starscream stopped his raging and stared his second in the face-plate, momentarily sputtering uselessly.
"Over? What do you mean over? What's over."
"The war is over. We've lost. There's no hope of making a comeback."
"Bah. It's over when I say its over. And it's not over."
"The Decepticons are finished. We are only war criminals now in the optics of the Autobots who are rebuilding the world to run it themselves. They are showing mercy to any that forsake their 'con alliance, providing a new start to any that..."
Shockwave was by far that larger of the two, and Starscream was more than a little intoxicated on high grade. But neither of these things stopped him from crossing the floor in three long steps before leaping clear from the floor, and lunging at Shackwave while screaming with rage. Caught off guard, the force was just enough to send the larger 'con crashing to the floor, and against his work table, knocking it over with a crash and the spilling of dangerous chemicals, as the lights flashed and flickered again.
"No!" Starscream shrieked with fury. "We are not defecting. This is my ship now. My cause. My army to lead!"
"There's nothing to lead anymore." Shockwave shoved his commanding officer off of him with one simple motion of his hand and stood up, as the smaller bot sat on the floor, now sputtering again incoherently. "My loyalty was to Megatron, and he's left us behind. Left you. Walked away from the spoiled child he should have killed for the sake of our planet. He turned his back on a cause he knew had gone corrupt, and he found a new path. I will prove my loyalty now, but following his example and walking away from this."
"We are not defecting!" Starscream bellowed. He tried to jump up from the floor, bent on attacking again, without a care for what might just happen to him by that point, if they larger bot were to grow tired of it and fight back. But instead he only stumbled drunkenly and fell back to the floor, resting on this wings and bent elbows, scrambling to make uncoordinated long legs cooperate with his efforts to stand up.
"It isn't even technically defecting," Shockwave said, stepping slowly toward the door. "Not where there is no longer a side left to defect from."
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"Energon pressure is just a little high," Ratchet said, as he unfastened a portable monitoring cuff from Arcee's arm. "That's quite normal though while carrying."
"Is that… safe?" Arcee questioned at once. The slight tone of alarm and fretting in her voice was a little too clear, but Ratchet only chuckled a little about it all. He had seen more than enough first time carriers in the early days of his medical practice, to only be reminded now of just how nervous they always tended to be over every tiny aspect of their health.
"Perfectly safe," he answered in assurance. "We'll keep an optic on it obviously, if for no other reason than your own piece of mind, but I'm not worried in the least."
He reached behind him for his trusted old handheld scanner, and after taking a moment to push buttons on it's small keypad and adjust its function settings, he placed it lightly against the armor plating that covered and protected Arcee's spark chamber.
"The newspark will have it's own spark pulse by now," he said, smiling slightly as he moved the monitor a little. "Listen."
Acree had of course heard the sound of her own spark pulse many times before. Once again hearing the low tone of her spark as it pulsed, cycling slowly with it's energetic whirring was nothing impressive at all. But the sound she heard running along with it, overlapping it's pulses at the far faster rate, made her optics open wide in shocked amazement. The far higher pitch it emitted over the monitor, made it easy to picture just how fast the tiny helpless spark spun constantly around her own.
"The constant rotation of a newspark,around it's own carrier's generates it's energy field, providing it the needed power to keep on building itself and growing larger and stronger"
Ratchet had explained that once, about a month before. And Arcee had been fastened then by the idea and the knowledge of it. But to hear the sound of it, to finally visualize exactly what it was he had meant based only on the pulsing nose that motion produced withing her own frame... it was different now.
Knockout, sitting on his cart, parked facing her as she sat on a repair table in the medbay, grinned just as wide and brightly as his mate, as he too listened to the high and steady pulsing sound. He understood the medical science of it obviously far better than she ever could. But to know that the speak pulse he heard was that his own child, was a different feeling entirely. And with his functional hand holding tightly to hers over the tray of the cart, he just went right on grinning.
"Ratchet, is it possible to tell the gender of a newspark before it's born?" Arcee questioned, curious.
"Sure," the old medic nodded. "If I were to just tune this monitor a little bit, I should be able to pick up on a gender signature for the little one. It should be far enough along now to know for certain. Would you like to know?"
Arcee had asked, only out of slight curiosity about the whole process really. But when faced with the question of weather or not she wanted to know what she was carrying, she realized she had never even thought about it at all. She looked from the old medic back to her mate and saw that he only continued to grin at her like a youngling wired on too many energon sweets.
"Do you want to know?" She asked him smiling.
Knockout was silent for a moment as he considered. Finally he answered with certainty, "I think I do."
"I do too," Arcee decided. Her learned general dislike of surprises, made her sure.
"How is the younging frame looking?" she asked after a second, and making conversation mostly to keep herself from bouncing with the excitement of soon learning more about the child she carried.
"I do believe it's nearly done," Knockout smiled. He had been leaning forward a little on his seat, but finally learned back against the seat-back, as his frame began to tire and he had more trouble holding his balance. "It looked this morning, like Ratchet had both of the wreckers hard at work on it."
"Indeed I did," the old medic chuckled. Holding his scanner in one hand, he used to other to work the keypad and then turn a small dial. He looked at both of the bonded pair with an almost far away look in his optics as he mumbled proudly, "it's been so long since I've worked on a youngling's first frame. So long since I've even seen a first frame."
"Let me see the frame," Arcee said. She looked at Knockout with wide begging optics, and giggled, and knew full well he would only shake his head. He had before… twice.
"Not a chance," he said then, as she knew he would. "I told you, I want you to be surprised by the finished frame."
"Surprises make me uneasy."
"Even good surprises?"
"Yes… well no… maybe."
"It'll be finished soon and ready to show you," Knockout said smiling his familiar bright grin. And she smiled right back with a playful shake of her head.
When Ratchet carefully held the scanner against her chest-plate again the pair feel silent at once and both again listened in fascination for another moment, to the pulsing of their child's spark.
"I'm reading a very definitely female energy signature," Ratchet said. He smiled up from looking closely at the monitor held in his hand.
"A girl," Arcee squealed with more than obvious delight once the old bot had put the monitor away and backed up so that she could move. "So few females survived the war!"
"She'll be the most well loved little one on Cybertron," Knockout promised. He let go of Arcee's hand so that could could place his instead over her spark chamber.