Notes/ I was so happy to see the first chapter so well liked. This one took me a while to get finished, mostly because I have a fair bit of this entire story plotted out already, but it's a bit tricky in places, to decide what goes where exactly, and what makes the most sense in which chapter. Regardless thank you again for the reviews, the favourites, and the feedback.
Just a warning for this one again. This chapter contains something a very near assault against a female bot. I'm posting a warning just in case that might bother anyone, and I like to be safe.
"'Ess'cuse me!" Firestorm called out cheerful, though no less alarmed, across the floor of the little downtown sweet shop. "Yu,forgot ya'sweeets..."
For a moment, the elderly grey painted bot that Firestorm had been speaking to, went on walking slowly toward the door of the shop. And she even began to hum to herself under her intakes as she moved with careful steps. But she turned around again, just as slow, before Firestorm could move to pursue her, bag in hand, with her walking frame. And with a light chuckle and a shake of her head, the old bot walked back toward the counter at the back of the shop again.
"Oh good gracious, dear," the old bot said, looking around in obvious dismay. "I seem to have forgotten my little bag of sweets."
"Ah'got'eet," Firestorm answered. And she almost laughed at realizing the old bot had not even heard her calling after her, but instead had finally realized on her own that the little bag was missing.
"Thank you, dear," the elderly bot said, as she took the bag that Firestorm held out to her. And for another moment she just stood smiling as she looked around the shop, holding the bag in her hand.
"A few sweets for my grand-creation's own small great grand-creation," she mused in another moment or so. And she chuckled as she raised on optic at Firestorm. "Yes, indeed I really am that old a bot already." her face-plate turned serious and she added slowly, "The younglings of my own grown younglings were the last of our family to ever see Cybertron after the start of the war. I know the generations that came after, all born on ships, are just as glad to see the Cybertron they knew only in stories, as you surely are."
"I'am glad evy'day ta'be home'ta seee dis place...," Firestorm said, grinning brightly.
There was only so much that Firestorm could do inside the sweet shop, when it came to her work. Her processor damage and the effect that had on her body and her balance would always limit her to some significant degree. But still, there was a lot she could do, when she was left to try it for herself. And though she did spend a decent amount of most shifts she worked either sitting on a chair behind the counter, while she operated a register, or simply doing so while leaning against her walking frame - she had also mastered origination of the little shop, could manage to pull herself up on ladders to fill the high candy bins, and many locals in the city had even grown used to her mumbled voice answering their comm-calls to the shop.
Firestorm had learned early into her current shift though, that standing for long at all was just not going to work for her at all. And the ladder was most definitely out entirely. The young bot, usually just as full of energy as she could possibly be, considering her extreme limitations in mobility for one barely out of youngling-hood, was growing tired and stiff that afternoon, just running the register from her place on a chair.
With a shake of her head, she reminded herself that she had just been discharged from the hospital a day before. And she wondered, quite reasonably, if she should of course even be at work at all . Certainly Ratchet would not approve if only he knew she'd gone back that morning. But Firestorm liked to work. She'd waited so long, before she'd gotten that job, just to have one of her very own. And since the day she'd replaced Speedbreaker in the little shop, already a few years before, Firestorm seldom missed a single shift.
"Firestorm? Are you sure you're alright to be here?" the shop owner, Crankshaft, questioned from somewhere unseen inside the shop. Firestorm turned to find him, standing halfway up the narrow metal staircase that led to the apartment he lived in with his bond-mate, above the place. He leaned over the railing, and looked at her with obvious concern.
"I'good!" Firestorm mumbled her answered just as usual. But she was quick about it. And she nodded her head with assurance as she did. The young bot may not have been quite up her usual self just yet, but she felt just fine as long as she was sitting down and not trying to rush around. And she told him that quickly.
"Fair enough," Crankshaft nodded, smiling. "TopGear and I are on our way out tonight, to go and pay a visit to that daughter of ours and her mate. We do after all have a little grand-creation in need of some spoiling." The old shopkeeper chuckled then, and his smile fast became a grin. "If you need to close up shop early and go on home, don't hesitate to do so."
Firestorm nodded. Certainly the shop owners were no strangers to closing early, or to opening late. Indeed so many places of business in the small city, most of them still small family run operations, were known to open and close whenever the bots that ran them could get over to open or needed to close, because really there were just not enough workers to hire as help.
"Say'hi ta Speedy fa'mee," Firestorm said, grinning back in lieu of any reply to his comment. "Tell'her tanks'fa fixin' ma'frame 'fa'mee."
"Will do." Crankshaft smiled again, before his face-plate quickly turned serious. "Remember to consume a little extra energon tonight while you work. Get some from the dispenser up in my apartment. You're still recovering. You need the extra fuel."
Crankshaft and his mate, Topegear, may have been Speedbreaker's creators. But both of them had come to care for Firestorm nearly as much as they did their own daughter. And she had certainly come to know it. Firestorm nodded her head in thanks and understanding and waved cheerfully to the old red and gold bot as he walked slowly across the floor of the shop and out the door.
Not long after Crankshaft had left, a chatty flyer frame-type walked into the shop with his twin younglings, Takeoff and Runway. The pair of little bots - almost identical except for differences in the colouring of the highlights over their dark grey frames – ran at once for candy bins and began choosing flavors. Their carrier of course stopped to chat. And he stood leaning against the counter for a good while to do so. The younglings meanwhile grew increasingly rambunctious as they ran around inside the shop, and quite randomly it seemed, they began a round of play-fighting just steps from the door. That was all good and well, until a bin of sweets fell over just as soon as one twin's little wings hit it in his sudden careless spin.
Firestorm stood up at once from the chair she'd been using to sit in at work, concerned for the moment of course that the offending youngling, Takeoff, might just have gotten hurt. But he hadn't at all, and he and his brother both stood in the middle of floor with shocked looks on their face-plates of younglings in trouble. And sure enough their carrier grabbed them at once, pulling both against his frame with one of his arms, and shaking his head while he kept his now protesting children restrained that way. Finally, letting both of them go again as he paid for the little bags of sweets in their hands , and then promptly grabbing both bags to store them in his own storage compartment, he offered to pick up the contents of the spilled bin. And he apologized, with a shaking head, for his younglings' behaviour.
"Is'okay," Firestorm answered quickly and smiling. "It'happen..."
And with her hands quickly placed onto the bars of her walking frame, she walked across the shop to pick up the spilled bin and it's contents herself, after assuring the flustered flyer that she could easily deal with it herself. The little family quickly left the shop after that
Each sweet in that large heavy container, like most sold in the shop, was individually wrapped. And Firestorm, reflected with a chuckle just how glad she was of that fact now, as she put then all back into the bin, now up-righted on the floor near the scattered pile.
"Ah'sory," she called out, mumbling when the door opened again, and she heard the footsteps from more than one bot walking inside from out on the sidewalk. "Jus'gimme a'second."
Looking up from the sweets she was picking up from the floor, Firestorm turned to see two large bots in the shop. And both of them were frowning at once in displeasure. Leaving the mess at once, she grabbed her frames handlebars again and hauled herself to her feet just as quickly as she could.
"How'can Ah'help'yu?" she asked, smiling. But the pair of bots just frowned far more then even before, and in another second both were flat out scowling at her. Firestrom only smiled brighter and stood, looking up at them both, leaning on the bars of her frame.
"Processor damaged, glitch case," one of the bots – a tall red and white one, with a strangely concerning number of recent dents – muttered at her with a disgusted shake of his head. That was certainly uncalled for and Firestorm knew it. The bot, she noticed quickly, smelled strongly of high grade, as did his friend. And she stood where she was and silent a second, just wondering to herself what it was she should actually do.
"Ah'dun tink yu'need'ta be in'here," Firestrom said, deciding at once to simply turn them both out, or at least to try to. And she struggled a little, just to keep her voice steady and her expression serious, despite the pounding of her spark. To drive home her point, she gestured with one of her constantly shaking hands, right toward the door, behind the pair of bots. "Yu'drunk."
Firestorm hoped beyond any hope, that the bots would just turn and leave, because strangely she got a bad feeling from both of them. But they didn't go anywhere. One of them, the red and white one that had already insulted her, stepped toward her fast. And in one swift move, he kicked the bottom of her walking frame hard enough that it was knocked away from her to land sideways on the floor of the shop. Firestorm stumbled badly, trying too quickly, to regain her standing balance without it. And she would have fallen to the floor because of it, had she instead managed one clumsy step sideways to catch herself against a shelf filled with colourful sweet containers.
"Fragging glitch retard!" the drunken bot snarled. And behind him, his black and green friend – just as drunk, and equally as scuffed and dented – began to laugh like something was hilarious.
"Get'outta here!" Firestorm said, shouting now and scowling right back at them both, as she gestured again, now quite pointedly. Letting go of the shelf, she leaned carefully forward to pick her frame again. But to her dismay, the big bot kicked it away from her and across the shop, before he shoved her hard into the shelf.
They were likely going to rob the shop. Firestorm reasoned that out quickly for herself when she saw the second bot, the still laughing black and green one, move steadily toward the register, set up on the counter in the far back corner. And far from willing to stand by and let Speedbreaker's creators be robbed of the livelihood they worked so hard for, she debated with herself quickly over exactly what to do. She knew she couldn't reach the commlink – that was behind the counter. And she certainly had no hope at all of physically fighting with one bot, let along two. She decided finally on leaving the shop, leaving her frame where it was, tipped far far across the floor, and making her way without it as fast as she possibly could, to an energon bar next door, where she could ask someone in there to call for the patrol.
The red and white bot was much closer to her than his friend was – indeed the black and green brute was no longer making any secret at all, of his intent to get the register open by simply throwing it to the floor and brutishly stomping on it – and the bot was faster than she was. Firestrom's stumbling steps, so hopefully clumsy without her frame, were no match for those of an able bodied and much bigger bot. And long before she could hope to make it anywhere even close to the door, the red and white fellow had grabbed hard and roughly by the arm, and forced her against the wall behind her.
"Where ya goin'? He asked her, mocking as he scowled in her face-plate. "Don't run away just yet little lady. I wanna have a little fun tonight."
"F... fun?" Firestorm mumbled, her unease too great for her to hide by now. And disbelief and dread filled her spark when the big drunken bot's optics wandered slowly over her body, from top to bottom and then halfway back up, stopping at the cover of her interface panel.
"Yeah. Fun," the bot said, too slowly, condescending as he forced her closer against the wall, and pressed himself against her. For a moment he just stood close to her and his body stinking of high grade, brought her close to gagging. After a moment more and another, much slower look over her tormenting form, he whispered close to the side of her head, "you're sure an ugly, odd looking thing. But still I'll bet that makes you easy..."
"Frag'off" Firestorm mumbled, helpless and trying hard to make the tone of her voice one of suriousness. In desperation, she smacked him across the side of her face-plate with the one hand he wasn't holding pinned against the wall. But that only served to anger him, and he growled at her as his hand went for her interface panel.
"Such adult language for a pile of scrap who surely should have died..." the big bot mumbled aggressively. And she wiggled backwards against the wall as much as she possibly could, struggling to avoid his wandering and certainly unwanted hand.
"What in Primus' name are you doing?" the other bot asked, obviously dismayed, as he looked up from his futile task of trying to break open the register by stomping on it and throwing it around on the floor. He looked around, nervous now, even if he did keep right on trying to bust up the till. "I thought we just came in for the credit coins..."
"You get that open, and I'll get this shop-bot," the red and white fellow said, menacing and with the worst kind of grin across his face-plate. "When I'm done, you can have her..."
Firestorm thought a second that the second bot, the black and green one, might just help her by speaking out in disapproval of his friend. But the black and green bot's optics, first narrowed in confusion, finally lit up with possibilities. And she knew that not only would she have no help from him, but her situation was now even worse. She kicked at the bot that held her, and screamed until he silenced her by pressing his body against her tight enough to force the intake from her vent.
"I wasn't counting on a prize like you tonight," he taunted sickeningly, while he began to rock his body a little against hers suggestively in the still standing positions, and she struggled to raise her leg just enough to kick him square in the knee-joint. "Am I first to call you a prize, little femme? A shame I think. But then no one does want the damaged ones..."
"Dun'ya dare' touch'me..." Firestorm warned. But she knew full well her tone of voice was hardly close to as menacing as she could only dream it was. And her spark, already pounding and flipping with her panic, began to pound harder before it dropped, seemingly into her fuel tank.
The door to the sweet shop flew open in the next second. And Firestrom barely dared to believe it really had. She reflected somewhere in the very back of her mind, on the stupidity of the violent bots who had obviously forgotten even to lock it once inside. But the rest of her attention was on the purple and dark blue flash of motion that crossed the shop fast, in the midst of light footsteps.
"Soundwave," she exclaimed, in disbelieving relief, as she watched the optics of the red and white bot in front of her open wide in horror. Unlike the two bots in their act of poor judgment and stupidly, Soundwave turned at once to lock the door behind him.
"We don't want any trouble," the black and green bot across the shop exclaimed. He stood up straight, right in the middle of slamming the register into the floor, and he dropped it onto his own foot in doing so. "We were just messing around!"
But Soundwave's attention was one the red and white bot to stood in front of Firestrom. And before the bot could even make his sputtering voice say even one sensible word, Both of Soundwave's electrified cables had shot forward from his body, and wrapped tight around the offending bot's legs. He was yanked from the floor, with a most undignified shriek of terror and surprise, and his head bounced hard off the edge of a shelf behind him as he fell. The second bot tried to make a run for it, heading fast toward the door But Soundwave's long arm was just long enough that he could reach him as he ran passed. And that bot received only a hard blow to the face-plate for his trouble. He dropped to his knees on the floor, gasping in shock and looking like he would beg for his life any second.
"Please..." the red and white fellow begged, sitting up on the floor, rubbing his head and still wrapped up tightly in the cables. "I... I didn't touch her. I... don't... I don't know why you, a former 'con would care so... so much. But I didn't touch her!" The bot screamed horribly as electrical charge passed through the cables that held him, filling his body with countless volts of Soundwave's rage at him.
"He... he didn't," Firestorm said slowly. Part of her hated to speak up for the bot that had hurt her, even if he hadn't managed to follow though on his ultimate intention. But she knew that Soundwave would kill him, probably throwing away his own future in the process, if she said nothing to stop him now. "Ya got'here 'fore'he... could..."
"Strong suggestion – run," Soundwave said, looking from one offender to the other, as he let the one he held go. His speech had reverted again to his too familiar formal monotone. But still it did little to hide his anger. The pair of drunken bots were both on their feet at once and shakily both half ran and half stumbled toward the door. One unlocked it with a shaking hand and both were gone, rushing into the street in well under one flat second.
"Soundwave," Firestorm said. Her hands were shaking from shock and relief, just as much as from the damage to her processor in that moment. Her knees gave out beneath her. And she would have fallen right to the floor, had he not grabbed her quickly and pulled her against him. "They'tried'ta rob'tha place... he woulda... if'yu hadn't come'in..."
Outside in the street, sirens were screaming again.
"Have you seen Cybershock's fuel container anywhere?" Arcee asked, dismayed as she looked around the common areas of her family's apartment for the third time by then, and did not see it in any of the places she imagined it should be.
"Did you try the sanitazer?" Knockout called back in reply to her question. "Or... the top shelf of the cupboard by the door?"
"Yes to both," Arcee answered. And she stood a moment shaking her head, before she looked around a partial wall, and into the living room, and spoke to her youngling. "Cybershock, where did you leave your energon container?"
Knockout was, at present, in the middle of doing his twice daily rehabilitation exercises, working on the floor in the living room. And Cybershock copied most of his repetitive motions, while she periodically jumped to her feet, ran around and served, in general, as the very strictest of task masters in his efforts.
"I dunno..." she said, replying to her carrier's question, at the very same second that she flopped back down, face-up onto the living room floor, and began to lift her left leg up, and let it fall before lifting it again, to encourage her creator to keep on doing so with his.
"Alright, little miss," Arcee said, chuckling as she tried a slightly modified approach in speaking to her little youngling. "Where were you when you last refuelled?"
"I dunno..." Cybershock answered, just as helpful – or not – as before.
Defeated, and shaking her head while forcing a laugh, Arcee wandered back into the apartment's entry way, where she opened an upper cupboard, grabbed one of several adult sized containers, and placed it below the dispenser by the door to fill it half full.
"I don't wike that one," Cybershock said, when Arcee set the container of fuel down on the low table in the living room. "I wike my lil' fuel 'tainer."
"I'm sure you do," Arcee answered. And once again she shook her head. "And if only we could find it, you could use it."
"Hey" Cybershock said to her creator, all but ignoring her carrier and the container of energon entirely then. And she sat up on the living room floor, frowning at him with her hands on her hips. "I don't think you 'spose to stop yet."
"Okay, you win," Knockout laughed, as he smiled at the youngling. "I'll keep on trying for a bit..."
"There is no try!" Cybershock proclaimed, sounding strangely like a few good – if not over the top – Autobots Arcee had known in the course of her life. "There's only do and suss'eed!"
"Cybershock," Arcee called to her child, from her place still standing beside the little end table. "Come here and drink some energon please." The youngling, Arcee knew all too well, would likely forget so often about her fuel all together if not reminded, sometimes constantly, to drink it.
Knockout was entirely capable by then, of sitting himself up, from laying positions, under his own power entirely. His use of grab bars, and any improvised thing he could find to help him, were all but forgotten by then. And he carefully sat himself up on the floor, before gently nudging the youngling with one hand toward the little table where her fuel had been left for her.
"I dun tink I wike this!" Cybershock proclaimed, making a face after a sip from her container. And the stubborn child promptly set it right down where she'd found it again, on top of the table. "I want my energon. This diff'ent..."
"New additive mix is all," Arcee answered. She smiled - though it was strangely just a little forced - kneeling down to offer the container again. "You're getting old enough for a different mix now."
"I don't wike it!"
"Try it again."
Cybershock, as lovely as she was, could also be an undeniably strong willed, stubborn child – not that it was ever likely she could have been any other way, given the natures of both of her parents. And true to her all too typical strength of will, Cybershock huffed loudly, and turned her body to face the other way.
"Cybershock," Arcee said in warning then. But her tone was still calm, patient. She stayed for a moment, kneeling on the floor like that. And finally she got to her feet again, pretending that she had forgotten all about the child's need for fueling entirely.
"Oh-kayyy..." Cybershock said, in less than a second. Her tone of voice was little more than a sigh of submission And she grabbed the container from its place on the table, drinking half of it, before pulling a face and drinking a bit more.
"Well played," Knockout said to his mate under his intakes. And Arcee flashed a triumphant little smirk in his direction, as Cybershock took another drink from her container.
Arcee took a few quick steps across the room, moving idly in the direction of the large patio doors, which she was intent on opening a while. And after three steps toward it and not paying attention, the toe of her right foot banged hand against a hidden leg of the sofa against the side wall. The pain of that hard sudden impact sent jolting shock waves through her lower leg at once. And hopping on her uninjured foot a second, she barely managed to resist an urge to curse out loud. Cybershock, true to form, burst out laughing in under a second.
"Not funny, little miss," Arcee mumbled, With more head shaking, and she stomped, flustered now, toward the patio. "So, so not funny."
A small metal toy building block lay in her path, and she didn't notice that either. Or at least she didn't until she stepped right on it, with her already sore and still throbbing foot. This time she was even closer to curing out loud than before. And she clampped a hand over her mouth to avoid doing exactly that, because of course her youngling sat close by listening while she drank her energon.
"Arcee," Knockout said, his tone serious and concerned. He looked at her across the living room from his place on the floor, as she yanked open the patio doors with far more force than the job required. "What wrong?"
Arcee shook of his questioning at once with a wave of her hand, and stepped back from the now open door, picking up the offending block on her way. But Knockout was nothing if not persistent. And he looked at her intently while she walked back toward him, before sitting on the sofa nearby and up against the side wall of the living room.
"I can't help thinking about that mess tonight in the sweet shop," she admitted. And once again she shook her head. She'd heard a good bit about the matter not long before, thanks to a comm call from Bulkhead, working back at the base, about it. But her former Auotbot teammate had talked her out of rushing out to even try doing anything about it herself because of her youngling and disabled mate.
She was used to war crimes far more than civil ones. And so far, when it came to troubles among the refugee neutrals, the worst of concerns had generally been fights and drunken misconduct, as well as the odd case of someone disturbing the peace. An attempted robbery; that was one thing. And that was bad enough. But a near assault on a disabled minibot shop worker – and one that happened to be a friend no less? That was a crime on a whole new level entirely. And Arcee fought back her anger as it welled up fast within her, just thinking of the whole matter.
"The civilian patrol will get those bots," Knockout said. And Arcee nodded, knowing full well he'd said it only in an attempt to help. But still she had her doubts and worries.
The police force, or what loosely passed for one on a good day, was filled with corruption, and too many members concerned more with settling scores established in ignorance, then in much actual police work. Too many patrollers were so clearly running on power trips those days. And reports of police brutality were steadily on the rise. And with the police bots busy beating others up on a near daily basis, Arcee wondered with an inward sigh, just how long it would take many of them to work through an actual case where it mattered.
"Bulkhead said he found the shop in shambles when he showed up with a couple of patrol bots," Arcee explained after a moment. And she smiled slightly in relief at knowing that at least Bulkhead was helping to work the case, and he would get things done if no one else did. "He found Soundwave with Firestorm in the middle of the floor, with broken glass from busted jars everywhere. He saved Firestorm from being violently assaulted. He might even have saved her life."
"I think I might have been a little bit wrong about Firestorm and Soundwave," Knockout said, his tone clearly reflective. And he just stayed where he was, sitting on the floor of the living room.
"We all have our moments," Arcee said, laughing a little despite the seriousness of their conversation.
Soundwave sat inside his small room at the end of a little used passageway inside what was once the the Auotbot base of operations. He tried to read the data pad he'd set propped up resting on his simple metal work desk. But his focus was on anything but computing notes that night, and to his frustration, he could barely recall which line he'd read last, in order to read the next one.
Laserbeak was restless too. And where usually she would have been recharging by that time of night, comfortably on her favoured perch set up in a corner above the desk, she was instead flapping her wings loudly as she flew across the room and back again, jumping repeatedly between the window sill, her perch and the top of the door-frame. Soundwave had tried twice to make her stop her jumping and flapping about. But she simply would not, and he certainly couldn't force her to do – or not do – anything. With a sigh as he lost his place in his reading again, and another sigh of dismay at the little bird, Soundwave finally shoved the datapad aside on his desk.
Laserbeak had so little to do since the war had ended. Most any purpose she had served for centuries had been related directly to the war effort. And now it felt, at least to her, like she had little purpose at all. Soundwave knew far better than to treat her as a common pet, in the absence of any real job to task her with. She was so much more than that. And far too intelligent to be expected to sit on a perch most of her life and amuse anyone. Soundwave had wondered before with great seriousness, how exactly she could become a full fledged and useful member of society. And that night, he wondered again.
A sudden and unexpected knock and the door, made him look in its direction. But the sound was so light, and so out of place, that for a second he dismissed it as nothing more than setting floors or noise below, in the training gym. But another, just slightly louder knock followed the first when he did not answer it. And slowly, with caution born of centuries in a life where no one could truly be trusted, he crossed the door and pushed the door release, letting it halfway slide open.
"S...Soundwave," Firestorm whispered, shakily. She stood in the dim lit empty hallway beyond the door, leaning on the handlebars of her walking frame, and obviously uneasy.
"Are you... alright?" he asked her. And with a gently tug against her arms, he pulled her into the room with him, before closing the door behind them.
"Ah'm oh'kay," Firestorm said, but her voice was still so quiet, and that alone hardly made it convincing She glanced around the room, no bigger than the tiny one she had, and decorated simply with dark natural colours, and Soundwave realized only then that she had never actually been inside his room at all before that night.
"Ah'jus keep on'thinkin' 'bout tha'bot in the'shop," she slowly explained. Her voice was slightly louder now and she spoke with some degree of confidence, as she moved to sit in the chair in front of the work desk. But as soon as she had sat down, she wrapped ehr constantly trembling hands around herself in a gesture of discomfort that much have been almost entirely unconscious, and she visibly shuddered. "Ah'cant fo'get his hands allover'mee, grabbin' like I's some... object'ta'be used... ruined."
Soundwave did the only thing he could possibly think of to do, and kneeled down quickly on the floor of his living space in front of the desk chair, so that he could be at her level. And slowly he moved to pull her against him tightly.
"Can'Ah stay'wit yu ta'night?" she questioned him slowly, after a few long moments in which she'd simply hugged him right back.
"Yes," Soundwave answered simply.
She had asked him before, a handful of recent times. And as much as he'd wished he could have let her, he'd always refused. But now, everything was different. He could not possibly refuse her simple request again.
"Have you refuelled?" he questioned, as soon as he realized that she likely hadn't yet done so before the attack at her workplace, and she may not have long after the fact.
"No..." she admitted, shaking her head against the front of his body armour. "Haven'felt up'ta any..."
"You really do need the fuel," Soundwave answered, well aware of just how much she really indeed need it then more than ever because she was still recovering from serious injury. And he stood up at once to fill a container from the little energon dispenser across his room, near the small window. He handed it to her, and slowly she took a drink from it.
"Tank'yu," she said slowly. To his relief she took another drink from the container.
Soundwave waited until Firestorm had finished the container of energon entirely, and then seeing the tiredness obvious on her face-plate, he offered her a hand up from his desk chair. He led her slowly toward his recharge station, and with some clear uncertainty, she climbed up to sit on it.
"Yu'really would'a kill'tat bot..." she said in a mix of statement and question. And he nodded slowly in response.
"I would have without hesitation, if I'd had to," he answered honestly.
"Yu'shoudn' eva'fight like'tha fa'mee..." Firestorm said, suriously. "In'tha optics'a'da police ya'still be the guilty'one..."
"You were an innocent bot, and treated like property," Soundwave explained simply. Because to him, that said it all.
"Tha's why'ya join'wit da'Cons?" Firestrom questioned hesitantly. Her tone was one of understanding. And far from judging him as she spoke of that, instead she reached out while he stood close by, and held his hands in her smaller ones, while she smiled. "Defence'of bots'from'ownership by'otthas?"
"That cause, among others, was what I once believed I was fighting for."
"Do'yu tink'I'm an'odd'looking, ugly'lil'bot?" Firestrom asked suddenly after they had both been silent for a very long moment.
"No," Soundwave answered at once. And he paused a moment, thinking, He never had been one for asking questions, but slowly he asked her anyway, what it was that could possibly have made her think that of herself.
"Tha'bot in'da shop ta'nigh..." Firestorm said. She spoke into his armour, which her face-plate was pressed against. But still he could understand her just well enough like that.
"Perhaps I was too hasty in letting him live," Soundwave answered. And he was only slightly joking in his comment.
Soundwave had never thought much about the concept of beauty, or at least he didn't in the way he knew others often did. He knew what beauty meant, of course. And he knew what made a bot 'pretty,' at least to himself – though he knew too that such things were generally relative. But such things just just never mattered much to him. The beauty - or the lack of - to one's features, hardly seemed relavent to his interactions with them. And had he ever found one truly attractive to him, it wasn't as though he would or could have acted on his attraction in any way. And so for the centuries he'd lived, he'd simply never bothered at all to notice such things really at all.
Little Firestorm was the first bot to ever make him notice her. He'd noticed right away that he thought she was pretty. And the very idea that he could think so of anyone by then left him dismayed and somewhere close to terrified at himself. He'd never planned on love. He didn't know how. Yet somehow he loved her... and that terrified him too.
He opened his mouth again to speak, determined to explain all of this to her, though he was sure she already knew and understood. But before he could say a thing, he saw her head fall suddenly forward. She lifted it again, and it tilted to the left side instead of staying straight. The little bot closed her mouth and promptly she opened it again. But still she did not form words, though clearly she tried to. And all the while the ever constant slight trembling of her hands increased until it had became horrible shaking.
"Firestorm," Soundwave said, firmly, trying hard as he could to hold her attention, because that was about all he knew to do, even after he'd seen this a least a dozen times by then. He thought fast, deciding exactly what it was that he should do with her. Her hands let go of his abruptly, and just as soon as she let go of him, he moved to put one of his arms gently behind her body. "I believe you are going to go right into reboot. I won't let you fall."
With his arm still behind her, he placed her, slowly so as not to startle her, backward onto the recharge station. And she stayed there, optics dimming and brightening only to dim again, while her limbs shook worse than before. Soundwave stood still, right beside his recharge station and the little bot that was now on it. He wondered what exactly he should do with her, as she continued to shake and tremble, and he cursed himself for still not yet knowing for sure. His first thought was that he should comm the medbay. But he remembered as well that reboots were most often no serious issue at all. He decided quickly that he should wait until she woke up – it would ideally only be a moment – and from there consider how she felt.
So he stood for a moment more, just watching her. A second more and her shaking slowed, and quickly it stopped. Her optics opened, quicker than Soundwave might have expected they would, and she moved, clearly trying hard to sit herself up again, though her body was still far too uncorroborated from rebooting to manage to do so. Soundwave moved slightly to help her, but quickly he had a far better idea. And with some hesitation, he walked around the recharge station and lay beside her on it.
"Fweeze!" Hotwire yelled across the playground. "You under re-rest."
"You neva' catch me!" Cybershock shouted back. All too excited in their game of 'police-bots and robbers.' She ran backwards, across the thin rubber safety flooring around a set of climbing bars. And finally she began to climb straight up the bars that supported the structure at its middle.
The playground the younglings played on, was a simple thing, constructed quickly the year before by Bulkhead's construction crew in a couple days downtime for the younglings of their city to use. It was hardly anything impressive at all, climbing bars and a slide, rubber mats to fall onto and wide high up walkways to run across. The thing was modelled, if anything, after the playgrounds of Earth, because Bulkhead had frankly never seen a playground of any other sort. And the little ones so loved it.
"I said fweeze, wobber!" shouted Hotwire, laughing while he tried to sound far too serious, as he gave immediate chase up the bars.
"You're never 'resting me!" Cybershock, fearless as ever, jumped from the bars at a height well over her head, rolled across the ground with the skill of any trained front-line soldier, and got to her feet quickly, running for the slide well across the playground.
"Cybershock, be careful!" It was Speedbreaker who gave that urgent warning. But she was of course a carrier too, and she and Arcee so often watched out for one another's younglings without a thought about it.
"Scrap," Arcee muttered beside her, on the bench they occupied, and about as floored by her child's reckless jump as her friend was. She sighed in relief when Cybershock got right to her feet and ran, and thouhg just about to get up fast and run to grab her, she sat back down.
"My kid is crazy," she said, shaking her head a second later. She leaned back a second on the bench and said, sighing again with a chuckle of nervous laughter, "between worrying that she's going to break her neck any day now just having her fun, and worrying that Knockout is going to fall and and break his, trying so hard to walk in rehab, I don't know how I haven't had a spark attack already!"
"It sounds though like Knockout is making a lot of rapid progress the last few days," Speedbreaker said. Her optics moved between both of the running younglings while she still payed attention to their conversation.
"He was able to transform into his vehicle mode this morning," Arcee said. And a smile came to her face-plate as she did. "He certainty can't drive. He can't even move forward in an alt mode – though strangely he can reverse a very short distance. Cybershock wasn't there to see that, and he's so excited, as you can probably image, to show her as soon as he can. She's never seen his vehicle mode..."
"I said fweeze! You under re-rest," Hotwire yelled, laughing out on the playground. Cybershock leapt over a railing and held her balance perfectly, standing on the very edge of a walkway high in the air, and with no obvious care for just how high up she actually was.
"You never take me 'live!" she shouted back, right before she began to walk sideways holding the railing and perhaps too quickly, while Hotwire scrambled clumsily up the bars to get to her.
"He's never going to catch her," Speedbreaker said, with an amused look. Then quietly she continued, not nearly so amused, "On the subject of Cybershock breaking her neck, perhaps I should be worried about my Hotwire breaking his just trying to keep up with her."
"Cybershock is unusually reckless," Arcee answered, cringing a little when her youngling dropped from the rail feet first. But she didn't stop her, because she knew the safely mat would break her fall. "I'm not sure she knows what danger means, and that's not exactly always a good thing." She shook her head, concerned. "Most younglings are not that way. Hotwire knows better."
"Soon enough, Hotwire will have a pair of siblings to chase around when he can't keep up with your little one," Speedy laughed, somewhat nervous and still in near disbelief.
"Have you wrapped your head around it yet?"
"Not yet. I mean a bit yes, of course. But just the very thought of suddenly having two more, all at once..." Speedbreaker paused a moment and then went on, with a smile now on her face-plate. "'Bee couldn't possibly be happier. I told him I'm worried because we're still young. We still have so little. He said we'll make it work. That no matter how long it takes us to give them much in life, our younglings – all three of them - will never doubt we love them more than anything."
"'Bee always did want his own family," Arcee reminded her, smiling.
Out on the playground, Cybershock had begun to clamber up the high set of bars again, climbng higher than ever this time. She quickly reached the bars that held the structure stable from the top, and were not likely intended to even be climbed at all. Hotwire had chased her up so far – a tiny 'police-bot' still determined to catch his 'robber.' But he stopped well below half way, visibly scared to go any further And slowly he began to climb back down.
To Cybershock though, climbing just as high as she possibly could was clearly an adventure and challenge. And even when she was no longer running from her playmate for the sake of their game, she still climbed higher.
"Scrap!" Arcee muttered for the second time that morning. And in under a second she was on her feet and hurrying toward the climbing bars with Speedbreaker right behind her.
"Cybershock," she called from the ground, and looking high up over her head, dismayed entirely by the height her child had easily climbed. "Can you get down?"
"Sure," the tiny youngling answered easily. And for one so small, still a first frame, and very young, she spoke with self assured confidence. But to her carrier's shock and rapidly growing near panic, she only climbed still slightly higher, instead of coming back down.
"Climb back down here please," Arcee said firmly, before she added with emphasis, "carefully."
Arcee knew she could easily climb that structure herself, with little difficulty at all, and safely retrieve her troublesome youngling, if said youngling were to need her help. She'd climbed far higher things, in the height of too many battles over several centuries. She'd climbed in the midst of weapons fire, while acid rain poured over the planet. This was only simply playground equipment. To her it was nothing. But still, something in the back of her mind told her to let her child try, no matter how small she was. The youngling was confident. It seemed unwise, unfair perhaps, to take that from her now.
Cybershock paused a moment, her feet on one flat bar, and one hand holding onto on above her head. For a second she turned her head so that she could look down, and Arcee's spark sunk at that. But the youngling, to her greatest dismay, laughed before quickly began to scramble down the upper supports again and and back onto the climbing structure, before she paused again perhaps two meters from the ground and turned, one foot still on a bar, the other hanging in the air and only one hand holding anything at all.
"Mama," she yelled happily, "catch me!"
Cybershock leapt from the climbing bars before Arcee could manage to fully react. But she managed quickly to brace herself firmly, arms in front of her, and catch her youngling anyway, the very second she launched herself at her, in a show of the innocent trust of childhood, laughing. Thrown of balance by the sudden impact and the weight of her child, Acree stumbled back a step, before her feet left the ground entirely and she fell backward, to land in an awkward sitting position, with Cybershock still in her arms. Promptly she began to laugh right along with the little one, who had burst immediately into waves of happy laughter, while her little feet kicked in the air.
A sudden loud sequel of tires and brakes made her look quickly toward the edge of the playground that ran along the main road that ran through 'downtown.' And she leapt to her feet, pulling her youngling closer against her, as a bot in a blue and white vehicle mode left the road at a speed to fast for the middle of the the city, drove up over the pedestrian walkway and careened toward the playground set up in front of him.
Hotwire stood near the edge of the playground equipment and nearly in the path of the speeding alt mode. And for a second the tiny bot froze in obvious shock and terror, before he took a few fast steps backwards, only to bump against the slide, which the speeder almost ran right into.
"Speedbreaker!" the blue and white bot hollered, the second he;d transformed – somewhat awkwardly - to his bot mode. He stood up with a fair bit of stumbling, from the position he'd come to rest in, kneeling on the safely mats. And standing in one place, he wobbled badly back and forth from one foot to the other. "Fancy'meetn' you'ere!"
The blue and white bot - obviously well past a little bit drunk- was clearly one that knew Speedy, or at least he'd known her once. And Arcee remembered after a second of thinking about it, that they had come in once on the same refugee ship.
Speedbreaker, for all her usual mild manner and tendency for non-confrontation was on him at once. Stomping toward him with rage in her optics and before Arcee could even question whether she should try to stop her, she pointed a finger in his face, standing up on the fronts of her feet and glared near daggers.
"Waste of space, drunken slagger," she yelled, her tone strangely dangerous for a small young bot. And she even dared to shave him backward them, causing him to stumble badly in his drunken state. "You nearly drove right into my youngling!"
"Who?" the stranger asked, clueless and stumbling again from foot to foot. He stepped backward a couple of long dragging steps, and he nearly fell over again. Hotwire took that second to second to run in Arcee's direction, and she grabbed him without a thought, kneeling on the ground to hold tightly to both younglings at once.
"Reckless, idiotic fool. This is a playground. It's the middle of the fragging morning!" Speedbreaker yelled. She made a fist with one of her hands, and in under a second she punched the bot – one a fair bit larger and heaver then she was – square in the centre of his chest plate. The drunken bot, stumbled back, rocking back and forth a second before-he fell hard to the ground sputtering in shock. Arcee resisted an urge to cheer her friend on, in spite of herself.
She had for a decent while, secretly thought more then once about how she'd wished that Speedbreaker could have been and Autobot with her and the rest of the team she fought along side, even if only for the somewhat selfish reason that she had so often wished she'd had another two wheeled speeder to work strategy with and relate to. She'd never thought however to even imagine that Speedbreaker would have been much good on the front lings of battle. But now, watching her in the present moment, Arcee would have chuckled had the situation been less serious, at imagining that Speedy might just have taken down Starscream had she only had the right motivation for it.
"Speedbreaker," the bot mumbled from his place sprawled across the ground. And he struggled to get back to his feet again, falling twice in the process. "What eva' happened ta' us? We had a good thing goin' once..."
"There was no 'us', Understeer," Speedbreaker said firmly. Her optics still flashed with her rage at her youngling easily close to having been harmed. And instead of offering a hand to bot to get to his feet when he tried to once again and stumbled, she just left him there and walked back to her fiend and their children.
Because the drunken bot was very close to the public youngling playground of any place, and because he was clearly well past all hope of walking anywhere, Acree quickly decided quite wisely to notify the city's patrol. And just as soon as she had done so with her private commlink, she grabbed Speedbreaker gently by and arm, herding her and both younlings all together toward the walkway and downtown.
"He never meant anything to me," Speedy explained, though Arcee would never have asked, or judged her. The young bot was clearly both shaken up and still well beyond angry. And it showed in the tone of her voice. Pausing on the walkway, she picked up Hotwire, who was reaching up to her, and shook her head with frustration. "Understeer fancied himself our ship's mechanic... though the job more often began to fall to me. He used to sit in the engine room complaining over how a femmbot couldn't possibly work on the hardware of a starship, and were bound to crash. Then he'd flirt and ogle me like some pervert, and act like he was so fragging funny. My carrier finally got wind of it one day and he let him have it good."
A couple of patrollers approached the playground as the bots and their younglings made their ways further away from it. Speedy stopped a second to watch them hurrying down the road in vehicle modes. And she shook her head, mumbled under her intakes in a tone of disdain, "Some days it looks like this city is going right to the pit..."
When Firestrom woke from her recharge, she knew at once that she was not in her own room. Looking over at a window shaded with the darkest of green curtains, blowing lightly in a breeze right above a simple black shelving unit filled with perfectly stacked datapads, she blinked a second in confusion. Warm bedding was still pulled up tightly around her, and she blinked slowly at its colour, the darkest green, just like the curtains. Blinking yet again as she rolled over, she slowly remembered the night before.
She had crept quietly down the corridor to Soundwave's room a short ways from hers, because flashbacks of a bot in the sweet shop with his wandering hands and disgusting intent, had made her wake up cringing every time she'd tried hard to fall into recharge. He'd let her in and he'd talked with her. Of course he had... but she could remember so little after that. A processor reboot. Her condition seldom embarrassed her. After all, she could do little about it and emotions toward it all did nothing. But she was suddenly embarrassed then as she realized she had gone into reboot again, and sometime soon after she must have simply fallen into recharge, too tired to do anything but.
"Soundwave..." she started to question, when she didn't see him at first, and realized at the same time she was on the recharge station all by herself. But turning slowly the rest of the way over, she saw him sitting at his. His computer terminal was powered up and he typed commands onto a keyboard in front of him.
Firestorm pushed the covers off, and climbed slowly off the recharge station. Her walking frame was standing on the floor right by the side of the recharge station she had been on. But she left it where it was and made her way slowly across the room, as she usually did in small spaces, simply holding her arms out a little for balance.
"Good morning," Soundwave said, turning away from his work when she walked up behind him and stopped there.
"Ah'am sor'ry 'bout the..." she started to say, trying hard to apologize for her rebooting incident. She had never felt a need to be sorry to anyone else before. That was new. Tears of coolant came to her optics in under a second, and before she could help it. That was also new.
"Why are you sad?" Soundwave questioned, uncertainly.
"Ah'dunno..." Firestorm answered, unable to explain, because she truly didn't know for sure.
"Never be sad over rebooting," Soundwave said slowly. He reached up to wipe away a coolant tear from her face-plate, with enough uncertainty and awkwardness it almost made her laugh instead of crying. "Do not feel sorry either. Fault – not yours."
"Wat'are'yu workin'on?" Firestorm questioned with curious interest. Her bout of sudden tears ended just as quickly as it had began, and she smiled a little, sitting on the end of the recharge station, still close to where he sat working.
"I am scanning files found on the hard drive used on onboard the Nemesis," Soundwave explained slowly. He went back to his work for a moment, but then he turned again to look at her. And though his face-plate was covered as always, she could only imagine he was smiling at her. "I am... looking for any possible photofiles of myself that may exist." He turned back to the computer screen, and he went on speaking, quicker now. "Ratchet asked me for one, if possible. Said it will be easier to construct a new face-plate for me if he only had a decent idea of what I looked like before..." Hs words died out there entirely, and Firestrom stood up again, to stand behind him smiling in her understanding.
"Did'yu fine'one?" she asked. Her tone was upbeat and that was deliberate.
Firestorm admitted to herself that she was curious to see picture of him too, just to understand what he'd looked like once. And she knew he'd surely show her, if he found one. But as he continued to scroll through files she knew it was less than likely one actually existed. Such a situation was not uncommon considering the war.
"I didn't," Soundwave answered, confirming. And though he spoke as he most often did, in a even and low tone of voice, hints of his frustration and dismay showed through. "I had hoped to find a photofile from the fighting pits attached to my enlistment record... it's been so long since I've seen or even thought about it, I could not even remember if..."
"Ratchet will'do da'bess he can, ev'n withou' a'picture fa'reference," Firestorm assured him, with a much brighter smile.
"Soundwave," she said a moment later, when he said nothing in reply to her and she noticed just from the slumping of his shoulders, how tired he clearly was. She remember, vaguely, that he had lay down a while, not long after she had woken up from her reboot. She remembered the warmth of his frame as she lay tightly against him a while. But she'd too quickly gone right to sleep. "Did'yu recharge much'las'nigh'?"
"I did not," he admitted. And with a start, Firestorm understood at once, remembering.
"Ta'day is ya'second optic repair."
"Correct."