Blastwave didn't say a thing about it. But Shortwave could tell in just a second of watching him, that he was almost too overwhelmed. He'd clearly been fearful and panicked, right alongside his amazement and obvious disbelief, from the second the family's small ship had landed on their world. And now, sitting on the edge of a medbay repair table, it was obvious to his carrier, even in his complete silence and stillness, that he was fast approaching terrified, as he stared at the med-scanner in the young medic's hand.
The medic, still a student, as he'd explained upon introducing himself just moments before, and whose name had been all but forgotten too quickly in the haze of brand new information, cracked some random joke with the youngling, obviously trying to make him laugh. But Blast' - raised all his life so far on a ship, and with no real grasp on culture or the modern world - simply didn't seem to grasp that he was even joking.
Shortwave, standing nearby – close to her tiny daughter as she was scanned far more slowly and carefully than Blast', while she lay still as ever and silent – looked up to smile assurance at her son.
"It's just a scanner, Blast'," Shortwave told the youngling, smiling to assure him as she took a step closer. "Not much different than the one on the ship." Because indeed it was nearly the same, save for the fact that the med student's scanner was obviously newer and far more high tech.
Ratchet, busy taking clearly detailed notes onto a data pad, exchanged curious and casual glanced with his red painted colleague, whose name had been just as quickly overlooked as the student's, while the red painted bot ran the scanner.
"Blast'?" Ratchet questioned, never having asked for the youngling's name yet at all, and now so clearly trying to casually deduce his from its short form. His optics left his notes for just a second, and he looked over the bigger youngling, who the medical student was now clearly trying to gently urge him to answer with a smile and motion of his hand.
"Blastwave," Shortwave told the old bot, when her youngling gave no answer for himself. And the medibot instantly chuckled.
"So then... that one would be..." he nodded with a light chuckle toward Shortwave's other youngling – who he was still busy working with.
"Lightwave!" Blast' exclaimed, the first he'd spoken at all since they'd landed. And he smiled now, grinning in his sister's direction, his unease about the scanner seemingly forgotten entirely.
"I... realized only while carrying her spark that I had a very clear pattern to continue..." Shortwave told the medic, chuckling a little.
"Cute..." the red painted bot muttered, smiling a little. He had started to attach tiny Lightwave to monitors now, and her optics began to blink fast – a try at communicating uncertainty over just how she felt about the idea.
"Is that so, little miss?" the red medi-bot said, calm and cheerful while he went on working. He paused in his work, and held a monitor cable in his hand, close to the optics, of the helpless youngling. His free hand gently held one of hers, and he worked to straighten her tiny bent fingers. He quite strangely appeared close to stumbling over his own right foot with his left one, as he took a small step backward and adjusted his footing. But it was a small thing really, barely noticable at all. And seemingly unbothered entirely, he just went right on. "You're just a bit nervous I bet because you have no idea what's happening, do you? I'm just going to attach this wire to your body armour... and then a few more of them. We can get readings that way on the machine right behind you."
Shortwave had so often wondered just how much Light' could understand. And she talked to her all the time, just as though it all made sense to her, sure at the very least she liked the attention somehow. Blast' did it too. Sometimes, she'd hear him chattering on to his sister for hours, telling her what he'd read on his datapads, and everything he saw on the view screens. The time he'd spend talking to her was by far the very most the youngling ever talked at all. But she'd always accepted that most bots were not her and her son. Most bots didn't bother talking to anyone like Lightwave. Sure, some likely did it to be funny, or friendly and polite. Or maybe they were curious what, if anything, might happen if they did. But this medic seemed to talk to her like that for the very same reason she and Blast' did – because Light' was a living bot too, and she just might have understood him.
"Her spark is weak," the medic said, clearly saddened by the readings he saw on the screen beside him. "Its function is perhaps thirty percent."
Shortwave nodded her own sad understanding while she watched her tiny helpless child so strangely begin to whir and buzz just a little at the medi-bot. Clearly she liked him. But his own machines only confirmed exactly what she'd never needed a machine to tell her at all. Light's spark was working for too hard just to keep up – Shortwave heard it clearly when she listened... she could see it just as clearly in the way the few simple almost meaningful movements the tiny bot could make, made her close to optics with a constant need for rest. And she knew before she'd decided to hurry for their home world, that she was only getting worse, and so quickly now.
She watched as the red painted medic gently sat Light' up on the repair table. And for a second she was about to hurry forward, to warn him in her worry, to please be careful because she couldn't support her own weight and had no sense of balance at all. But he instantly supported the tiny frame with a hand behind her the second her moved her. The other hand gently held her right shoulder panel, and he was moving her so slowly. Shortwave saw at once there was little need to worry. The youngling's head fell to one side, as she was barely able to support it on her own, and the medi-bot clearly noticed this quickly, because he shifted her around a little more, tipping her back just a little against the arm he held behind her, so that she could lean it back against his upper arm.
"Are... you done with me now, Sir?" Blastwave said, on his own repair table close by. And Shortwave turned away from her smaller child just in time to see the medical student who had been assessing her bigger one nod smiling, with a strange dismayed look on his face-plate. Shortwave chuckled just a little in amusement, understanding that this still very young student was clearly not used to anybot calling him 'sir.'
"Go on, Buddy," the student said, laughing a little as he lifted Blast quickly up from his place on the repair table, and plopped him gently down onto the floor, before he chuckled again just slightly, with clear discomfort over the formality.
Shortwave caught her son lightly in mid step, as he hurried toward her. She smiled down at him before her attention, (and his too just as clearly) went back to Lightwave. The red painted medic had lifted her up from the repair table. And for a moment he just stood holding her in his arms for little or no discernible medical reason at all. He bounced just a little, with his footing somehow just slightly off in a way that Shortwave could not quite place, before he just as strangely placed Light' onto the floor, holding her in the closest she could ever be to sitting position, while he held her hands in one of his in front of her and supported her from behind again with his other one. He moved again, sitting with her on the floor, and letting her lay in his lap, he carefully bent and unbent tiny joints. Again, Lightwave whirred a little, and buzzed at him.
"Light likes him," Shortwave muttered, both impressed and greatly surprised, as well as relieved. Lightwave could show fear – though just like any other feeling of hers, it was expressed through her optics and tiny whirs and buzzes and was very hard to distinguish. And her carrier had worried of course, quite troublingly, that she might have been unhappy.
"Knockout is our younglings' medic," Ratchet said, standing beside her. He gestured toward the red painted bot with a look in his optics that might have been something close to pride. "And I have yet to see a tiny bot he isn't somehow good with..."
"Her processor function is impossible to measure exactly without running more, detailed scans of her," the red painted bot said. He had sat Lightwave up now, on the floor in front of him. And he held her carefully, supporting her in that floppy seated position, to stop her falling while he appeared to assess her balance and strength – or all lack of either. He layed her back again, lifted her back onto his knees, and held a finger in front of her optics before moving it slowly. Light' barely followed it. "She can't be functioning at more then twenty percent however. Language files offline, fine motor skills completely non-existent, her inability to hold herself up is just as much a severe balance issue as it is lack of strength..."
"This is... by far the most profoundly damaged bot I've ever seen in my centuries of practice," Ratchet muttered, nodding his head with a sad look on his face-plate.
And Shortwave, standing close by, just lowered her head understanding the implications at once. She knew it had to be every bit as bad as she'd feared and possibly worse, if a medi-bot who'd practised as long as that one clearly had seen nothing worse.
########
Shortwave sat watching out the window, while Blast' busied himself in the courtyard outside, running around with a bent metal bar he must have found somewhere – waving it around, aiming it at the air and probably pretending to shoot invisible targets just as through the bar was a blaster. She laughed a little, dismayed, trying hard to fight back the unease that had been running through her mind since her family had landed on Cybertron the previous morning.
She held Light' tighter against her, still sitting slumped and floppy as ever in her lap. And slowly she stood up, careful as ever to support the weight of her child, holding her close to the window, letting her look out. She heard a tiny whirring buzz from the youngling. It might have been excitement, but it was so hard to tell. Blastwave, strangely, had always been far better at knowing exactly what his sister was thinking than even she, her carrier was.
"Good afternoon," the voice - from a bot behind her when she had never noticed the sound of footsteps approaching at all – made her nearly jump clean out of her body armour.
"I... I'm sorry," the bot said when she turned around quickly to face him. The red and white medic she'd met the day before, upon landing. Ratchet. She recalled his name almost too slowly.
"Not your fault," Shortwave told him, allowing herself to laugh a little. She held her child tighter, and and considered for a second. "I'm usually not nearly this jumpy..."
"You'll feel better after some good recharge tonight," The medi-bot smiled. "Has anyone had a chance to show you your living space yet?"
Shortwave just nodded gratefully, because indeed she had seen it briefly, and it was surprisingly much nicer then she would ever have expected it to be. A pair of soft padded recharge stations for her younglings took up a good amount of the space inside and each of them was made up with light blue covers and soft pillows plus a few spare. But there was also a holo-vid player for them all to use, set up in a corner with a small viewing screen above, and a small stack of assorted discs on a shelf nearby. There was an armchair, and data pads, and light blue curtains that blew in the breeze through a large window that could be opened and closed as they wanted. She had been showed the room not long by the medical student whose name she never could seem to remember. And she was sure Blast' would like it too.
"The room is lovely, thank you" she said, sure that someone from among the Autobot team she had yet to meet had gone well above and beyond just to rearrange a room and make it nice for them. "Still, I fear I may not recharge much tonight..."
"Understandable," the medi-bot said, an easy smile on his face-plate. He stepped closer to the window himself and looked out for a moment before turning back to Shortwave again. "You're on a brand new world. What's not to be near panic inducing in that?"
"Cybertron is my world," Shortwave argued. "It's my home."
She remembered her youngling-hood so clearly... a youngling-hood on the world she stood on now. And in her memories it was just as good as any childhood could have been for a small femmling born to be a slave. But the medic shook his head a little, and this made her stare it him, suddenly growing frustrated.
"This is nothing like the world you left," Ratchet said, calm and smiling. He smiled a little, in a way that was clearly meant to simply be causal and even friendly. "It can't be. We are only decades out of the war and the place is changing far too fast for anything to seem familiar."
"Not to mention, I'm across the world now from where I grew up... " Shortwave mused, chuckling a little, before she paused, questioning even that knowledge in her growing, and frustrating confusion. "I think..."
"Where is Kaon from here?" she asked a moment later, laughing a little again before she stopped suddenly, remembering that the place she spoke of was now probably just pile of rubble and wreckage the size of a once huge city. And for the first time – now that she was back on her world – that truly disturbed her.
"Well... the ruins of it anyway," she added, chuckling lightly to hide her sadness, and deciding she may as well just say it out loud.
"Clear across the planet," the medi-bot said, confirming her best guess. And he stood still for a good long moment just shaking his head before he muttered, sadly himself, "And yes, it's little more then rubble now. There's been little interest in any restoration of the place, and even a good bit of direct opposition to it. I see where bots are coming from, given what the city came to represent. But still... there's so much history there and and lose it all forever would be a crying shame "
"For so long, my goal was just to get here," Shortwave mused, smiling down at Lightwave in her arms. "Get back to Cybertron, now that I could... and I never really thought much beyond that..."
"And now that you're here you wonder what's next?" the medic guessed easily. And Shortwave nodded.
"Pretty much," she chuckled again, uneasily. "Starting over again among the refugees... I... I've never liked unknowns very much."
"You'll get a housing placement as soon as one is open for you," Ratchet said. "You'll be given work. You can be happy here."
"Is it okay that he's out there?" Shortwave looked at Blast' again through the window, windering is she was right to have become concerned. "He wanted to explore a little on his own..." She stopped speaking again. But the old bot just chuckled, nodding.
"Younglings play out there all the time. He's hardly the first."
Lightwave was not exactly big for her age, nor was she as heavy as she should have been. But still, she was heavy enough, and her legs hang awkwardly over her carrier's arms while she was held. Shortwave slowly sat down with her on a bench with her back to the window. And she looked down at the child, laying with her optics barely open as typical, over her knees.
"May I give her a gift?" Ratchet asked suddenly, and grinned again. And Shortwave, startled and just slightly confused nodded a little.
She smiled though when the old bot took a soft stuffed toy cyberhound – one with exaggerated and 'cute' features and oversized floppy audial receptors, and made of bright emerald green fabric - from his storage compartment. She smiled even more when Lightwave's optics opened wide again at least for a moment, so that she could look just as intently as she could manage, at the cute stuffed thing, before she gave a little whir of clear interest. Lightwave could not hold the toy of course. She had never been even close to capable of holding an object. But Shortwave took it carefully from the medic anyway, and set it on her child's chest panel while she held her laying on her lap. And finally she moved her youngling's hand, letting it rest on the toy, letting her sense the soft fluffiness of it. Light' whirred quietly again. And she might just have grinned if she could have.
"Knockout brought that back for her right before I came to find you here," Ratchet explained, smiling with obvious joy at watching the damaged child interact the best she could with the toy. "He needed to get back to work, but he insisted I give it to her for him."
"Tell him thank you from us both," Shortwave said, once again moved by the kindness of these bots who did not need to be understanding but clearly tried to be anyway.
She wanted to ask him then how long her last child might live. Now that she had finally gotten her family home, she wanted to know if her last child might ever grow up – whatever growing up could mean for a helpless bot like Lightwave. But she knew she never would. And she didn't need a medic to tell her that. Even if he had some answer for her, which she didn't need to ask to knew he couldn't possibly have, it would only be an approximation anyway. And Shortwave was not entirely sure she'd want to know for sure, even if he could somehow tell her the answer with any true certainty.
The medi-bot sat down beside her on the bench, and with a silent motion of his hands, he asked, wordlessly to hold the youngling for a moment. Her took her gently from her carrier's lap, and set her down half sitting, on his own. And promptly he rested her new stuffed toy on her chest panel again. Her head tilted to the side to lean on his upper arm, and he just sat, supporting her helpless frame, smiling down and her, and grinning when her optics lit up in response. He looked up again then, his expression serious and sad.
Shortwave stood up from the bench again, and turned to the window, watching her son, still outside in the courtyard. Other younglings had joined Blast' out there now. A small yellow painted boy with bright chrome highlights, along with two girls – a head to foot pale green one, and another painted bright red and pale blue with brilliant purplish patterns on her upper limbs. The three chattered away to each other in the middle of the courtyard, their hands flying around cheerfully as they all suddenly began to laugh, possibly, it seemed, at something the green one had said. The three all stopped, the attention turning suddenly to the brightly coloured little femmling, who immediately set off running across the courtyard a bright smile on her face-plate as she tumbled, her lower body up over her hands, upside down and quickly right side up again, her body springing forward as she flipped over and over until she nearly hit a bench beside the walkway, and she turned around grinning.
"Light' lived to see Cybertron," Shortwave mused, that knowledge just enough to make inevitably losing her one day much easier. "I know there's no measure of her level of awareness, no way to know just how much she really understands. But this is home to her too, and I like to think she knows she's really here."
She laughed then just a little, remembering how Blast' had taken Lightwave from her arms carefully just moments after they'd landed and disembarked from their ship that morning. He'd set her down on the cool metal ground outside the city, amid the rubble still awaiting clean up, and the large chucks of sulphur that littered the ground. And he'd held her up, slumping forward on useless knee and ankle joints, while he held her tightly just as though she was really standing by herself. Only fair, he'd explained with a rare bright smile on his normally sombre face-plate, that she should stand on Cybertron's ground at least once with the rest of them.
Shortwave watched the younglings outside the window again. Saw the little yellow bot manage a decent forward flip just like his playmate had done. But he stopped at just one, then flipped upside down again to stand for a good moment on his hands, while both small girls laughed and cheered him on. She watched then as he flipped back over easily onto his feet again and the three resumed their chatting, as one by one they flopped down onto the ground fitting themselves into a tight circle of small laughing bots. Blastwave still stood alone across the courtyard, with that metal bar he'd been playing with now held tight and nervously in his hands, and the pale blue and red youngling, looking at him over he heads of her two friends, smiled brightly in his direction, until he lowered his optics with a shy hint of a smile of his own.
Ratchet joined her at the window then, Lightwave still in his arms and motionless with her optics dim. And with a laughing smile across his face-plate he pointed out and named each of the three younglings, with clear fondness in his voice. There was Hotwire – the son of the medical student she'd already met. Switchgear – who's creator it seemed she still had yet to meet. And Cybershock – the daughter of the younglings' medic who had been so good to both of her children. Shortwave smiled then, trying to commit the names to memory along with the growing list she was acquiring. But slowly she began to frown a little instead.
"Those younglings must be near enough to Lightwave's age..." she mumbled sadly.
She didn't let herself think much about what Light 'could have been. But she thought about it then, just watching those little bots as they began to run and tumble around again on the metal ground outside. And she wondered if Light' could know that she was one of them.
"You said on that comm-call you made to base while en-route, that you had some urgent information for us," Ratchet said, changing the subject abruptly. And Shortwave was instantly glad of it somehow.
She took a fast intake, reminded at once of her duty. And for just a moment she wondered if a medical officer – now that she'd discovered it was indeed a medic she'd been talking to over comms in the first place, was the best bot to rely the account of her encounter in space to at all. But he'd now asked her directly, he certainly outranked her, and it was easy to guess his role among that HQ team extended to much more than medical matters. She'd already deduced easily that the team may well have been surprisingly small.
And so she told this old red and white bot everything . The attack on her ship. The the hits to her shields and the string of ignored comm-calls to an enemy she tried hard to reason with, and how said enemy had only laughed when he'd finally accepted her flagging him, unconcerned over her younglings on board. And she told him what the 'con had said to her, when he'd thrown her civil warning of peacetime violations out the window. Finally done explaining it all just as fast as she could, while he just stood listening, nodding patiently at her with her youngling still content in his arms, she allowed herself a second to cringe as the true seriousness of what she'd just relayed hit home for her.
"A new master?" the old medi-bot muttered under his intakes, repeating what he'd just heard her say. He stood up straighter then, his expression one of purely business as he asked her, "did, this scavenger 'con mention a name for this 'new master' of his?"
Shortwave only shook her head, regretful, before she replied slowly, "he didn't say. I... asked him to explain himself. But he cut the call and fired on my ship again instead."
"I will be discussing this with the team as you can imagine." Ratchet answered, nodding understanding. And to her relief, he appeared to take her entirely seriously. But he smiled again, however wiry it may have been this time, and reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder panel, just as though she was a valued part of his own team.
"No doubt they will want to talk to you about this themselves. I'd advice you to go ahead and prepare a report," he continued, his tone one of calm assurance. "Meanwhile focus on just settling in here. Take some time to get to know Cybertron again."
"Thank you," Shortwave said, her own smile hesitant but no less sincere. "For everything..."
"Today has been quite a day for you already," Ratchet answered her, before he chuckled a knowing chuckle. "Again, perfectly understandable of course. The first few days are almost always a bit overwhelming for the new arrivals... but I have some news I need to share with you, and I think you'll want to hear it."
The medic motioned with his hand, inviting her to sit beside him again on the bench. And when she did so, however slowly and more hesitant than ever, he handed the youngling back to her, placing the heavy child easily into her waiting arms, for her to hold tightly while she stared at him with growing dread at his now serious expression.
"Your son is alive," he said, his voice entirely serious. And Shortwave, confused, looked immediately back toward the window, half way to standing again in order to do so.
The red and pale blue youngling, Cybershock, had broken away from her pair of friends now. And she was walking slowly toward Blast' with her bright smile, and a hand extended in friendly greeting. Blastwave certainly appeared unsure now. But he stood still, looking right at her, and finally smiling just a little in return.
"Of course he is..." she began to say, stupidly. But the old medi-bot shock his head to stop her train of thought at once. And his face-plate was more serious than ever.
"Your other son," he said slowly. "Your first youngling..."
"S... Sound...wave...?" Shortwave's reply was weak and stammering, shaky and emotional and she feared it only made her sound pathetic then. But the medic just nodded, smiling.
Shortwave opened her mouth at once to speak again. But she closed it a good moment later, when she realized she had no idea what she wanted to say. Blast' was always the one with the hope of such a possibility. But she herself hadn't dared to hope, because any chance at all had seemed so small and it knew it. To learn at last and for sure that he was offline and had been for centuries – that she could have lived with. That she'd been prepared because because she'd simply assumed that was what was. Everything about the near impossible life she'd made for herself since the day she'd last seen him, she done it for the youngling who never quite got to grow up and who she'd known would have wanted her to be all she could be... the youngling who believed she was something amazing when the rest of decent society saw only an interface slave with no regard for her place. And now, just the idea that she could soon talk to him again, that he had somehow survived all those years...
"He's made a life for himself," the medic said, smiling again. "A decent life. He tries so hard, just like the rest of us... And he's happy."
Shortwave knew at once, before she was asked, just how much she wanted to see Soundwave again. She imagined for a second that perhaps this bot could give her his address – that she would rush on outside at once, snatch up Blastwave gently by the arm and run with him down the street of this new city, explaining on the way why they were rushing, and that he'd been right in his innocent daring to hope. But it just didn't work that way and she knew it. Soundwave would be a near stranger to her now. She couldn't ring his buzzer with an armload of his siblings he'd learn only then existed at all, and expect he'd wave them on in laughing.
She'd failed to protect him... failed to keep them together, and it didn't seem to matter all of a sudden, that it hadn't been her fault. He would be justified now, after endless years, in hating her now. And she wondered if he'd even want to meet her again. She thought maybe she couldn't blame him if he didn't. She looked at Lightwave, now back snug in her arms, and then at Blastwave outside the window – the red and pale blue youngling was talking to him by now, chattering away doing most if not all the talking, while Blast' just nodded, smiling shyly as before. Shortwave thought then, now that she needed to really think of it at all, that maybe she didn't need her first youngling anymore. She wanted to see him again, to talk to him, to catch up on centuries and to see with her own optics just how he had turned out. But need him, like she'd thought she did long after she'd lost him to fate? That was wasn't sure of anymore. She had a new family now, younglings who she loved just as much as she'd loved him. And surely he didn't need her either. Not if he'd managed to survive a war and build a life without her help.
"Soundwave knows you're here," the medi-bot said, pulling out of her thoughts again with his suddenly excited tone. "I comm'd him not long ago to tell him, and he wanted to drop what he was doing and hurry right over here to see you at once. He would have too if I hadn't reminded him that you might need time... But he wants to see you. He told me he'll be ready and waiting for you any time." The old medi-bot paused again, watching the younglings outside before he went on speaking. "His face-plate was once all but destroyed. The medical team... we were able to rebuild it... let him look quite like anyone else. But there was little hope of fully restoring his natural features entirely. I only explain all this so you won't be shocked to find a creation that doesn't look quite like the one you must remember all too well..."
Shortwave was about to reply. But she didn't know what to say. She wanted to say it didn't matter, but of course the old bot knew that. And then she wanted to ask what had happened to cause such damages, and just how bad it had been. But it wasn't that old bot's story to tell, and she knew he couldn't. So she just nodded mutely. And was greatly surprised when the old medi-bot spoke up again, grinning now.
"Firestorm is so excited too," he said laughing. And he continued on with his train of thought at once instead of ever explaining who this 'Firestorm' actually was in the first place. "I heard her burst out crying in the background right over the comm-link. And not the sad short of crying I can tell you! You'll meet her too soon. And of course you'll probably love her. She's amazing..."
The briefing room was, among a few other places, all that was left of the old Autobot base that could truly still be considered military in nature and function. And Ratchet found the plain and mostly empty room, just as unpleasant now as he always had while in the midst of war. He leaned forward in his hard backed and decidedly uncomfortable chair and took an intake, looking around at the gathered members of the lead Autobot team, uneasily. He did not like to feel uneasy, did not like that throb of tension that was steadily building in his processor and had been since that afternoon.
"It seems to me the information she had for us, however limited, was the best she had," he said, sighing loudly. "Still, I fear this potentially be very serious."
"I'll say it's serious." Bulkhead, sitting across the table slammed a hand onto it with just enough force to make the thing shake above the knees of the gathered bots. "Who's this 'new master' of theirs?"
"Shortwave never heard his name, Bulk'" Arcee reminded him, visibly concerned right though her calm expression. It was her who had interviewed the new arrival late that afternoon, hearing her relate her story and taking notes that were just as detailed as she could get with such little information.
"It's still completely possible that 'con scavenger was lying," Bumblebee said. And course he had a fair and valid point, which Ratchet found himself nodding agreement with at once. "It stands to reason that once he realized he was up against a ship containing only one lone low ranked Autobot and a couple of younglings, he decided it might be fun to be a bully and scare her."
"Or maybe this Shortwave is lying," Wheeljack said. He looked around the table with strange disdain on his face-plate. "I don't know her from a hole in the wall. None of us do. But we know she comes from Koan... she's never denied the fact. We have no reason at all to trust that this isn't all some trick..."
"We can't judge a bot for the city she came from," Smokescreen said from his own chair across from him. He sat still and silent for a good moment, and just looked flustered. "When have we ever called it okay to do something like that?"
"When they happen to come from the very home of Megatron's uprising," Wheeljack answered, his tone growing just slightly heated. "One look at her service record and I can see she's virtually nobody among the ranks. No recognized honours... never been promoted..."
"We can't all be wreckers and elite guard bots," Ratchet said, growing just a little heated himself. He may not have Known Shortwave any more than any others did. But he'd talked to her in his medbay. He'd seen her nervous uncertain optics, just as clearly as he'd seen the same on so many bots with no idea what would become of them on new Cybertron. He liked and felt protective of her younglings. "That very same service record will tell you she was a navigator. That may not be the most glamorous job among our ranks, but it's just as valid and valuable as any position... including a field medic."
"A service record we failed to find until yesterday..." Wheeljack argued, clearly determined to push his point, despite the glares more and more of the team were beginning to give him from their various places around the table.
"A service record we failed to find because it was filed as that of a bot of unknown designation who was presumed offline!" Arcee snapped, suddenly growing truly angry. Knockout, in the chair beside hers, visibly cringed where he might usually have simply smirked over such a thing. "A misfiled record just like a thousand others!"
"There was a time you would have been just as quick to question her as I..." Wheeljack protested. He finally lowered his optics a little, as she glared daggers at him. And finally, not a second later, he simply shut his mouth, clearly seeing the wisdom in that action.
"Keep it up with your so called 'logic' right to Knockout's face-plate and see if I don't send you flying," Arcee grumbled, half way to standing up, still glaring and her hands now in fists over the top of the table – suddenly the feisty quick tempered bot she'd been in wartime. "Say all that to Soundwave's and see how long it takes Firestorm to clobber you."
"Arcee..." Ratchet stood up, arms extended between the pair of arguing bots, and his head shaking just a little in dismay. But Knockout grabbed his bond-mate gently by the shoulder panels, pulling her lightly backward until she sat down again.
"I'm sorry," Arcee mumbled, shaking her head with a look of sincere apology. She looked around at her gathered teammates, before she took a slow intake to calm herself. She had been on edge lately, prone to upset. And it was all to obvious now as she just sat, for a moment with dismay in her optics before a looked of forced calm replaced it.
"Wheeljack has a point," she said, her tone even now as she looked at said bot. "But... I spoke with Shortwave myself. I interviewed her carefully, as well as reviewing her service record and Ratchet's notes. I have no reason to think she's lying. Her story never changed once. She just wants her younglings safe. Her smallest one is so clearly damaged... Still, right along with her motivation to seek medical care for a youngling that's quite possibly dying, she did her Autobot duty in warning us of a potentially serious situation."
"So... what do we do now?" Smokescreen asked. It was admittedly, a very good question. And the others exchanged looks while most shook their heads, each of then not entirely sure.
"We can't exactly just wait for a new 'con defector and ask him what he knows," Bulkhead grumbled. "We haven't had any new defectors in almost ten years."
"We haven't had any because their faction is finished," Arcee grumbled right back. "Or... at least it was supposed to have been, before it somehow decided to possibly regroup."
"I say we go after these so called scavengers," Bumblebee said, firmly and clearly serious. "We gather a team of volunteers, grab a ship and go on a 'con hunt around the area Shortwave ran into them the first time. Hopefully we're lucky enough to have a run in of our own, and then we capture their ship drag them home to see how fast we can make them talk."
"Talking prisoners was never ideal even in wartime," Ratchet said, shaking his head a little, even as he admitted reluctantly to himself that the logic of his young teammate was sound. "Now, during what's officially still considered peacetime, I'm hardly sure it could even be called ethical."
"They committed an act of war when they continued to fire on a ship after they'd been informed it contained innocent younglings," Arcee countered, frowning and serious. "'Bee is right. I say we catch us a couple of 'cons and see how quick they are to start talking."
Around the table most of the others all began to nod, and murmur, while a couple of them quite pointedly slammed their fists together.
"If it's all the same to all of you, I'd like to be the first to volunteer for this little hunting trip," Arcee said a moment later, and over the sounds of the teams continued murmurs. And from his place right beside her, Knockout cast her a concerned look.
"You're an early education teacher who's been away from active duty for close to a decade and a half," he protested. And Ratchet, watching him across the table, would have been hard pressed to miss the look of clear conflict on his face-plate – a bot trying hard just to protect his beloved mate and the carrier of his equally beloved creation, all without igniting her anger in the very same moment, and quite possibly spending a night recharging on their living room sofa.
"Yes..." Arcee said. And she appeared to choose her words very carefully, before she instantly stood up "I'm an early education teacher to a small group of tiny younglings who all deserve to grow up here in the peace we promised them. I'm the carrier to a child who deserves exactly the same. Along with her friends. I may have been out for years, but that doesn't mean I can't do this. And I am doing this..."
Knockout just smiled at that.
"You're gonna a bot with a decent ship and piloting skills," Wheeljack said, looking around slowly at the gathered group. He stood up too. "Count me in."
"Arcee is right about the younglings," Bumblebee added. "And I'd be a bot not worthy of the title of creator if I won't personally assure the peace and safely of my own."
'Bee stood up, in his own indication of volunteership. But he did so with a kind of clear hesitation where once he would have been the first to stand without question. His life though was different now. He had a bond-mate And together they had four younglings already. There was a fifth one on the way, and that one due in less than a month.
"I'm far from a medi-bot still," 'Bee said. And he shrugged just a little in a show of his old wartime confidence. "But I do fully believe my field skills are enough to keep anyone alive if things turn terrible."
"I... appreciate the confidence Bumblebee," said Ratchet, standing up quickly and without even a question over the sense of lack there of if in what he was doing. "That go get'em attitude will do some real good in the medbay... where will you will continue to work and study under Ambulon and Knockout while I'm away on this mission instead."
"Ratchet... I can do this..." the young bot started to protest. But Ratchet cut him off quickly with a firm wave of his hand.
"No bot in this room doubts it for a second," he said kindly. "This mission, if all goes to plan, should be safe work compared to the truly dangerous situations in which we've all seen you take the lead. But you have a baby at home, soon to be two of them and three second frames who all need your more than duty ever will." he looked across the table then, glaring for a moment at Arcee, not the least bit surprised to see her glaring right back.
"Sit yourself down, Arcee," he said firmly, though not without a tiny hint of a laugh. "You're not going either. Cybershock would never let us send you."
Knockout did not even move to stand, though Ratchet – recalling the never quite forgotten rank breaking stunt he'd pulled years before with the wreckers to rescue Miko while he was still far from even able to walk – knew instantly that the red painted medic would have stood up instantly had he not been glaring at him. Bulkhead however did move to stand, slowly, just as though he thought somehow the old medi-bot (and the one who had clearly assumed lead on the job of coordinating volunteers) might not have noticed him do it.
"You're not going either," Ratchet said, firm as ever, moved by the team's constant courage, and decidedly growing just slightly frustrate. He glared at Bulkhead, not because he might have needed it exactly, but because he could, and let himself chuckle silently to himself in victory when the big green bot sheepishly sat down. "You're the only parent Switchgear has. If you think I'd let you go out there, only to explain to her later why I let you go..."
"I guess that leaves me." Smokescreen chuckled a little as he stood up. But he nodded at his teammates when he had, clearly more than willing to volunteer.
"This sure is a big building, Carrier," Blastwave said clearly slightly uneasy He paused in the main floor atrium of 'building One, and glanced with a clearly uneasy look down the corridors that stretched out in two opposing directions with countless doors on either side. Finally his optics moved toward the elevator right in front of where he stood, and he stared intently, appearing to read floor numbers the reached into the sixties.
"That it certainly is, Blast'" Shortwave chuckled beside him, before she smiled assurance and lead him toward that elevator.
She pushed Lightwave in front of her, strapped snugly into a youngling sized wheelchair that the medical team had adapted for her with padded shoulder harnesses and a decent support for her head to rest against for comfort while in a just slightly reclined position. Shortwave had had her doubts about the thing from the second she'd seen it, and she still did. She'd carried Lightwave from place to place herself, despite the fact that she certainly was too heavy for that by now. And she could hardly imagine doing otherwise. But the contraption was already proving helpful on her first try at moving her anywhere significant outside the confines of a small spacecraft. And Lightwave did not appear to dislike the thing. Shortwave admitted to herself finally that the team may just have been right when they'd said Light' may just have preferred to be pushed then carried because it was far more comfortable to ride like this.
The elevator's doors slid open then the family approached. And Shortwave, with some doubt and a little help from Blast', pulled Light' inside and managed to park her between them facing toward the back wall. She set the elevator control for the forty-second floor and smiled a little, leaning back against the wall beside her increasingly anxious son.
"Does... Soundwave know about us, Carrier?" Blast questioned. His voice was quiet now, barely more than a whisper. And he glanced around the elevator as it rattled a little, as though he feared the cable might just break. "Me and Light' I mean..."
"You are both going to be a good surprise for him," Shortwave said back, hesitant now and questioning her decision to visit her long lost first creation while he still had no idea his siblings existed.
But then, she questioned herself shakily as she leaned against the wall, what else could she really have done? What should she have done? Everything was happening so fast. And it had been centuries since they had lost each other. Surely, she reasoned, he would assume – however sad he may have been to do so – that she'd had more children.
"He is waiting upstairs... in his apartment," Shortwave said speaking out loud to Blast' because she was too excited and nervous... and suddenly so strangely guilt sick, to keep it all to herself. "Himself and Firestorm."
"Who is Firestorm?" Blast' questioned, clearly confused. And Shortwave shook her head, unsure because she never had been told that herself even then.
The elevator came to a stop again, after a ride that had seemed far too long. And she hurried off, pulling her small youngling's chair out behind her. Confused by the hallway, just as big as it was, she headed to the left only hoping she was correct. And when she found quickly by the series of increasing unit numbers on the doors, she stopped halfway to the one she was looking for, to wipe – quite uncharacteristically fretting – at a scuff mark across Blast's shoulder panel. She did the same for Lightwave' despite the fact that Light' could not possibly had become scuffed to begin with. And instantly her attention was back on Blast' and wiping this time at an almost nonexistent scratch on the paint of his left wing tip.
"Carrier," Blast' protested. And he was a youngling who never seemed to protest.
"let's go..." Shortwave said, shaking her head a little in disbelief at herself, and trying hard to shove away her own unease.
The small family reached the door of 4214 in just another quick moment. And Shortwave paused in front of it, just staring at the bright chrome numbers on the door until the began to swim a little in her field of vision. And for a long moment she all but forgot how to press a buzzer button – or do anything else for that matter, aside from just blankly staring.
Blast' pressed it instead. And Shortwave snapped out of her terrible daze when the resounding low buzzing sound reached her from inside the apartment. Footsteps echoed somewhere inside, moving slowly toward the door And she felt for a second like she might fall over from her overwhelming emotions.
"...Carrier?" a voice said out of what seemed like nowhere. And she understood only then that the door had slid open.
She looked up then into the optics of her youngling – her first child, who she had lost so long ago they should perhaps have barely recognized each other at all. But she did recognize him. How could she not – she knew she'd have known him from a city block away. Though he was not exactly a youngling anymore.
"You're... alive..." Shortwave muttered, stupidly at him because it was the only thing her suddenly near useless processor could manage to put together for coherent language. "You were still alive... all this time..."
"These are your brother and your sister," she continued on a good moment later, making herself form words when Soundwave said nothing and simply stared at her thoughtfully, reminding her every bit of the youngling he'd been when she'd last seen him.
"...Siblings?" Soundwave said, quiet and so clearly near disbelieving. He stared down at the two youngling bots with his carrier, red optics blinking and a tiny hint of a smile on his face-plate. "I have a... brother? A sister?"
"Blastwave here reminds me so much of you." Shortwave rested a hand on Blast's shoulder panel, smiling a little when he smiled, however nervous he still so clearly was. "And Lightwave... well she's complicated. But she's still so lovely. She'd let you hold her if you want to..."
"Come... inside," Soundwave invited, clearly realizing for the first time that they were all indeed still conversing, quite strangely, in his doorway.
Shortwave followed him, pushing Light's chair with Blast' close beside her, into a tiny though well decorated apartment. They took offered seats on the overstuffed pale blue sofa that barely fit tight again a living room wall, and shortwave glanced around at the well matched blue fringed curtains over the narrow patio window and the many incidental while shelves of so many things mounted on the walls by their clean sliver brackets. Light sat parked by that narrow glass door, buzzing once before she closed her optics. And Blast just looked around, silent, and so clearly insure what he was supposed to say to a bot he'd always known only from his carrier's fond stories.
"Carrier talks about you all the time," Blast' said slowly. He smiled shyly up at Soundwave, who had sat himself down, in a simple black framed chair, which he'd pulled out from the little table in the other corner of the room. "All my life she'd tell these wonderful stories... I... feel like I almost know you already, kind of."
Soundwave only smiled at that. But his smile was bright, and so clearly moved at how how he'd never been forgotten. And Shortwave smiled too, lacking any words of her own that might have sounded even close to all she wanted to say.
And so instead of saying a thing, she just looked around the apartment again – a place that seemed to her just slightly outside of a style she knew the youngling she'd known might once have chosen for himself. And it was then that her optics caught sight of another bot – a fellow flyer – in rare pale white and yellow colours, who stood facing toward a counter top with her back halfway hidden behind a partial dividing wall. She turned around then, grinning an adorable and mischievous little grin, as she lifted a tray of energon goodies she'd been putting together off the counter top and just stood holding it.
"This is Firestorm," Soundwave said, with the brightest smile Shortwave could even recall seeing on his face-plate, as he gestured toward the bot with the tray. "She is the true love of my life..."
Soundwave had found love. Shortwave gasped with joy once she knew that. Years of her worries for him during his youngling years flooded through her processor and she remembered clearly just how she'd feared that maybe he wouldn't or couldn't... that maybe he was just a little too different from other bots to relate quite enough. And she took a fast intake to force back her tears of relief when she understood just how she'd been wrong. Her strange and wonderful, worrisome youngling had found love... And Firestorm's near youngling like grin was simply beautiful.
"It was Firestorm that was searching for you," Soundwave said. And he took the little white and yellow bot's tiny hand in his just as soon as she had set down the tray on a small table in front of the sofa. He smiled at her more then brightly enough to make Shortwave sure she might almost cry with joy at simply seeing the pair together. "She had Ratchet check and recheck every record she could think of, always insisting you had to be somewhere long after anyone else would have given up for lost..."
Lightwave would have easily sat for hours unnoticed if she'd been left to it. Light' never fussed or demanded attention – she couldn't. But Shortwave picked her up anyway, to hold her on her lap for a while as the small group of bots, still mostly unsure what to say to each other, all sat exchanging looks and smiling now and then. Soundwave reached out, after some long moments clearly asking without speaking, to hold the small youngling himself. And Shortwave, smiling brightly, placed her onto his knees, noticing his clear and obvious uncertainty at once as he struggled a little to learn quickly enough how to support the weight of a bot incapable of holding herself up.
"Please don't think for a second that Light's tiny life is without real value or purpose..." Shortwave said suddenly, moved to speak up because it seemed so very important now.
Soundwave should never have felt like that might have been the case, and she knew that in her spark, She certainly had not raised a bot to hold such views and she never would. Blast' certainly had no such opinions. But Soundwave had been so young when she'd last seen him – a bot with a lot left to learn. And he'd grown into adulthood without her in a city more known than any for Cybertron's terrible old functionalist opinions...
"I would have told you once that I thought exactly that," Soundwave said slowly, his tone both honest and clearly regretful. "But I've since been forced to rethink such ideas." He sat still in the chair he'd pulled out, staring across the apartment over his tiny sister's head for a long moment, before adding seriously, "There is... hope here in this new city."
Notes/ Thanks for continuing to read this. As always feedback and suggestions are always greatly appreciated and make my day. This one took a bit longer than I wanted in order to get posted, and yeah, sorry about that. I literally decided to flip the order of a couple chapters while the one that's now up next was half way through the rough draft and this one was barely started. With most everything I finally end up posting, what I start with and what you end up reading can become quite different as I edit, rewrite and scrap scenes... fellow writers will relate to this surely.
*Thinks it might be kind of fun one day to make a couple of single chapter cute shorts out of a couple of 'cut scenes' that no one would otherwise ever seen because they just don't quite fit anywhere... *