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“Oh, fuck off, Lightspeed,” said Afterburner, trying out some of his new Earth vocabulary words. Scattershot reminded himself that he needed to shoot Hot Shot for letting Blades talk to the Technobots.
“But look at it!” Lightspeed spread his hands across the far window of the laboratory. “It’s beautiful—a living planet. You can practically hear it growing; how could they ever wanted to destroy this—is that Grimlock?”
The other Technobots crowded around the window. Lightspeed let out a wheeze of distress as he was crushed into the glass. Scattershot shoved down Strafe’s big head so he could see. Lightspeed was right: it was their erstwhile creator, stalking across the Iacon Academy of Science and Technology’s courtyard.
“I hope he doesn’t smash the fountain,” Lightspeed whimpered.
He didn’t, stalking past it with his fists clenched, but he looked like he was in a truly impressive temper.
Nosecone let out a low whistle. “Is he steaming? He looks really mad.”
“We didn’t, uh, do anything, did we?” Scattershot glanced at Grimlock, getting closer, then at the door to their laboratory.
“I don’t think so,” but Nosecone said it more like a question than anything else.
“Uh.”
“Fuck off.”
Scattershot smacked Strafe and Afterburner on the back of their thick heads. “What did you two do?”
“What the hell, boss?” Afterburner ducked and covered the back of his head. “What are you, my creator?”
“No,” Scattershot pointed to the window, “he is. So tell me what you’ve done before you have to tell the tyrannosaurus with a sword and a bad temper!”
“Scattershot,” Nosecone touched his arm, “c’mon.”
Scattershot shrugged him off and crossed his arms. He’d seen Hot Shot and Silverbolt do it, and it had cowed their respective bands of lunatics. Afterburner just spat at him.
“That’s it!” Scattershot lunged across the lab and caught Afterburner low in the chest, tackling him to the floor. He got a few good punches in before Afterburner bucked him off and sent him flying into a freestanding counter.
“Scattershot!” Nosecone was trying to pry Lightspeed off of the window, with his usual sedate speed. Strafe just stood by, howling and cheering for whomever seemed to be punching harder at the moment.
Afterburner’s fist connected with Scattershot’s face, sending a burst of mechfuid spraying up his cheek and up onto his optics. Afterburner froze at the sight of it on his knuckles. Scattershot took advantage of his frozen horror and kicked him off, where he stayed, half-sprawled against the benches on the far wall. The other Technobots were silent as he pushed himself to his feet and plucked an anti-static wipe from the rubble of the destroyed freestanding counter and wiped the mechfluid off his face.
The door to the Academy building slid open. Scattershot froze. Strafe darted over to the control panel and hit the lights, plunging them into darkness.
“Strafe!” Nosecone protested.
“Shh!” Strafe hissed.
A step of heavy footsteps clomped outside the door, paused for a second, then continued onwards.
Strafe vented. Lightspeed peeled off the window and slumped to the ground.
“What do you think he wants?” He whispered.
“Comms,” Scattershot grit out.
[Sorry,] Lightspeed said, this time using their internal radios. [What do you think he wants?]
[Depends what you did,] Scattershot directed his glare at Strafe and Afterburner.
[We didn’t do shit,] Afterburner sneered.
[Yep!] Strafe added. [Nothing at all! Not a thing! Nothing nothing nothing nothing!]
The rest of them stared at him. Afterburner dropped his face into his hands.
[They were out shooting,] Nosecone informed Scattershot, who snapped to glare at him, for a change.
[And you didn’t think to tell me this earlier?!]
“No.”
“Shhh!” They said in unison. Strafe grabbed Nosecone and covered his mouth, staring fixedly at the door.
“Didja shoot him or something?” Lightspeed asked, trying to peer out of the small window in the door. “He can’t be that mad about, what, some buildings?”
“We took down some of those overgrown buildings out past the Primary Energon Reserves Control power station,” Afterburner tucked his fist down by his side. The glowing mechfluid reflected off his thigh.
“Just some buildings?” Scattershot glanced over at him.
“Yes, just some buildings.”
“Stow it, Afterburner.”
In the silence, they heard a creak and a click from up above, and the low murmur of voices in conversation. Perceptor was absentminded and a bit of an egotist, but that didn’t mean Scattershot wanted to see his head ripped off. Besides, if he died, then Computron would get saddled with… whatever the hell it was he did. Power converters? Perceptor was actually doing some measure of formalized science up in his lab, not the play-stuff the Technobots did when Computron wasn’t hogging their bodies to invent hyperlight travel and quasitronic impulse satellites. He even had to call humans, back on Earth sometimes, humans who weren’t Captain Faireborn. No thanks!
“Maybe he just… had a question?” Nosecone stared at the ceiling, his head tilted to the side.
“We can answer any questions he has,” Strafe crossed his arms and pouted.
“I dunno that we can,” Lightspeed drummed his fingers against the side of his face. “Perceptor’s been alive a lot longer than we have.” He stooped down and began picking up a few shattered pieces of glass. Strafe righted a chair, and Nosecone plodded after Afterburner with a solvent wipe and a pouch of nanites.
There was a sharp noise from upstairs. Lightspeed dropped his glass. It just made more glass.
“What are they saying?” Strafe whispered.
“I don’t—shhh,” Scattershow held up his hand and focused. “Something about… deep planet processors and iradium?”
“Iridium,” Afterburner snorted. “He really did go up there for a science lecture.”
“Maybe the old Grimlock is back?”
Nosecone stared pensively at the ceiling, “If our father is back… then what’s happened to Computron?”
Scattershot didn't get a chance to answer him—not that he had an answer—because there was a thump and a yelp from the floor above them. Strafe clambered up onto the lab counter and pressed his head up against the ceiling.
“They’re arguing,” he relayed, “something about something being easy.”
“What’s easy?” Scattershot hissed, holding his arms out to brace Strafe.
“Being smug? These walls are thick, I don’t—“ Strafe collapsed suddenly, falling right on his ass, which put him eye level with Scattershot.
“What happened?”
“Ah-ha, uh, just some screaming. A little eek and a yell and I mean, Grimlock wouldn’t really tear his head off, right? Right!”
“They’re fighting?” Lightspeed sounded like his lasercore was cracked.
“I hear a tussle,” Nosecone said, “metal-on-metal.”
“He should just play dead!”
“Keep it together, Strafe,” Scattershot said, his optic band still turned upward.
“Should we call someone?”
Lightspeed’s question echoed in the ensuing silence.
“I think…” Nosecone said. Scattershot didn’t really care what he thought, not about this. At the end of the day, this was the problem with Gestalt teams: they cared more about each other than any respective faction. Grimlock scaled higher on the ‘concern-meter’ than Perceptor did. Calling Ultra Magnus about Grimlock attacking their resident scientist would only net their creator and fellow Autobot a trip to the stockade.
In the end, Scattershot didn’t have to make that decision, because Perceptor screamed once and then went silent.
“Oh, fuck,” went Afterburner with his new Earth vocabulary again. “We’re so fucked.”
“We didn’t do anything!” Strafe protested.
“Yeah,” Scattershot’s voice was tense, “exactly.”
“Wait, wait,” now Nosecone was standing on the desk, “I think I hear something. More metal noises, maybe some words. It’s almost—“
Then he fell over too. Scattershot got a wave of blooming horror over the gestalt link.
“Nosecone, what is it?”
“Uhm.” It normally took him a while to do… anything, but this was excessive.
“Outta my way,” Afterburner shoved Nosecone off the counter and assumed his spot. After a few seconds of intense listening, his face went blank, then curled into a smirk. He hauled Strafe up next to him, who looked confused for a moment, and then began giggling under his breath.
“What’s going on?” Scattershot put his hands on his hips. Lightspeed glanced at him for a second, then joined his brothers on the counter. Traitor.
“I don’t—oh!” Lightspeed covered his mouth with his hand. “I guess that’s sweet.”
“It’s gross, is what it is! That’s Grimlock!”
Strafe tapped the back of his hand with his finger, making a rhythmic, clanking sound, snickering to himself all the while.
“Strafe!”
“I’m right!”
“Alright,” Scattershot raised his voice. Four wide-eyed heads turned to face him in unison, “What’s going on?”
“Uh.”
“Um.”
“Well.”
“Fu—“ Three hands smacked over Strafe’s mouth before more than the first syllable could get out. He reached up and pulled them away. “They’re fu—“
Lightspeed, of all mechanisms, tackled him, slapping both hands over his mouth. “Nothing! Nothing is happening, haha!”
Scattershot eyed him. “You’re not gonna tell me that you suddenly aren’t curious.”
“Can’t be curious about nothing!”
“Nothing at all,” Afterburner glanced upwards. “Yeah. Hey, Lightspeed, talk about mellowing, huh?”
Nosecone covered his face with his hands.
“Alright, all of you, off the counter,” Scattershot placed his hands flat on the composite, preparing to haul himself up and put an end to this mystery.
“No no no,” Strafe pulled out of Lightspeed’s grasp, “nope, nadda! You don’t wanna do that!”
Scattershot eyed him flatly. “Why not?”
“Be—cause,” Afterburner said slowly, “you’ve got to drop off those data requisitions to Perceptor’s lab.”
Lightspeed, Strafe, and Nosecone gaped at him. Afterburner elbowed Nosecone, who was the closest to him. “Right, Nosecone?”
Nosecone took his usual speed to respond. “Right.”
The data requisitions in question were sitting on a counter by the door, and had been sitting there for weeks now.
“And this is suddenly urgent because…?”
“Because the same stars are shining out there right now as the night we were made.” Lightspeed said, like it made any sense at all. Afterburner wrinkled up his nose.
“You can’t be that stupid. We came from Unicron, not—uh.”
“Bang, bang, bang!” Strafe cried triumphantly, clapping his hands together with each syllable.
“Right.”
“Okay,” Scattershot threw his hands in the air, “I’m not dealing with this. I’ll deliver the data, whatever.”
He hefted up the pile of data pads and jabbed a finger at the other Technobots. “I find a corpse up there and Computron is gonna be missing the whole left side of his body.”
“What did I do?” Nosecone protested. Scattershot directed the finger at him specifically, then slammed the door on his way out.
Hot Shot didn’t have to deal with this. Silverbolt didn’t have to deal with this. Scattershot would bet that even Motormaster didn’t have to deal with this, but he had to deal with Galvatron and the Stunticons, so maybe he was worse off than Scattershot in this one particular instance.
The corridors leading up to Perceptor’s lab were quiet—quiet enough that he could hear the low murmur of two distinct voices: Perceptor’s clipped priss and Grimlock’s gravelly growl. Well. He wasn’t dead, for all the good that did. He could still be missing all his limbs and bleeding out, although from the tone Scattershot could hear, no one sounded exsanguinated.
He heard another loud crash—that was a body hitting the ground. Scattershot swallowed and opened the door.
The first thing that hit him was the smell. Cybertron didn’t have an atmosphere, ergo, it didn’t have weather, but it had stormed while the Technobots were on Titan. Lighting crackled across the sky, and Sideswipe and Sunstreaker, sent to retrieve them, snickered to themselves. The air went hot and strange, and smelled sharp and metal: ozone. They hadn’t bothered to explain the joke to the Technobots, but Silverbolt caught him once Skyfire landed back on Cybertron and explained with the sort of longsuffering expression of someone who had gone through this exact thing twenty years prior.
Scattershot had only been alive for two months, and those two months had contained multitudes, but not sex.
He assumed that he’d know it when he saw it. Well, he knew, and by Primus he was seeing.
Grimlock was on the floor. That wasn’t really important in the face of the utterly besotted expression he was making. Maybe it wasn’t obvious to anyone else, but this was his father. Unfortunately, Scattershot could tell.
His chest was scuffed red and blue and his face was scuffed white and his chest was all open. Scattershot felt his face grow numb in horror. Perceptor looked worse. He was dented.
He nearly dropped the data pads when they both looked up at him, appearing about as startled as he was.
“Um,” Scattershot cleared his throat and wanted to be anywhere else in the world, “am I interrupting something?”
Computron was going to be a torso by the time he was finished with the other Technobots.