No Rest For The Weary

Ratchet grumbled menacingly, his left foot twitching to the beat of a hyper drummer hopped up on some super-stimulant. "That is not helping, WheelJack!" The inventor muttered an apology and switched the configuration of several jumpers behind Ratchet's head. His leg stopped twitching, and now he had the uncomfortable sensation of having feeling on only one side of his body. For the first time, he questioned his creators' need to be so, as the humans put it, so anal retentive in his design. There were so many numerous jumper and resistor configurations that it boggled the mind, and the mech behind him trying to get a grasp at the sheer number of wrong turns to be made.

"I think I see how this is done." Ratchet thanked Primus that WheelJack could see how any thing was put together without reducing it to ash. "The jumper configurations form a Levy C curve fractal after the first twelve iterations. Ingenious." The inventor went on to describe the workings of the fractals, all of which bored Ratchet to no end. He did have his own processor after all. Though the fractals he was interested in had to do with the formation of organic structures within the human body.

'Can you say obsessive...' Ratchet thought gloomily as he sat up, allowing WheelJack to replace the casing on the top of his cranium. He flexed his hands, walking a few circuits to make sure his components were working in the correct order. "How long have Iron Hide and Chromia been in stasis?"

WheelJack's vocal indicators seemed to turn a shade of rose. "Three hours. But, I assure you, the effect of the..."

"I know you had nothing to do with that WheelJack, calm down," Ratchet chuckled. "They are quite effective at getting themselves nearly deactivated without your help. I need them down anyway. I hate it when he hovers over my shoulder." The medic ignored WheelJack's silence, grateful that the mech was not talking his own head off for a change. "Who is watching the sparklings?"

"Prime, I think. He said he had nothing to do and wanted to be useful." WheelJack shrugged. "He sent Jazz and Perceptor off to explain what happened. I think he was afraid of what Sam's mother would do to him." His laughter was cut off by Ratchet's glare.

"And you're not?" Ratchet laughed. "That woman would key Prime's paint, put sugar in his gas tank and feed turpentine into his oil pan if that mech so much as looked at Sam the wrong way." The grimace from WheelJack spoke volumes as to how much the inventor knew the Witwickey parents. "Then she would call a scrap yard and have him disassembled for spare part. And besides," Ratchet stepped over to the door that separated his open medical wing from the private area the three sparklings were using. "Jazz knows how to speak to humans better than any one of us. He would be the least likely to insult them with too blunt an explanation."

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Optimus Prime never liked killing. He loathed the act with every atom of his being. Yet, here he stared at the result of his actions and not for the first time, found the disturbing feeling of being glad he had killed. He had severed the head of Bonecrusher with the blade he had stored in his upper arm. It was out of expedience really. And too there were humans nearby that could get injured if he drug out the battle to make sure that the Decepticon was dead.

Though had he only injured Bonecrusher, his body would not have been used to build Ellie's protoform. Nor would her spark have had a place to reside comfortably and receive the nourishment it needed. Her shoulder had been fully repaired and she lay in deep recharge, making up for lost time. She had stayed on-line to defend Sam and Mikaela if any Decepticon got it in his processor to take advantage of them. Prime's optics focused on her hands, zooming in to watch the conduits twitch with each pulse of the valves in her pump. Those hands that had crushed countless Autobot sparks, ripped hope from millions of hands and seared dread into billions of processors now lay serenely at her side.

Their design had been changed of course. The chassis reduced to allow for a more femme like shape, the armor stripped and cleaned, the sensor systems reconfigured for the new body. And within that arm lay one of her massive plasma cannons. They were similar in design to IronHide's cannons. Though Ratchet had not had enough time to install inertial dampeners in her elbow or shoulder joints which would have kept her from being sent through the brick wall on the recoil.

Optimus turned his head to the left, watching Sam and Mikaela on the opposite side of the room. He could see bits and pieces of Brawl and Blackout in these two as well. Blackout's long legs were unmistakable on Mikaela's form as was the half helm that gave the impression of short dark hair cut in a Bobbi style. Her entire frame was dark and slender alternated with silver patches at her joints and face. Her hands were small, each with an extra joint to give them added flexibility. She looked to be a meter or so shorter than Bumblebee, who happened to be resting on the other side of the medical wing where Perceptor had gotten through with his repairs.

Sam, just beside Mikaela was slightly bulkier but not nearly enough to be a warrior. He looked to have the same body type as Jazz; perfect for getting himself into more trouble than he could handle. Standing just equal to Bumblebee, Sam was the color of oiled metal. Unlike Mikaela or Ellie, he had no built in weapons to speak of, but from what he had seen, Prime didn't think that would be a problem. He already knew how to use his head, literally, in a fight with any mech. Even against one as large as a Seeker. Prime chuckled. Sam had nearly knocked himself stupid when he hit the Seeker with his own head and had continued babbling all the way back.

The three of them were carried in trailers, strapped down and a tarp put over them to keep prying eyes away. Neither had chosen an alt form as yet, but that was not needed until much later. All three still had to break in their new bodies. Prime shuddered as an errant thought caught him by surprise. He flicked his optics toward Ellie as though she had put the thought there herself. He blinked a few times until his optics brightened to their normal sky blue. Where in the Matrix had that come from? He shouldn't have even had that thought to begin with. IronHide would blast his spark out of his chest and make him eat it if he knew what had just gone through his processor.

But still, the reason he had thought that was not as important as the fact that the thought had occurred to him. It had been a very, very long time since Optimus had been close to a femme. But working as closely with Arcee as he had, he had not felt anything remotely close to what had just happened. Elita had conjured those feelings once, but she and Optimus had been apart for far too long to facilitate any kind of rekindling. And besides, she was close enough to be bonded with Kup, so there was absolutely no chance, barring he was suicidal, that he could have any feelings for the Femme Commander. They had parted amicably, but there was nothing between them any longer. The images and feelings entered his processor again, causing the boot-up of several long ignored systems that made the Autobot Commander very uncomfortable in his own armor. Again he gained control of his own processes and squashed the notion as fast as it had started.

Now this was odd. Not only was it odd, it was wrong. There were only a few things that could conceivably land a mech in the pit for all eternity, and this was one of them. No matter how old Ellie had been as a human, as a Cybertronian she was barely a sparkling. In human terms, the femme would barely be able to hold her own head up. Only after several hundred vorns, when her spark had settled into a deeper shade of blue could she be remotely ready for what his indiscriminate thoughts showed him. Optimus gripped the edge of the berth, steeling his resolve. There was only one thing he could do besides sending her off-world. He would have to keep his distance and hope no one caught on. He would never speak of what he had thought of to anyone of his soldiers. They would loose all respect for him.

Optimus started as the door to the private room opened, Ratchet standing there outlined by the brighter lights of the med-bay. "You're free to go, Prime. I can take it from here." Prime lifted his hands from the table and stood stiffly and quietly made his way out.

Ratchet watched Optimus go, one of his optical ridges rising slowly at his stiff demeanor. He raised the lighting a few levels, his eyes focusing on Ellie's berth. Right where Optimus had been sitting, there were two distinct sizable dents in the berth. Dents made from two hands clutching the metal with every bit of their strength. The raised optic ridge rose even higher, followed by the roll of his optics. Ratchet had worked with the Autobot Commander long enough to know two things about the mech. One; that he took his position seriously, and two; he was as obtuse as IronHide could be on his worst days. What Prime saw and what was in front of his face were sometimes two different things. Such as this case.

Ratchet bent down to scan Mikaela, his digits opening an access panel on the side of her chassis. The medic plugged several wires into the panel, watching as the readouts scrolled across his vision. He did the same with Sam and Ellie, the same results scrolling across his HUD. He ran the diagnostics several more times on each before he accepted what he was seeing. It was official, he had seen everything. The sparks he had placed into the containers were the sparks of younglings barely old enough to know how to process on their own. What greeted him now, were the sparks of adolescents and within the month Ratchet knew, would be adults. The medic shook his head, a puff of air exiting his vents. Hope came in the form of a curve-ball it seemed.

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Blurry optics slowly focused on a dimly lit room, the lights flickering weakly. The first thing he noticed, was the shadow across the wall. Addled processors took several minutes to register that this was his shadow. Why, then did it look smaller than before? He stared at the shadow on the wall as though it would speak up and tell him the answer when another shadow joined the show. This one was much bigger, much bulkier and somehow, familiar.

"Ahhh, Starscream," The Seeker started at the black silk voice filled with oily undertones and a barely audible sub-sonic howl that sent prickles over his armor. "You are on-line. Good." Starscream could almost imagine the smile that graced the face behind him. Pale white face angled inward, mouth components spread out until the plates barely made contact with themselves. Dental apparatus stained yellow from the smog of a thousand burned worlds held in a maw that would have given Sentinel Prime pause. He imagined the crimson optics twinkling with barely concealed maleficent glee, his hands clenching in anticipation of the carnage yet to come. Starscream could not help it as his old routines kicked in.

"Why, Megatron! It is a pleasure to see you functioning..." The roar he got in response fizzled the rest of what he was about to say. If anything, the shadow got bigger.

Starscream screeched as he was grabbed roughly from be hind and forced to turn where he was hanging. The sight that greeted him made his processor freeze, his systems stuck in a semi permanent state of terror. Gone was the bleached bone armor, the oddly flexible mouth, the rows upon rows of jagged yellow teeth... What replaced them was armor so black it shone an iridescent violet. The helm split down the middle and curved up at either side like the horns of one of the taskmasters of the pit from myth. The neck and mid-chest were charcoal black, the seams illuminated by a spark so corrupted it shone a dull crimson like the core of this planet. But that was not the worst of it. Megatron's face was a malformed monstrosity in itself. The upper jaw moved normally, but the lower jaw was split at the chin, each side moving of it's own accord to form the words that issued from his vocalizer.

"Megatron no longer exists! Did you think I would be fool enough to allow such failure to go unpunished!?!" The silence echoed through the warehouse. Starscream's mouth worked, but no sound came out, his optics as wide as they would go. "No...of course you did. You were always an arrogant fool, Starscream. But even fools have their uses, do they not?" The blank look from Starscream did not deter the speaker one bit. "You helped me more than you know with your arrogance. How? You gave bodies to those three sparklings. Sparklings carrying the last shards of the All-Spark. "I believe loyalty should be rewarded. Even unintentional loyalty. Do you think so, Starscream?"

The Seeker finely found his voice, his head nodding vigorously enough to jar one of his relays. "Yes! I will serve you well, Meg...Sir!"

"I am sure you will..." The glimmer had returned to the dark mech's optics, his maw spreading and climbing his face until he was nearly engulfed by his own mouth. "Will you serve me loyally at my side, Starscream? Will you swear to execute your duty exactly as I command?"

"Yes!" Starscream practically trembled with delight and relief.

"It shall be a pleasure..." The voice had gone even silkier, the depth resonating through Starscream's armor like the seductive beat of synth-percussion. Dark, clawed hands stretched out and grasped Starscream, by the waist, bringing the mech crashing against dark armor. Pain unlike anything he had ever experienced filled Starscream from head to clawed foot. The unnerving feeling of parts moving, reorienting themselves and disappearing entirely filled his body. His chest felt like someone were pushing out from the inside, his head felt about ready to explode from the pain. After a long while, the pain subsided, leaving hyper-sensitive metal behind.

Starscream hissed as a clawed hand was drawn up his thigh, resting at his rounded hip. Optics shot open as the dark mech holding him chuckled, his eyes darkening until they were darkly shining orbs of blood-red magma. The hand at his hip held him tightly as it's twin traced the seam that split Starscream's thoracic armor in two. Armor that curved outward with an alluring grade, flattening into a narrow waist that culminated with the access port nestled between two shapely thighs. The fear that showed in Starscream's face only encouraged the Dark mech further, his hands roughly caressing his...or more accurately, her armor.

"You're service begins now, Starscream. Your master has been refined, galvanized, hardened into the ultimate doom upon all who oppose my rule. Address me as...Galvetron." The maw seemed to consume more of Galvetron's face. "Show me how loyal you can be to me..." Starscream stood as still as she dared as Galvetron lifted one of her legs and draped it over his thigh.