Ep 1.5 "Baby Shower" - Closed

[Deleted]

Well. Hadn't things just gone to the Pit in a pushcart lately.

Rhinox rumbled over the groundbridge behind his teammates, precious cargo in his pickup bed, and felt uneasy. The mood throughout the base had been dismal indeed since That Slagfest With Barricade, as Rattrap put it, and Cleaver had been right in the middle of it, so she couldn't have been any happier about it. And now they, almost total strangers, were supposed to cheer her up with a present?

"Come on," Airazor murmured to him as his wheels touched ground in the Neutrals' command center. "It's the best sparkling toy ever. She'll love it."

Rhinox pulsed gratitude at her, and scanned the room for their recipient.

[Deleted]

Cleaver had been following a hunch that the invasive repairs that Sunstreaker had undergone to save his life had resulted in marginal but significant neuroforaminal damage that was impeding the autorepair of his neurocircuitry system-wide. Stopping him from coming out of stasis.

As yet, the medic hadn't been able to confirm this hypothesis, but she hadn't disproved it either. It was a small point of hope, but it was hope. Something positive to fixate on in the wake of... everything else.

Upon hearing the watery harmonics of a closing groundbridge, she took a klik to replace the cover over the yellow Twin's cranial port before moving out into the Atrium to investigate. No one had comm.ed ahead, and spontaneous traffic was non-existent as of late. Flicking a sensor out before she reached the doorway, Cleaver stopped when didn't recognise the mecha in vehicle mode.

She pinged a general greeting and welcome even as she shifted her weight a little awkwardly across her pedes. Faction wasn't obvious yet, though she was guessing Autobots.

[Deleted]

Rhinox's return ping was complex: a thank-you, an apology for intruding and a request for a moment of her time, along with "we come in peace" and "we come bearing gifts." He stayed in his vehicle mode while Airazor and Rattrap unloaded the precious cargo, and only then transformed to offer the DMZ's leader a smile.

"Cleaver, I presume? My name is Rhinox, and these are Airazor and Rattrap." Rattrap flipped her a wave; Airazor nodded a hello of her own. "It's an honor to finally meet you."

[Deleted]

Cleaver experienced an ugly litle pulse across her lines at that remark, but kept her field firmly in check. 'Honour' felt so far away from being applicable to anything relating to the medic at present as to be bitterly laughable, but the fresh pang of anxious regret was being gradually superseded by curiousity and the infectious longwave of the new arrivals.

Rhinox, in particular, was a locus of warm, friendly calm. And he was holding something large and spherical that was emmitting faint power readings.

Stepping closer into the mech's field, and smiling a little at the natural ease in it, Cleaver tipped a blade outward in welcome. "It's good to meet you, too," she replied casting optics across all three before fixing on Rhinox as the apparent 'leader'. Then her curiosity got the better of her and she was staring at the giant ball thing.

The femme flicked a scan over it to see if this was a medical visit for someone stuck in their transformation sequence. Though the device was fairly complex and contained a power source, there was no spark inside, leaving Cleaver even more curious as to what the mystery sphere was. From the way Airazor and Rattrap had handled it, it seemed important.

"Can I offer you a cube? Or a..." She shook her head a little, smiling before pinging 'I give in'. "What's that you've got?"

[Deleted]

"Well, it's..." Rhinox trailed off with a blurt of uh-oh glyphs that quickly descended into sheepishness - in their excitement to actually build the toy, they'd forgotten to give it a name. "It's, um."

"Easy, big guy." Rattrap patted Rhinox's chest. "I got this. 'Raze?"

"You owe me for this," Airazor muttered, picking up the toy.

"Not my fault you're the prettiest." Rattrap stepped forward, offering Cleaver an exaggerated bow. "Mechs an' femmes, th' Axalon Sparkling Toy Society proudly present a one-time exclusive collaborative effort: The Sparklesphere!"

Rhinox's vents sputtered as Airazor hoisted the toy proudly and Rattrap made 'ta-da!' noises. //We're lucky he didn't call it the Happy Fun Ball,// Airazor observed wryly on a private channel. Rhinox held back another sputter.

"Features include interactive movin' parts - that's your cue, bird-lady - with each interlockin' ring havin' a different effect when your lil' one grabs it." Airazor pressed two rings together, triggering the mechanism that made it unfold into its open configuration, and touched a few rings to demonstrate their effects. One lit up, one vibrated, one gave off gentle warmth, and one emitted a soothing chime. "The, uh, noisemakin' one can be turned off, of course," Rattrap added.

"Show her the pictures," Rhinox nudged.

Rattrap swatted at him. "Slow down, Green, I'm gettin' to that!" But Airazor was already turning the sphere to touch the projector ring. A 2D holographic image of alien mountains shimmered into view, dark blue against a cloud-streaked tangerine sky.

"We aggregated images of planets the Axalon surveyed on its travels," Airazor explained, taking over Rattrap's self-appointed duty. "There are three thousand stills and four hundred video files, and when the sparkling gets a little older you can reconfigure the toy to display glyph markers for the objects in each file. So it'll help when it's time to learn to read."

She touched the projector ring again, turning it off, and Rattrap took over again. "It's completely portable, durable-" Airazor dropped the toy to demonstrate; the sphere simply bounced a few times with no ill effects - "and it's got an encrypted trackin' device. If the toy's anywhere in the base, you'll know where it is, an' by extension the bitlet."

"Blaster did the encryption," Rhinox volunteered. "It's at the same level as we use for our most sensitive communications."

Airazor picked up the toy, gave it a light squeeze, and it folded into its closed configuration again. She walked it over to Cleaver, a strange, sad smile on her face. "It's customary on this planet to give gifts to expectant parents," she explained. "We might have gotten a little carried away. I hope you don't mind."

[Deleted]

Cleaver watched the presentation with a peculiar mix of shock, awe and pleasure - broadcasting as much in field and expression. The physical construction of the toy was incredible, particularly given that almost all manufacturing was by hand and from recycled pieces. But it was the sheer thought that had gone into the sphere that truly bowled the femme over . On the surface the toy was meant to entertain, with simple shapes, colours and movements; at its core, however, it was accumulated knowledge from their travels and history, packaged with an exceptionally accessible learning platform. Holoimages, video files and, as the sparkling grew, labels for every facet of the snapshots of the universe.

Finally, the tracking device was a practicality invaluable to any keeper of a small, nimble and exploration-addicted sparkling. Rhinox's remark about the level of encryption took it beyond an installed convenience to a demonstration of protectiveness. Safety. Cleaver had been giving the sparkling's safety within Haven significant thought following recent events. DMZ or no, mechs like Barricade could descend at any time, and there was only so long a sparkling could be successfully hidden in the deeper recesses of the mine.

It had been a horrendous few weeks, and the mine felt particularly large and painfully empty. Moonshot had gone into hiding; Cat was trying to coax the sniper out; the Twisters spent most of their time circling the mountains outside; and Sideswipe was viciously elusive. The most contact she'd had with the Autobots was with Steeljaw, to whom she was transmitting the co-ordinates of minor energon spikes from her flyovers that might indicate where Shadowrunner was. She'd not seen or heard from Ironhide since Shadowrunner had bolted, nor Jazz after his checking-in visit. Everything felt to be in a nauseating limbo.

And then three Autobots she'd never heard of, let alone laid optics on, had come with a gift and an apology for disturbing her.

Cleaver knelt as Airazor approached, field warm but quivering with a weaker form of the frequencies Sideswipe had pulled out of her. She lay hands on the sphere as it was offered, blunt digits touching the smaller femme's. "It's wonderful. Primus, it's..." Optics rising to take in Rattrap and Rhinox as well, there was another shiver shiver of longwave. "Thank you all, so much."

[Deleted]

No victory Rhinox had ever shared in his lifetime, on the battlefield or off, could compare to this: Cleaver's smile.

Rhinox couldn't speak for a moment, his entire field overtaken by the pride and relief and joy streaming from him. Even Rattrap, though his glyphs were tangled with cynical pessimism, was beaming. It was Airazor, the hints of sorrow there in her field for anyone looking for them but not overshadowing her happiness, who spoke for all three of them. "We're all very happy for you, Cleaver. You and your little one. If you ever need anything, you have only to ask."

She let Cleaver take the Sparklesphere (the name was going to stick, they could all feel it) and stepped back, still smiling. "If nothing else, ou's going to start demanding stories of all the places ou sees in hir toy," she observed. "And we'll be happy to tell ou all the sparkling-suitable ones."

[Deleted]

"I'd like that - very much," Cleaver replied, still kneeling and turning the Sparklesphere about in her hands. She pressed two of the rings as Airazer had done and released the toy, huffing a laugh as the vibrations took in in a slow, meandering path - perfect for encouraging a sparkling to pursue.

Transforming her arm back into its natural elongated configuration as she swung her hand up, Cleaver batted the toy back and pulled the rings back apart to still the toy. It continued to flash cheerily as she scooped it up in her remaining hand, holding it to her heated chassis - close to the sparkling beneath - without really realising that she had done so.

They didn't know her. She'd nursed their enemy's leader back to health with utterly failed secrecy. And they had gone to, clearly, great lengths to make a personal, thoughtful and beautiful gift for her sparkling.

"This must have taken you so long to make," Cleaver uttered, field and vocaliser both flucuating between overwhelming gratitude, pleasure and awe at the three of them.

[Deleted]

Rhinox actually shuffled, warmth sharing space with embarrassment in his field. "We're engineers," he explained, as if that explained everything.

Rattrap snorted. "You two're the engineers," he said. "I'm parts procurement, an' trust me, the level of mad-science an' gushin'-over-sparkling in that workshop was enough to put me off my lunch."

"And that's saying a lot, considering it's Rattrap," Airazor grinned at Cleaver. Rattrap snorted, but wisely didn't argue the point.

[Deleted]

Cleaver smiled back at the small femme - a long way off a matching grin, but her field soaked in the almost overwhelming warmth and affection from the group and replied with a grateful, quietly stunned wave. They'd obviously enjoyed making the toy (and that word did absolutely no justice to the thoughtful, complex and beautifully constructed gift), the novelty of a sparkling as infectious to them as the techno-bug she was familiar with in engineers.

She regarded the sphere again, then looked back to the bearers of the touching gift. "Well, I don't think I could do justice in introducing the bitlet to the Sparklesphere. Would you three be alright with showing hir all the wonderful things you've included in the design when zie's here?"

[Deleted]

A flurry of delight- and excitement-glyphs met her words, all three lighting up. "We'd be honored," Rhinox spoke for all of them. "Thank you."

This was more than an invitation, they understood; it was an expression of trust. Cleaver trusted them in the presence of her sparkling, once it was born. Even requested they help with hir education. Seriously? Rattrap's field blurted; behave or we'll sit on you again, sent the other two.

"Any time you want," Rhinox promised Cleaver. "We'll be here."

((OOC: Anyplace else you want to take this, or shall we wrap?))