#raf!! that's my genius programmer!!

[am-i-soup]

them!! i adore these kiddos. they're my favourite humans in any continuity. they're such realistic teenagers and good characters in general (miko haters FIGHT ME she is my adhd girly and i won't stand for this slander)

a lot of people get annoyed by the kids, but i love the energy and family dynamic they bring to team prime. the autobots really need that after the terrible things they've experienced in the war (the kids are also funny and have adorable relationships with the bots and bring out the kid in bee, which is so precious)

[elendiliel]

Soldier and Scientist

Another bit of semi-nonsense, following on from these fics. Inspiration credit, as ever, to @justawannabearchaeologist's series "TFP Wheeljack in TFA", which is still highly recommended.

---

“Hey, kid. What’cha got there?”

Glitch was too deep in the task in front of her even to be annoyed by Wheeljack’s greeting. Normally, she hated being called “kid”, but at that moment she had bigger circuits to fry – or, rather, modify. Besides, next to the battle-scarred veteran Wrecker the newest member of Team Prime did look like a sparkling, despite being of age by her home universe’s standards. “Wiring diagram for my magnets. I’m trying to figure out how to increase their power without sacrificing too much sensitivity. Might be on a hiding to nothing, but it’s worth a shot.”

“Want a hand?” Wheeljack was already studying the schematic with a look Glitch hadn’t seen on him before, not exactly, anyway. But then, she didn’t know him well, though she had been part of the team for a few weeks by then, and had gone fossil-hunting with most of its members. He kept himself to himself – which was at least preferable to Smokescreen’s frequent, hopefully-joking attempts to flirt with her. She liked her fellow semi-rookie, but wished he’d grow up a bit and calm down more.

“I wouldn’t say no.” Glitch moved aside a little so that Wheeljack could join her at the workbench they both now shared with Ratchet and Raf. The table was a spectrum of order, from the senior medibot’s and human’s carefully arranged tools through the field-tech’s creative chaos (which made sense to her, but not to anyone else) to the Wrecker’s mess of half-built grenades and other, mostly explosive, devices. Somehow, nothing had blown up and nobody had lost their temper. Yet.

“Interesting…” Wheeljack said, more to himself than to her. “Haven’t seen anything like this in a while, but have you considered adding a high-power setting, rather than increasing the power of the setting you’ve got? That might give you what you’re after.”

“A bimodal system? I hadn’t thought of that, but now you mention it…” Glitch started making tentative changes to the virtual circuits in front of her, Wheeljack watching and occasionally making suggestions or correcting her mistakes.

“You don’t seem surprised,” he remarked after a while, “that I know ‘bout this kind of thing. Most people just think of me as a Wrecker.”

“People are complicated. Nobody’s just one thing; look at my Bulkhead. Heavy-labour model, space-bridge genius and artist.” She had mentioned that before, so Wheeljack wasn’t too shocked. “’Sides, I’ve seen the way you analyse situations sometimes – more scientist than soldier. And your alternate is high up in the Science Guild. Brilliant engineer, tends to experiment on and modify himself rather than anybot or anything else, and quite possibly responsible for putting some of High Command’s more… dubious… projects on a better ethical footing.”

“I like the sound of him – but not of those projects. What kindsa things does he work on?”

“Most famously, Project Omega.” The wartime programme had been what she now knew humans called a “special interest” of hers since she was a sparkling. As she grew up, and especially after meeting one of the last Sentinels and his mentor, she had become more aware of the ethical issues around it, but all the data were still in her memory banks, and she’d have to be careful not to bombard Wheeljack with too much information. “Living weapons, Autobots with battleship alt-modes, created towards the end of the Great War. Designed to have very simple processors to avoid inconvenient attacks of conscience, so each one was assigned a mentor to teach them how to be soldiers, or in at least one case how to be Autobots. The first mentor was supposed to be an intel-bot who’d been a schoolteacher – my universe’s Arcee, as it happens – but to cut a long story short, my Ratchet had to take her place. The end result was the same – Omega Supreme was taught to be an Autobot hero, not just a killing machine.”

“Omega Supreme?” The name seemed to stir up memories for Wheeljack – ones he clearly wanted to keep buried, as he quickly redirected the conversation. “And my counterpart chose the other Arcee?”

“Ratchet thinks so. I can’t find any relevant files, and, believe me, I tried. Most of the others were assigned military officers, but given the draft and the utter sweetsparks at least two Primes I know back home can be, they could still have been chosen for the same reasons. The Omega Sentinels did everything from guarding convoys to fighting on the front lines – or, in Zeta Supreme’s case, beyond them as the Wreckers’ mobile base.”

“The Wreckers exist in your reality?” The look of excitement on Wheeljack’s face made Glitch’s spark flicker as she cursed her motor-voicebox.

“They did.” She wished she could lie, but she couldn’t, and there was no bending that truth. “The war claimed them. They did take all but one of the Decepticon Heavy Brigade with them, though.”

“That’s something, at least. What happened to the survivor?”

“Still in service, unfortunately. Offlined another three Sentinels over the course of the war, Delta, Beta and Eta, which one has to admit is impressive. Last seen acting as Team Chaar’s heavy hitter.” Very heavy, according to Glitch’s friend Ironhide, whose team had fought Blackout’s not long previously – relative to her, that was. This transdimensional stuff was complicated, even for a sci-fi fan.

“Are any of the Omega Sentinels still alive?” Wheeljack tried again to put the discussion on an upward trajectory.

“Two.” Out of twelve. “Omega and Sigma. Both had to be put in emergency stasis after the Battle of Iacon. Sigma’s still in stasis-lock, serving as the Elite Guard flagship Steelhaven, but Ratchet and Sari managed to revive Omega a couple of stellar-cycles ago.” Only for him to fall under the control of Megatron and Starscream. “He spends most of his time in Detroit, away from anyone who’d try to use him as a weapon again, and in ship mode still. Each to their own, though if I’d been stuck in my alt-mode that long I’d spend as much time as a biped as I could.”

“I know what you mean – though Earth does make some good cars.” Wheeljack’s alt was a rather nice custom sports car, almost as fast as Bumblebee’s. “What about Sigma? How’d he end up as a flagship?”

“His mentor is Ultra Magnus. What he thinks of having Sentinel bossing him around now, I wouldn’t care to speculate. I have my problems with Ultra, and the system he allowed to continue, but Sentinel’s just an out-and-out jerk. Yes, he’s been through a lot, but so has my Optimus and he’s still one of the nicest ‘bots one could hope to meet, as long as one doesn’t cross him.”

“You don’t seem to get along with our Ultra Magnus, either,” Wheeljack commented. Blast him. Oh well; maybe talking about that problem would help her resolve it.

“Not really, and I’m not sure why. He just – gets under my plating, and I seem to grind his gears as well. Being given structures and instructions is one thing, but I’ve never coped well with being ordered around.” Or treated like a soldier, rather than a field-tech. “Used to mess with Sentinel when he was my drill sergeant, partly for that reason, mostly because he was picking on my friends as well. There might be some carry-over from my reality, as well. As I say, I’m not a fan of my version.” She managed to mute her audio-processor at that point, before she could really start to rant. Though she hoped her issues with that universe’s Ultra Magnus were fixable. She didn’t like not liking people.

“I’ve never got on with ours, either.” Glitch had gathered that. “But enough of that. Looks like we’re just about done here.”

Glitch re-analysed the new wiring diagram. “I concur. But would you be offended if I were to ask Ratchet to triple-check this?”

“Not at all. Though I don’t think you need to. You’re pretty good at this, once pointed in the right direction.” Glitch blushed and avoided Wheeljack’s optics more than usual. “I’m surprised he hasn’t recruited you to help with the groundbridge, or his Synth-En project.”

“I’d be no use as regards the groundbridge. Whenever Bulk tries to explain space-bridges to me, it just goes whoosh,” she mimed something flying over her head, “and not because he’s about twice my height. I wouldn’t say no to the Synth-En work, though. I’ve done some research on my version.” Not enough that she could synthesise it – yet. She was making do with oil, aware that Team Prime’s Energon resources were very limited. “Although – let’s just say there’s a reason my lab’s well away from the living quarters back at the Plant. And that I’m very glad we have fire extinguishers that aren’t attached to Optimus now.”

“I knew I liked ya,” Wheeljack laughed. Glitch had no idea how to respond to that comment, so ignored it and carried on. “Recently, I’ve been working more on organic chemistry and biochemistry. My friend Elita’s half-‘bot, half Archa-7 spider, which makes things tricky when she needs medical treatment. She and I had to reverse-engineer a lot of their biology just to design basics like painkillers and sedatives. I think we were close to a breakthrough when I ended up here.” She sighed. “Hopefully, Ratchet can take my place on the medical front, and Optimus will carry on helping her accept her organic half and stop hating it and trying to get rid of it. He’ll probably do a better job, actually. My main concern is what might happen if Sentinel finds out that she’s at our base while I’m here.”

“Why’s that?”

“He hates and fears organics, ironically because of the accident that turned her into a techno-organic. The last time he saw her, she tried to kill him after he rejected her. And she used to be a Decepticon. If he discovers we’ve been sheltering her and keeping secrets from him… it won’t be good.”

“Well, from what you’ve said about your Optimus and your Ratchet, I think they’ll have it covered. Though I wouldn’t mind if you made it back before that happened, ‘cause I’d quite like to be there. For… moral support.” Intimidation, more likely. Wheeljack, despite being one of the smaller ‘bots in Team Prime, was taller than Sentinel and carried an impressive pair of katanas. And took no scandium from his own superiors, let alone someone like Sentinel “Magnus”.

“Now that’d be something to see.” Perhaps from a safe distance. But it wouldn’t happen if Glitch didn’t survive long enough to go home, and to that end she returned her attention to the new design for her mods, checking it over one last time before asking Ratchet for his approval. A joint effort by a soldier and a scientist – or, perhaps, by two people who were both a little of each.