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PROVENANCE
The Yeager family have become used to hearing voices outside their house in the middle of the night. The Autobots haven't quite gathered the sensitivity of human ears, nor the intense quiet of the countryside at night. They're getting better – slowly – but when Cade hears Hound's voice raised in greeting from all the way inside his brand spanking new government-paid, well-insulated barn workshop, it's far from an unusual occurrence.
It does serve the purpose of reminding him just how late it is. His watch glows 12:43 PM; his stomach growls ferociously, informing him that he hasn't had dinner yet.
He sighs, and puts down the welding torch. Tessa's going to be mad at him again.
Dinner waits on a workbench closer to the barn door. It's stone cold. Cade picks up the plate and checks it for ants under the light before he leaves.
The security light over the patio casts a warm white light out over the lawn. The Autobots are gathered nearby, all in 'bot mode. There's a tree in the way; he can just see their lower legs and feet.
There's a few too many feet. He spots red and blue flames on the extra pair, and grins.
The gathered Autobots switch from their own alien language to English as Cade comes within earshot. Hound and Drift give him a friendly greeting, the newly-arrived Optimus a respectful nod.
He climbs up onto the patio, which puts him at a point slightly higher than their knees. “I wasn't expecting you back so soon.”
Optimus steps forward, further into the light. “It is not a visit I foresaw, either.”
In the background, Crosshairs elbows Hound, who replies with a burst of rumbled Cybertronian. Drift makes a noise halfway between a snapping guitar string and a pigeon's coo. A glance from Optimus, and they fall silent.
Cade puts his dinner down. Plainly this is not a casual meeting.
“Okay, what's going on?”
Optimus kneels. Slowly and somewhat ponderously, as if he has to think about how to do so.
“I apologise for the lack of notice, Cade Yeager,” he says. Eleven years on Earth and he still hasn't gotten the hang of surnames. “In my travels I became aware of the fact that the Cybertronian race has persisted, despite the destruction of the All Spark. This is a somewhat sensitive matter, and I could think of no place safer than here.”
“What do you mean, 'persisted'?” Cade frowns up at him.
Rather than answer, Optimus turns his helm to his shoulder and makes a low, rumbling croon. There's a pregnant pause, and a small silver thing pops up, perching unsteadily on the curved span of his pauldron.
Then there's another beside it. And another, squeezing between its fellows and Optimus' thick neck.
Cade's eyebrows head skyward. “What are those?”
Again, a pause. Optimus glances at the Autobots, visibly thinking fast.
“They are nymphs,” he says eventually, lifting his hand to the peanut gallery on his shoulder. The things – tiny robots, Cade realises, maybe two, two and a half feet tall – chirp like baby birds and swat at his fingertips. “Although the All Spark was what allowed us to form our former galactic empire, we had been capable of a more organic form of reproduction during the early years of our independence. Over time it was forgotten, but the capability still lies within our bodies.”
Cade's eyebrows must be halfway to the moon by now. “You're telling me these are baby robots?”
Optimus dips his helm. The nymphs wobble and grab his hand for support. “Essentially, yes.”
Hound finds his voice. “Looks like a good-sized clutch.”
A flicker of silver on the edge of his field of vision. Cade looks down, and stares as yet another tiny silver being appears from around Optimus' knee.
“Ah,” says Optimus, and produces another one of those deep croons, degenerating into a wavering middle-school-band oboe note. The nymph tips its small head up. It doesn't have much of a face, but bright red optics blink out of approximately the right place, and suddenly despite the alienness of its construction Cade recognises a child.
The nymph chirps, continues on its journey. Cade watches as it scrambles on all fours up the patio steps, peripherally aware of the eyes of the Autobots watching him in turn.
The nymph sticks its face into a pot plant. There's a small noise of complaint, muffled by greenery. The plant shakes. Cade hopes for Tessa's sake that it's hardier than it looks.
“Do they have names?” Cade asks.
He looks up. There's a faint smile playing around Optimus' mouth.
“They do not, not yet. At this stage of growth they are unable to understand speech. In perhaps thirty or forty Earth years they will be ready to accept those programs, and will articulate for themselves their own names.”
Cade crouches, putting himself on a level with the nymph. It's given up harassing the hebe. Curious optics, Decepticon-red, blink at him.
“Where'd they come from?” he asks. “Think I'd have noticed it if one of you guys was pregnant. Or have you got some girls hidden away somewhere?”
Crosshairs chuckles – his patented 'silly organics and their barbaric customs!' laugh, which Cade knows far too well. “Like Prime said, we're all of us capable 'a carrying. Ain't no such thing as girls and guys.”
“I believe they're Megatron's,” Optimus murmurs.
There's a mass movement backwards from the Autobots. Hound spins up a cannon, plainly torn between keeping the nymphs in his sights and not pointing it at Optimus. Crosshairs and Drift have no such compunctions. Cade jumps to his feet and puts himself between the nymph on the patio and their guns, hands in the air.
“Whoa, whoa! Relax, guys. They're just kids!”
“Stand down,” Optimus orders, and there's a harmonic in his voice that Cade's never heard before. The back of his neck prickles, the hairs on his forearms standing up. Drift steps back again; Hound drops his cannon at his feet. Bumblebee, the only Autobot who hadn't gone for his guns, steps in front of Crosshairs and grabs the barrel of his weapon, pushing it to the side.
“Okay,” says Cade. His heart's pounding; he's had more than enough of twenty-foot alien robots pointing guns at him. Especially when his own gun is in the safe in his new barn, a hundred feet away. “I know Megatron's a nightmare, but the little guys aren't him.” He pauses, and looks at Optimus for confirmation. “Are they?”
“No,” Optimus says firmly. “They're too old.”
Cade blinks. The answer he was expecting, but not the reason. “You'll have to tell me how that works sometime.”
“I shall.” Optimus collects the explorer from the patio to the tune of indignant screeching, rises, and turns to face the Autobots.
Now Cade can see what the Autobots had seen. Optimus' entire back is covered with clinging nymphs.
“Whoa,” he says.
'A good-sized clutch', had said Hound. There's a dozen, maybe sixteen, eighteen. It's hard to tell which set of limbs belongs to which head and shoulders.
He can't quite see what sort of expression Optimus is wearing, but judging by the unusual level of attention he's being paid by the Autobots, it must be a severe one.
“I will not ask you to overlook your ingrained prejudices or well-earned fears of Megatron. I will not require you to have anything at all to do with the raising of these nymphs; I feel that that would be counterproductive both for your sakes and theirs. What I do ask is that you remember that, no matter the fact of their parentage – which I would remind you is only an educated guess on my part, not confirmed fact – these are new, innocent beings, and cannot be held responsible for the sins of their forebears.”
Bumblebee is the first to answer, with a snappy burst of radio chatter to the tune of 'Aye-aye, Cap'n!' Hound shifts from side to side, then nods. “I can do that.”
Crosshairs simply turns and stalks off into the darkness, throwing a loose salute over his shoulder.
Drift remains. “You are certain that they are not Megatron? He has no spark; his offspring would only be extensions of his own processor.”
“They are teething,” Optimus says gently. He offers a finger to the trio on his shoulder; they grab it, pull his hand closer, and soon he has three nymphs nibbling at his knuckles. “Their claws are coming through. They are at least five years old, perhaps older. They were more than likely kindled prior to the battle of Chicago.”
“I see.” Drift seems to come to a decision. “I will offer you my assistance, should you require it.”
“Thank you,” says Optimus.
Cade is woken the next morning by a pair of sparrows having an argument outside his first-floor window. He blearily checks his watch – 6:52AM – groans, and rolls over to see if he can't get an extra couple hours of sleep.
Then there's a decidedly un-sparrowlike thump against the outside windowsill. Cade sits bolt upright and throws aside the curtains.
“My apologies,” says Optimus as he carefully, carefully peels a nymph off the side of the house. Is it just the early hour speaking, or is there a hint of embarrassment to his voice? “They seem to be more adept at climbing than I had realised.”
“Jesus Christ,” says Cade.
He throws on a pair of jeans – and, predicting the way the day is going to go, one of his already stained and holey sacrificial T-shirts – and thumps downstairs to the kitchen.
Tessa is standing by the door, peering out at the chaos on the lawn.
“Dad,” she begins, with the air of someone whose patience is about to snap, “why is our property full of tiny robots?”
“Well, for once I'm not the one you should be asking,” says Cade helpfully. “Besides, they're babies. Nymphs, I think he called them.”
Tess turns and regards him with raised eyebrows. “Right,” she says, drawing out the word in highly dubious fashion. “And where did they come from?”
“Well, Tessie, when a mommy robot and a daddy robot love each other very much...”
The look she gives him in reply speaks volumes, all of them profane.
“I have no idea,” says Cade. “He brought them in late last night. Needed somewhere safe to keep them.”
Tess peers out past the mosquito net. “Is it safe to go out there?”
Cade shrugs, and opens the door. “I was out there last night, and I'm still alive. Hang out with Crosshairs if you don't want to get mobbed; I don't think he likes them.”
Tessa follows him out into the early morning sunlight. “Crosshairs is an ass.”
Hound, sitting with his back against the patio, looks back over his shoulder and chuckles. “Can't argue with that.”
There are three nymphs in his lap. Cade checks; he's removed everything visibly explosive, but this is Hound, so that's no guarantee. The nymphs click and chirp at each other, stretching their small frames out over his thighs.
“They tired themselves out,” Hound comments, rubbing his thumb against one's shoulders. It leans back and chirrs softly. “Cute little fraggers.”
Tessa approaches cautiously. “How many of them are there?”
Hound looks out over the lawn and attached driveway. “Nineteen.” He frowns, and adds, “Least, there was last time I checked.”
Aside from the three in Hound's lap, there are five roughhousing on the lawn, two napping in the shade of the lopsided tree that is the only remnant of the old house, and one chewing industriously at the wheel rims of Cade's new car.
“Hey!” he yelps, leaping down onto the grass. “I need that!”
“Aw, let him be,” says Hound, patently unbothered. “All they're doing is tryin' to blunt their dente. Your car'll be fine.”
The next moment, he's proven wrong by a thunderous bang!
Cade instinctively ducks, his reflexes sharpened by the fiasco in Hong Kong. The local nymphs scatter like kittens. Most of them end up pressed flat to Hound's bulk or hiding underneath the patio; the one whose sharp baby teeth had punctured the car's tyre sits frozen on the lawn a few feet away, wailing piteously.
Optimus appears from around the side of the house within seconds, his arms full of the remaining eight. “What happened?” There's a note of urgency in his voice that Cade recognises, parent to parent.
Cade heads across the lawn to the wailing nymph. “A blown tyre,” he reports. “Scared the shit out of... most of us, honestly.”
Hound, half-crouching, settles back onto the ground. “Forgot you guys use pressurized air,” he grunts. “Sorry, little fellas.”
The nymph grabs at Cade as soon as he's within range, hiding its face in his chest. He awkwardly squats, patting its back with care. “It's all right, kid,” he says, in the same tone of voice he'd once comforted Tessa with after her childhood nightmares. “You're fine, no need to cry.”
Optimus reaches down with a smile. Together, they managed to transfer the distraught nymph to his hand, whereupon it is immediately mobbed by its siblings.
Cade rejoins Tessa on the patio. “So what's their story, Optimus? Where do you find twenty baby robots just hanging out?”
Optimus sits gingerly. “As I re-entered Earth's atmosphere, I came down on the Serengeti Plains in Kenya. At ten thousand feet of altitude my long-distance scanners picked up several small, and weak, but plainly Cybertronian signals. I decided to investigate.” He watches the nymphs closely as they clamber down onto the grass. “I found two stasis-locked and severely damaged Decepticons, of a quite small frametype, and these, feeding upon them.”
“Feeding?” said Tessa incredulously. “You mean... actually eating them?”
Optimus nods. “I gather that Megatron had left them to look after the nymphs prior to the battle of Chicago, but that when Megatron failed to return, lack of energon forced them into stasis lock. Nymphs require a steady source of metallic nutrient in order to fuel their growth, so when their prior source ran out, they would have instinctually started in on their stasis-locked caretakers.”
“That's...” Cade begins, then realises that he has no succinct word to describe it. Horrifying, heartbreaking, disgusting. “Really sad.”
“I judged it likely that the two Decepticons were beyond my or anyone's help, so I killed them and buried their remains,” Optimus murmurs. “I then gathered the nymphs and came straight here.”
“Poor kids,” says Cade. Tessa murmurs her assent. “Anything we can do to help?”
Optimus tilts his head to the side, thinking. The sun beats down on the house; cicadas sing and the wooden patio creaks as two of the nymphs play among Tessa's pot plants.
“It may be helpful to give them a thorough wash,” Optimus says eventually. “We flew through a raincloud or two on the way here, but their internals are still full of dirt and mud.”
Cade chuckles. “I doubt they'll be staying clean for long, playing the way they are. Gimme a couple of hours, Optimus; I'll see what I can do.”
That evening there's a rented swimming pool in the barn. All important things have been shifted out onto the lawn, hopefully out of splash range. There's less of it than there ought to be; the nymphs have already trashed the ride-on lawnmower, the Guard Dog Mk.II, the work-in-progress server droid and a whole basket of the neighbours' fixer-uppers.
Cade can't even be angry at them. He tries his best, but they're just babies, and something about that knowledge takes the bark right out of his attempts.
The new garage is about the same size as the old one. Drift and Bumblebee fit with no problems, but Optimus has to crouch somewhat to avoid knocking his head on the rafters. The nymphs gather at his feet, peering suspiciously out from behind his calves.
Cade splashes the pool invitingly. The two closest hiss and draw back; the ones behind them simply stare.
Cats. Ginormous kittens, rather. You'd think they'd never seen water before.
“I was hoping they might get in of their own accord,” Optimus sighs.
“Put one in and wait for the rest to follow,” Cade suggests. It works with cattle – why not baby robots?
Optimus gives him a considering look. He gently scoops up the closest nymph, thumb around the shoulders and fingers across the midriff, and dangles its feet into the water.
The nymph screeches and splashes. Optimus hurriedly draws it away – the big softie – but it occurs to Cade that the bitlet hadn't been trying to get away that hard.
“Hey, Optimus, I think he just needs a bit of time to adjust.”
Optimus looks from him to the no-longer squalling nymph in his hands. Finally, with a resigned vent, he lowers the nymph into the pool again. The screeches begin again, but quickly die down into soft, continuous warbling. The nymph splashes experimentally. The pool is only half-full; it can stand on the bottom and have its head and shoulders above the surface.
Before long, it makes a long, rolling cheep. The waiting nymphs reply with sharp staccato chatter, and mass forward, each pushing to get in before their siblings.
Cade laughs softly as Optimus and Drift ferry the rest in one by one.
The water in the pool is mud-coloured by the time all nineteen have been scrubbed and rinsed. Cade is soaked to the skin, and has never more envied the Autobots their quick-drying metal natures.
He wraps the last of the cheap store-bought towels around the shoulders of the last nymph out of the pool. Batman stares sternly out at the world as it runs off, joining the flotilla of its Disney Princess- and assorted superhero-clad siblings in the front yard.
There's a fight breaking out; apparently the Dr. Jumba Jookiba towel given to the first cleaned nymph has become a status symbol.
Cade shakes his head and looks at Optimus. “You might have gotten yourself into some trouble.”
There's a significant pause before Optimus answers. “I find myself much impressed that you have managed to raise your own offspring to adulthood, if Tessa was anything like these as a child.”
Cade laughs outright at that. “That's why we humans don't have twenty at a time.”