Chapter Text
Recently, Cody had been noticing something…not necessarily strange, but certainly different about the Rescue Bots. In the past, Cody had hardly ever heard the bots whirring and clicking away in Cybertronian. But now? Now, even when they spoke English, they punctuated almost everything with mechanical rumbles and hums.
They also seemed more alive, for lack of a better word. Boulder puffed smoke from his shoulder-mounted exhaust pipe when deep in thought. Chase’s sirens whooped when he got startled, and the finials on his helm (if Cody remembered the Cybertronian-related terms correctly) flicked when he was interested in something. Blades’, well, helicopter blades on his back flared for emphasis during conversations.
As for Heatwave? Cody hadn’t noticed much of anything different, mostly because he excused himself before Cody could ask him about anything Cybertronian-related. Yet despite Heatwave’s prickly nature, whenever Cody walked into a room one of the Rescue Bots was already in, their EM fields often flared with warmth, like that kind of bright energy right before school gets out for the weekend. The bots didn’t say anything about it, so Cody didn’t either. However, that didn’t mean that he wasn’t still curious!
“Has anyone noticed anything weird about the bots recently?” Dani asked one day at breakfast. She nervously picked at the edges of her nearly burnt toast. “When I got into Blades’ cab the other day, there was this strange grinding gear noise. And then something inside him started humming and clicking! I’m starting to get worried about him…”
Kade scoffed as he poured himself a cup of black coffee (with an obscene amount of sugar, not that anybody commented on it). “Psh. I’m sure he’s fine, Dani! The bots make weird noises all the time. Heatwave especially! Ever since I’ve known the guy, he’s made these sharp rumbling noises whenever he’s ticked off.” Kade tried mimicking the sound a few times before dissolving into a coughing fit.
Dani rolled her eyes and muttered to Graham, “More like Heatwave makes those noises when Kade ticks him off…”
Graham snorted into his bowl of oatmeal.
“I heard that!” Kade half-gurgled through the messy sip of coffee he took to soothe his throat.
“Kids, settle down,” Dad said over his newspaper and coffee, voice caught between Dad-tired and listen-to-me-Chief-Burns. He set the paper aside, jostling Cody’s elbow where he’d been absentmindedly jotting down notes in his Cybertronian journal. “Ah, sorry about that, son.”
“’S alright,” Cody rasped a yawn, closing his digital journal. He took a bite of overly soft brown sugar oatmeal, missing his mouth. He blinked slowly and readjusted his spoon, tired from a long night of practice repeating Chase’s Cybertronian recordings. The hardest sound to mimic so far was a chassis’ rumbling purr. He instead made the rumble in his throat, but it ached something fierce, hence the soft oatmeal. Cody just needed more practice, like how Frankie did voice training for her singing.
“Come to think of it,” Dad mused, rubbing his scruffy chin, “Chase started humming the other day when I complimented him on a patrol well done. I know he transforms into a car, but I didn’t think that the purring engine would carry over into bot mode.”
Cody was only half paying attention to his family’s conversation, but his sleepy brain provided the blunt answer that didn’t make it to his mouth: The bots are speaking Cybertronian, duh. I know since I’ve been learning it myself!
“Oh, the Rescue Bots are just speaking Cybertronian.” Graham shrugged and took another bite of his oatmeal.
Everyone but Cody looked at Graham in surprise. Cody was too tired to protest that he already knew that.
“Like, another language?” Kade asked. “But it’s just a bunch of car sounds!”
“Their alt modes are cars,” Graham said flatly. “Of course that’s going to be evident in their home language. Boulder told me about it a while back.”
The breakfast table exploded into a flurry of questions that Cody ignored and let his mind float away from. He opened his Cybertronian journal again and chewed on the end of his well-worn stylus. It was Saturday, and he’d already finished his homework, so barring any emergencies, he had a free day…maybe he could ask Chase to record some more Cybertronian words for him?
Dad eventually called for order, and everyone snapped to attention in an instant. Dad powers, clearly. Cody let out a startled mrrp! from the back of his throat, something sounding more Cybertronian than human thanks to all his constant practice.
Graham locked eyes with Cody across the breakfast table…for some reason? Cody couldn’t parse out what was going on, head floaty as it was.
“—and Boulder and I determined that humans can’t really speak Cybertronian without hurting ourselves since we don’t share a lot of the same anatomy,” Graham explained, though Cody hadn’t processed that first bit. “Boulder made me promise that I wouldn’t try anymore since he didn’t want me to get hurt. However…”
After breakfast, Cody almost ran headfirst into a wall that was surprisingly squishy. And light green. And wearing glasses.
Glasses?
“Cody,” someone asked with a slight rasp, “are you doing alright?”
Ah. The squishy wall was Graham. Cody liked Graham. Graham was nice. He always knew the right thing to say.
.
.
.
Cody blinked slowly. What’s going on, again?
Graham. Yes. Grahamity-Graham-Graham.
“’M okay. Stayed up too late. Reading.” Unaware of what he was doing, Cody then hummed, something between a Cybertronian [love-you-please-go-away] and a random human sound. That was a benefit of Cybertronian compared to English—you could get a lot more across in fewer words.
Graham let out a little gasp. He then cleared his throat and said, “I love you too, Cody. I have extra tea and honey in my room if you ever need it.”
From there, Cody wandered aimlessly around the fire house. In his room, he dragged out his Halloween candy stash bag from under his bed and shoved a handful of old candy in his mouth, hoping that the sudden sugar bomb might keep him awake. He stuffed a few more wrapped candies in his pockets for good measure.
With a big yawn, Cody began rummaging in his room, the living room, and the kitchen in search of something that might help him make the Cybertronian sounds he couldn’t make on his own quite yet. In an old drawstring bag, he collected anything from paper towel tubes to empty and rinsed soda cans meant for recycling to aluminum foil, hoping that one of those things might work.
Eventually, Cody found himself in the Rescue Bots’ garage with no bot in sight. He frowned to himself, wondering where everyone was. Cody hadn’t heard the emergency alarms go off, so that wasn’t it. Maybe he missed a memo at breakfast, then?
Just as Cody was about to leave, he heard somebody shouting from the Rescue Bots’ spaceship in the back corner of the garage. What if someone’s hurt? Cody worried. Without skipping a beat, Cody ran to investigate, his drawstring bag clattering on his back with every step.
“Hello?” Cody asked as he clambered up the Sigma’s deployed ramp. His voice echoed, mixing ominously with staticky Cybertronian argumentative chatter deeper in the ship’s metal hull. “Who’s in there? Are you okay?”
Not even a second later, the conversation cut off, followed by a series of crashes and clattering, Blades’ wide-eyed (or would it be wide-optic-ed?) face popping into view. He filled the entire entryway of the Sigma, grinning awkwardly.
“Cody! Hey…what’re you doing here?”
Cody blinked. “I was just looking to see if any bot was available to talk and stuff, but no one was around…except you, apparently! And I heard voices in the Sigma. Are Boulder, Chase, and Heatwave back there or—?”
“Just me!” Blades chuckled nervously. “Doc Greene had that tech demonstration for the bots with grounder alts, so not me! I think he’s showing off some kind of invention for icy roads? It’s one of the few times I’m glad Optimus Prime had me scan an aerial alt…don’t tell him I said that!”
Cody giggled and said, “I promise, Blades. But what were the other voices, then?”
Blades’ helicopter blades flared on his back, and his optics darted side to side as if looking for a threat. “Promise not to tell?”
“I…promise?”
Blades didn’t inhale, since that would imply he had lungs. But Cody noticed that he had cooling vents along his body, so Blades in…vented? Sure. He in-vented sharply and said in a rush, “I’mrewatchingmyoldCybertronianrom-coms!”
“Uh…can you say that one more time, but slower, please?”
Blades in-vented once more, dragging out every word like each one had personally jammed into his rotor, “I’m rewatching my old Cybertronian rom-coms.” He then covered his optics with both servos as Cody looked on in curiosity. Then Blades peeked out between two digits and whispered, “You’re not making fun of me? This is the part where bots laugh at me. Cody, do you need to be repaired? Oh, I know I should have reviewed my human medical books—”
“I’m fine, Blades! I promise. I just wasn’t expecting your response! But Cybertronian TV? That sounds so noble!”
“You…you really think so?” Blades asked, wringing his servos. “You’re not just pulling my rotor?”
“I’m serious! I’ve been trying to learn more about your home language, and Cybertronian TV seems like it might have good examples of conversations and stuff!”
Blades clapped his servos together, and his helicopter blades wiggled in excitement. “Oh, I just knew that’s why you’ve been talking with Chase so much! Come in, come in! I have so much Cybertronian media to show you, Cody, you have no idea!”
Blades then took a knee, palm up for Cody to clamber onto. As soon as Cody did so, he nearly got vertigo from how fast Blades stood to rush him deeper into the Sigma. Propped up on the deactivated control panel, a large tablet’s screen was paused mid-scene of one Cybertronian pulling another through a bustling light-filled city.
Blades skidded to a halt and slid into the middle swivel chair of three at the Sigma’s main console. He spun around in the chair with a laugh, and even when he slowed to a stop, Cody’s brain still felt like it’d been blitzed in a blender.
“Ooh, this is one of my favorite movies, Cody! You’re gonna love it. I hope! It’s okay if you—Cody?”
Cody fought the urge to hurl. Between Blades’ sudden movements and his exhaustion from the night before, he didn’t especially feel like he was in tip-top Cody shape.
“I’m…I’m okay, Blades. Jus’ peachy…”
Blades frowned as he held Cody up closer to his optics. “You do remember that I’m a medic, right? While I specialize in caring for mechs, the symptoms of a sick human are very similar…”
“I’ll be okay,” Cody amended with a yawn, “I’m just a little out of it, but I still want to spend time with you!”
Blades huffed, helicopter blades flicking, “Fine. I’m still keeping an optic on you, though! Now, let me start a movie at the beginning…”
Blades set Cody down on his pauldron and began fiddling with the tablet, filling the air with warm chatter and mechanical trills. Cody sluggishly rummaged in his too-full drawstring bag for his Cybertronian journal, only to knock a few empty soda cans and his roll of aluminum foil free.
Blades noticed and let out a hum of excitement as he exclaimed, “Aw, Cody! You didn’t have to bring me some snacks! Did Dani tell you that Foil Wafers were my favorite?”
Before Cody could respond, with practiced surgical precision, using claws that Cody swore he hadn’t had a minute ago, Blades plucked the aluminum foil roll free from its box. He then proceeded to eat it like a Fruit Roll Up while he sifted through his tablet’s catalogue.
Cody scribbled furiously in his digital journal once he tugged it free. Cybertronians eat metal??? Not just energon??? Talk with Dani to see if she knows more about Blades’ favorite snacks. Blades = likes aluminum foil (Foil Wafers).
Blades huffed as he showed Cody the thumbnails of hundreds of old Cybertronian shows, films, and even clips of news reports on his tablet. Blades had so much saved, thanks to back when he needed something to pass the time on idle rescue missions.
“I wish I had more media saved. Not just for me, though! After so many vorns, er, do humans have an equivalent word for that? Large star cycle chunks? Whatever. After all the time we spent in stasis, the old Cybertronian way of life is pretty much space dust. I might have the only surviving copies of this media left…”
Blades turned on the subtitles—Cody’s first taste of Cybertronian glyphs, not that he understood them yet—for one of his other old favorite movies. It was essentially a rom-com about two bots learning to see optic-to-optic despite their respective high- and low-caste origins.
“Oh, I love a good love story, Cody! The Archivist and the Gladiator is a classic…I promise that the title sounds a lot better in Cybertronian. And the ending sets up for a sequel where the characters get ‘junxed, but the Council didn’t give the okay to the filmmakers! Can you believe it? Functionalists to the core, only saying bots can have a relationship if they’re in the same caste and frame type! What a bunch of—”
“What does ‘‘junxed’ mean?” Cody asked as two bots on screen literally crashed into each other and introduced themselves. He barely recognized “hello” in Cybertronian, but still quickly wrote down what he thought were the correct glyphs from the subtitles. His stylus almost became a blur; it was moving so fast!
Blades’ faceplates seemed to flush a little blue, although that could’ve just been the tablet’s lighting. “It’s, um, short for ‘conjunxing.’ In this case, Conjunx Endura.”
“Which means…?”
“Conjunxing makes your spark feel whole, but also more, if that makes sense. It’s a type of relationship for bots who love each other a lot.” Blades’ voice turned reverent, his EM field pulsing with a sudden warmth. “Like, a lot, a lot. Like, if there was an English word for ‘love-plus,’ it’d be that.”
“…do you have a Conjunx Endura?” If Cody had had enough sleep the night before to strengthen his filter, maybe he wouldn’t have asked that question. And yet…
“I wish I did. I’m just not sure if he likes me back or not…”
Cody’s eyes widened, and he slid down from Blades’ pauldron, along his arm, and down to the ship’s console so he could stare Blades in the optic. Cody grinned as he did what little siblings do best: tease. “Blades…do you have a crush!?”
Blades’ faceplates flushed blue, more obvious this time. His helicopter blades flicked the air so fast, they sounded like the buzzing of a bumblebee.
Cody gasped, “Oh, my gosh! You do!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Do not!”
“Do too!”
“Cody, for the last time, I do not have a crush on Bumblebee!” Blades huffed, crossing his arms. “We are friends, not even Amica Endura, and I am totally fine with it! And another thing—! Wait. Why did you get so quiet all of a sudden?”
“Bumblebee?” Cody echoed.
The Cybertronian rom-com had long since become background noise, humming and clicking away as one mech tenderly cupped the other’s helm in their servo. Blades went uncharacteristically quiet, optics glazing over the screen. He carefully reached out to the monitor, as if he was the one holding the love interest instead.
“Blades? Are you okay? I didn’t mean to upset you…”
Blades didn’t respond.
Maybe English isn’t enough here, Cody thought. He took a deep breath and hummed, followed by a rolling low click-chirp. [I’m sorry,] he tried to say in Cybertronian.
Blades’ helicopter blades twitched, and his outstretched arm dropped. He mumbled something in Cybertronian, but Cody only caught a word or two. He noticed [love] with a burst of negative emotion so strong in Blades’ EM field that Cody could feel it. He didn’t know what kind of negative emotion Blades pushed out, just that it made him want to shut down.
“What’s wrong?” Cody asked, voice choked with tears. He was getting through to Blades, he swore he was, but he just didn’t have the Cybertronian words he needed to express himself! “I’m not sure how I can help you. Would you like me to…to grab one of the other bots? Dani? I—”
Blades ex-vented heavily with a weak laugh. He began clicking something in Cybertronian before shaking his helm and continuing in English, “You’re a sweetspark for trying to help me, Cody. It’s just a lot of ‘wrong place, wrong time.’ I really like Bee, and on the foil-thin chance that maybe he likes me back? I may be unaware a lot of the time, but as a medic, even I can see that conjunxing during a war would be bad. If one of us got hurt? That kind of sparkache would destroy a bot…”
“But wouldn’t a life without love be awful too?”
Blades paused at that, glancing over to his tablet’s screen. The two bots were now pressing their helms together, optics closed, holding on to each other tightly.
“I…I don’t know. Maybe.” Blades smiled weakly. “When’d you go and get so wise, Cody?”
Cody puffed out his chest and exclaimed, “I’ve always been this wise! Mostly. But I’d do anything to help a friend like you, Blades!” He punctuated his sentence with a Cybertronian trill that meant “friend.” Or maybe it tipped over into the word for “ally?” Cody was still working on the specific tone.
Blades tilted his helm curiously at Cody, who laughed nervously.
“Uh…you’re not gonna give me a medic’s lecture on why it’s bad for me and my human vocal cords to speak Cybertronian, are you?”
Blades giggled and softly patted the top of Cody’s head with a single digit. “Should I? I may not be a human medic, but so long as you do so in moderation and soothe the ache, you should be okay. I think Bumblebee mentioned having a human partner who uses a Cybertronian soundboard to speak the language, so maybe you could try something like that!”
“Noble,” Cody yawned, his late night of studying Cybertronian finally catching up with him.
“It sounds like you may need to get some recharge upstairs.”
“‘M awake, I promise!” Cody mumbled, leaning against Blades’ gently cupped servo. “I wanna finish the movie with you…please?”
Blades mulled it over for a moment and begrudgingly agreed. Cody scrambled onto his open servo, which Blades lifted to meet Cody optic-to-eye. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when you fall into recharge, and your backstruts lock up!”
Cody didn’t really know what backstruts were. However, after he was lulled to sleep by the hums of recorded Cybertronian, and later slowly blinked awake in the late afternoon, his body didn’t feel so achy, held close to Blades’ spark.