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Tinkering with things often led to new discoveries, new inventions, or new experiments.
But for Boulder, it was a hobby.
He loved randomly sticking things together, seeing if they would work or not. But that wasn’t his only hobby.
There was something else he loved doing, something surprising.
“Hey, Graham. Ready to visit the greenhouse?” Graham gestures the red cart behind him, filled with nursery trees.
“Yup! I got a couple extra since they were on sale. Hope you don’t mind mangosteen.” Boulder kneels down, carefully inspecting the tree starts Graham has brought him.
Breadfruit trees, jackfruit trees, lychee trees, papaya trees, banana trees, and the additional mangosteen trees Graham had surprised him with.
“Looks great! They’re all in good health, too.” As they walk to the greenhouse, Graham pulls the cart along and Boulder carries all the equipment they’re going to need to plant the new trees in their new home.
“I’m sad to see the pineapples go, but I think everyone in Griffin Rock is getting tired of them.” Graham laughs, nodding in agreement.
“They’ve even stopped selling pineapples at the grocers! It’ll be a while before we start importing them again. I think Cody said that if he saw one more pineapple, he was going to row out to the middle of the ocean and drop in it.”
“Do- Do pineapples float?”
“Uh…” For a moment, Graham falters. That’s not a question he’s ever had to answer, or anything he’s had to think about. But, if pineapples worked the same way as eggs…
“I guess? The good ones, at least.” They exchange a glance, both picturing how Cody would react to that news. It sets them off in giggles. Boulder opens the greenhouse doors, pushing through the plastic flaps that keep it temperate for the short time the door is open.
“Phew! It’s humid in here!” Immediately, Graham wipes at his brow, feeling the sticky, sweaty cling of tropical heat and humidity. Boulder grins in pride, closing the door behind them.
“Thank you! I’ve been carefully maintaining it to go from Polynesian rainforest at this end to Indian jungle at the back.”
“So it gets hotter?”
“Yeah. And the sprinklers are set up to replicate the monsoon season too. This end is constantly watered in a fine mist.” Looking up, Graham can see the very fine droplets hanging in midair, a thin fog above the plants that thins slowly, giving the plants below a constant moist appearance, droplets occasionally rolling from the leaves.
As they head from the rainforest to jungle, the heights of the trees and plants get shorter, lacking the canopy forming trees. Most of the plants back in the jungle area are no taller than Boulder, but the leaves are greener, the ground is more lush, and the plants seem wider.
Graham passes by the corpse flower, giving it a cautious glance, grateful that it’s not in bloom. That thing stinks.
Thankfully, the corpse flower bloomed rarely, sometimes decades apart. Considering it had last bloomed three months ago, it was unlikely to happen any time soon. All Graham had to worry about now was the Rafflesia…
“Here we go!” Boulder gestures grandly to the area where pineapples used to be, cleared out when he realised his plantation was far more than the townspeople needed.
Or wanted.
You could only gift a pineapple a few times before it became too much.
“I think Griffin Rock is going to be pleased to see this patch gone.” An amused rumble from Boulder’s engine answers him, and the bulldozer starts sorting through his tools.
He could just transform and dig up the land, but this was his hobby, and he wanted to do it the way it should be done.
The rake is comically small in his servo, even though Graham’s one is huge. The two of them start raking through the soil, turning it over to bring fresh nutrients to the top. Every now and then, Boulder adds a sprinkling of compost.
Once the soil is raked, it’s time to switch to shovels, digging circles in the ground evenly spaced apart for the trees to grow. It’s hard work, and Graham takes a break halfway through, breathing heavily as he leans against the cart.
“This is why… I didn’t start… Gardening… in the back garden… Phew!” He wipes sweat away from his brow, stretching his sore back. Boulder casts him a friendly look, making the holes a little bigger and deeper.
“It can get a little tiring at times. By the end of this, even my struts will ache. But it’s worth it to be able to see all these beautiful things grown and flourish.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it really is. Still, it’s not as much fun as some other things.” Laughing, Boulder picks up the first tree to plant.
“Oh, it’s much more fun to go dirt-roading, but I prefer the reward that comes from gardening. Especially in this greenhouse.” Refreshed from his break, Graham strides over to crouch in the dirt and start packing soil around the base of the newly planted tree.
“That’s fair. Say, what do the other bots do for fun?”
“For fun? Hmm… Blades like to watch TV, do arts and crafts, and recently… Online browsing. I think he’d shop if he could. Asides from that, he also practices mediation and Circuit-Su, but only when he’s alone, or with just Chase.”
“Circuit-Su?”
“A peaceful martial art. It’s like… Hmm… Aikido, in human terms.” Graham blinks a couple of times. He knows there’s a class that teaches that on the mainland, but the closest thing on Griffin Rock would be Tai Chi.
“Huh, that’s not what I expected.”
“Then you definitely won’t expect when I tell you he’s top rank in it.”
“Top rank? Like a black belt in Karate?”
“Not quite. We’re still millions of years too young to have mastered it, and we no longer have teachers. It’s more like… Somewhere between brown and red belt.”
“Woah, that’s crazy… What about Chase? Any surprises for what he does for fun?”
“Reading.” The simple answer catches Graham off-guard, but he nods and laughs as he moves to another tree, patting the soil down compact.
“That figures. Anything else?” Boulder stops to think for a minute, giving Graham a chance to catch up to his progress in planting the trees.
“Just spending quality one-on-one time with someone else. Mostly Blades or Chief Burns.”
“Makes sense. What about Heatwave?”
“Oh, yes. Chase spends time with him too.” Graham throws his head back and laughs.
“No, not that! I meant what does Heatwave do for fun~?” Boulder shuttered his optics, and rest his vocaliser with a touch of embarrassment.
“I- I knew you meant that.” A playful expression of ‘sure you did’ is sent his way, and Boulder can’t stop his faceplates flushing. He quickly waves off the embarrassment and plants the last tree.
“Heatwave likes active games. Sportslike activities, or sports themselves.”
“I’ve… Never seen him playing sports.” With a contemplative humm, Boulder pauses in his gardening. When he speaks again, his voice is soft.
“Back on Cybertron, it was hard to get him in the classroom for lessons. He rarely sat still, always full of energy and ready to go. Even though his grade were average, it was his agility, stamina, and endurance that earned him the position of team leader.”
“That sounds a lot like Kade. Average grades, but excelled in physical exercise. The basketball set-up outside? Dad had that set up for Kade when he moved onto secondary school.”
“I think he was trying to explain it to Heatwave, once, but humans have very different rules for their sports than ours.”
“What sort of sports did you have on Cybertron?” The pair begin to tidy up, putting the tools in the cart Graham had brought the trees in. This time, Boulder takes it as they walk back to the entrance.
“Disc. Podlet. Cube. Cube was the most popular. It was- There were championships, and challenges, and the top players for each city were basically celebrities.”
“How’d you play it?” Boulder rubs at the back of his helm.
“Well, it… Uh… Athletically?” Graham snickers, though not unkindly.
“It’s okay, I have no idea how most earth sports are played either.” Locking the greenhouse doors behind him, Boulder tacks the tool cart by the handle and follows Graham back in the direction of the firehouse.
There’s no need to drive, not on such a lovely day.
It’s a day for hobbies, the kind that nothing could interrupt and-
“Boulder? Graham? Are you there? We have an emergency downtown and-” Sighing in unison, Boulder transformers and leaves the tool cart on the grassy verge, Graham jumping into the drivers seat.
“We’re on our way, Cody. We’re on our way.”