Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Perceptor had been first in line when Optimus made a very dramatic speech to the Council calling for representatives to reach out to the Decepticons. Well, second, considering that Optimus himself had volunteered to be the first. Most of the Council had shuffled their feet and prevaricated—letting Megatron go back to the Decepticons to create more problems for the Quintessons trying to run them over was one thing. Actively allying with the Decepticons themselves, all of Autobot society, was another thing entirely. Even the Council members who were self-interested enough to recognize how necessary Decepticon support was—or how much profit there would be from reintegrating them—were themselves somewhat leery of personally walking onto a Decepticon ship. 

No one questioned his own decision to go. Everyone knew Perceptor didn’t feel fear. They just all tried to stop him.

Various Councilors pointed out he was too valuable to the Autobot cause, citing current and past projects. Perceptor explained that this was why they had an entire Ministry of Science full of reasonably capable mechs who could continue working in his absence. They didn’t like this. 

Others pointed out that he was too valuable as an acting Councilor, and if negotiations dragged on too long, much less encountered disaster along the way, he would be absent from his duties. Perceptor cited the regulations that allowed him to appoint a proxy, and went on to point out that the reason the Autobots had a Council as opposed to the Decepticon’s Autocracy was to deliberately make it easy to replace absent mechs. All being cogs in the great Autobot machine, and all. They liked this even less. 

“Furthermore, if the situation has deteriorated far enough that the Decepticons will kill me simply for attending the talks, our collective odds of surviving either the Quintesson invasion or subsequent Decepticon retaliation are less than four percent. It would be most efficient to find out now whether they are truly interested in this alliance.”

They liked this least of all, judging by how they all sat there in silence. Optimus Prime looked around at them all, before folding his arms in a decidedly…decided manner. 

“Well. you heard him.”

And so Perceptor was on the first Autobot ship to travel peacefully to Decepticon Headquarters in five million stellar cycles. As planned. 

Despite Perceptor’s well-reasoned arguments, the other Autobot Councilors refused to leave Cybertron. Perceptor had appointed Wheeljack as the Ministry of Science’s representative to the Council in his absence, since the other scientist was distinctly uninterested by the prospect of Decepticon negotiations. That meant that among the Autobot delegation, Perceptor was most familiar with the Jettwins—under strict instructions not to speak to any Decepticons without supervision—and Brawn, who had argued his way into coming. 

“You realize that causing fights with the Decepticons will endanger the negotiations,” Perceptor had pointed out, while they were waiting for the shuttle to pass through the spacebridge. “You will have to be extremely well-behaved.” Something Perceptor knew well Brawn had enough trouble with on Cybertron, to the point of being repeatedly written up for disruptive emotional behavior. The Enforcers kept making Perceptor sign off on Brawn’s record in order to continue keeping him employed at the Ministry of Science. They didn’t seem to mind that it wasted both their time and Perceptor’s while having very little long-term effect on Brawn’s conduct—something Perceptor had compiled the statistics to give his own presentation on the last time the Enforcers made him sit through a review. They had failed to draw the appropriate conclusions and suggested that instead Perceptor stop signing off so Brawn could be detained for correction of his programming. Perceptor had refused. 

“Somebody’s got to watch your back,” Brawn grumbled, manually aligning his digit sockets. “Primus knows you can’t hold your own in anything closer than a hundred astroyards.”

“Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary.” Perceptor examined the starfield as they approached the spacebridge, calculating the shifts in visible light since the last time he had been up here, five hundred and seven stellar cycles ago. “I have planned ahead in the event of casual violence.”

“Does that mean I can plan ahead for casual violence?” Brawn was grinning. Perceptor chose not to indulge him. 

“I have no doubt you will rise to the occasion, prepared or not.” A crash drew Perceptor’s attention to the Jettwins’ most recent attempts to perfect their space-restricted flight transformations. The simulator hadn’t really been able to replicate the feeling of crashing into walls. He recalled that being an important part of a young flyer’s learning experience, but there hadn’t been room for it at the Ministry. “Your time may be better spent protecting them,” Perceptor pointed out. Brawn was not the most diplomatic of mechs, but the Jettwins would hardly have made any important plans he could disrupt. 

“I’ll consider it,” Brawn said, and spent the rest of the trip making repeated requests for Perceptor to provide him with weapons. 

Negotiations started promptly after docking on the Nemesis, or at least, the standard opening Decepticon posturing did. Perceptor tuned most of it out once he saw that Optimus seemed to be able to handle posturing right back, focusing instead on reviewing a datapad of Council demands to see if any of them were worth actually putting forward. Many of them were not. 

”Perceptor!” Brawn yelled, from somewhere off to the side. He had been more than happy to get in on the posturing, judging from the crashes Perceptor had been tuning out. This sounded like something Perceptor should pay attention to, though. 

Ah. One of the triple changers was posturing directly at him with a shoulder blaster. It was powering up, but not with the rapidity that would indicate a serious attempt to fire. His EM field indicated pride and challenge, but no true anger. Perceptor took a step to the side, positioning himself in front of one of the access hatches for the volatile engines to decrease the chances that the Decepticon would actually fire, and waited. 

“Blitzwing, stand down!” Megatron snapped. “You will not blow up our engines because someone called your little bluff.”

The triple changer deactivated his cannon with a curse, and declared, “You’ve got guts, puny Autobot. You get to keep them. For now." Perceptor acknowledged the compliment with a tilt of his head.

“Are we done waving weapons around now?” Bumblebee demanded, waving his own stingers around emphatically. 

“Yes, are we?” Optimus Prime’s tone was so reminiscent of Ultra Magnus that Perceptor actually lowered his datapad to look over at where the Prime, despite not coming up past Megatron’s chest, was unflinchingly staring down the leader of the Decepticons. The Magnus Hammer was still in his hands.

“I believe we are,” Megatron replied, and the negotiations proceeded from there with a minimum of shed energon.

“On the immediate front, there is a pressing matter we wish to draw to the attention of your Autobot Science Corps,” Megatron said several cycles into the meeting. Perceptor looked up from the datapad where he was sketching out potential efficiency improvements for engine combustion, now that the Decepticons would be able to share certain mineral stocks. “The Quintessions are making use of a type of quantum technology that we were not previously aware had combat applicability.”

“So you didn’t bother to learn anything about it?” Sentinel Prime sneered, like he hadn’t ignored every non-combat briefing the Ministry of Science had tried to get him to sign off on since being made Prime. Wheeljack had just started submitting all his requests for experimental materials by describing the ways he would make them blow up. Perceptor had made him write up those lists for years, but usually it was just so he knew what kind of lab safety regulations to implement. 

“We had other priorities,” Shockwave hissed, narrowing his eye at Sentinel. Perceptor immediately began tweaking an old calculation he had devised for the purpose of determining whether physical violence would erupt between Longarm Prime and Sentinel Prime, significantly raising Longarm’s willingness to engage. 

”Regardless.” Megatron cut them off. “One of our conditions is that you turn your Ministry’s attention to it.” He looked directly at Perceptor.

“You can’t just demand the attention of Autobot scientists like—“

“Agreed.” Perceptor spoke over Sentinel’s protests. “The assistance of one of your Decepticon scientists would expedite communication in this alliance.”

Megatron considered this. “Blackarachnia?”

“I will not work with Autobots,” the techno-organic growled from her position at the far end of the table. “Especially not with the Ministry of Science.”

Her refusal was logical. Many of Perceptor’s fellow scientists would be more likely to see her as an experimental subject than a fellow colleague. It was also convenient to his plans.

Megatron’s optics narrowed, but he did not rebuke her. “I will not force any Decepticon to work with your organization,” he informed Perceptor. “Especially…” His gaze slid to the Jettwins, hanging back by the wall. “…considering your track record.”

“May I make inquiries?”

“Do you have a particular mech in mind?”

“Brainstorm of Kimia.”

Several of the Decepticons around the table winced. Blackarachnia broke into full-on spluttering. “Brainstorm? That arrogant, reckless, obnoxious, overblown, over flown , ego-driven aft?”

“I am familiar with his work,” Perceptor said, simply. The data that Brainstorm was alive and well enough to maintain his reputation was useful. 

“Perceptor,” Optimus Prime said, leaning over the table towards him. “Are you sure about this?”

“Given the papers he has published and other accumulated evidence, I calculate a seventy-two point three percent increase in the Ministry’s success at both reversing engineering the technology in question and distributing the information to your troops.” 

“As I said, I will not compel any Decepticon to cooperate with your Ministry,” Megatron said. “But your request will be passed along.”

“The odds of his acceptance are better if I make the request myself,” Perceptor stipulated. 

“As long as it doesn’t disrupt the negotiations, I can’t see why that would be a problem,” Optimus said, firmly. Perceptor opened a new social behavior algorithm to make a note of the way Megatron focused in on the assumed challenge to his authority and then let it pass. 

“Very well. Regarding the distribution of troops…"

Brainstorm was easier to find than Perceptor’s calculations—built over more than two million stellar cycles of unsuccessful contact—would have predicted. He was not aboard the Nemesis itself, but instead located on one of the Decepticons’ colony space stations. As part of the treaty, one of the nearest space bridges was being refurbished, so Perceptor was able to ride along on a repair shuttle within ten megacycles of obtaining Megatron’s permission. 

Brawn had decided not to come along on this trip. He was too busy getting on smashingly with the warbuilds. Often literally. The rest of the Autobot delegation had other concerns.

This meant that Perceptor walked into Brainstorm’s lab—a riot of quantum scribblings on clear panels, half-assembled weapons on lab benches, scattered briefcases, strange arrangements of straps that he was fairly sure were meant to facilitate dangling from the ceiling,empty energon cubes, and datapads—alone. He immediately began to catalogue the shape of the mess, mapping it against his recollections of the last lab he'd shared with Brainstorm. 

“I’m not done yet!” a particularly contorted arrangement of straps declared. A familiar shape unfolded, upside-down arms gesticulating wildly. There was a briefcase cuffed to one wrist. “Even my genius needs time to work! I told you, when I know, you’ll—“ The sentence cut off. “Great. Hallucinations now appear at thirty cycles without recharge. Good to know.”

“Hello, Brainstorm,” Perceptor said, filing away the comment on ‘thirty cycles without recharge’ for later review. “I am not a hallucination.”

“Perceptor?” Brainstorm leaned up to scrabble at the arrangement of straps around his waist, flipping to the floor with a thump. He approached without trampling any of the debris on the floor, despite not looking down once, eyes fixed on Perceptor’s face. His field indicated nothing visible to Perceptor’s EM reader.

Perceptor tipped his head back to return the gaze of the much larger approaching flightframe, otherwise holding still as Brainstorm reached out and poked him gently but firmly in the head. Despite the Brainstorm’s elbow naturally resting level with Perceptor’s forehead while both of them were standing, Brainstorm was curled forward. His frame hunched over Perceptor’s in a way that blocked out the rest of the lab. It was just the two of them forming and sharing a bubble of enclosed space. 

“Are you satisfied that I exist?” Perceptor asked, when it had been several astroseconds and Brainstorm had yet to draw his hand away. 

Brainstorm abruptly pulled back, wheeling away in a blur of explosive motion to settle down at a lab bench strewn with datapads, hunching over and burying his faceplate in them. “Yep. Completely satisfied. You sure are here, huh?”

“I am.” Perceptor picked his way across the lab floor to stand in front of Brainstorm’s lab bench. He was not confident enough to keep from watching his step, but as soon as he stopped, he resumed his study of Brainstorm’s face. His faceplate had changed. His field kept flaring with brief flashes of emotion, too brief for the reader to analyze.

”Why are you here?” Brainstorm said. “And what happened to your voice? Wait, let me guess. You’ve joined up with the Decepticons. You’re a prisoner of war and I’m supposed to supervise you. You realized there’s a problem you can’t possibly solve without me and you’ve come to beg for my forgiveness.”

“You are half correct,” Perceptor said. “I have been tasked with a larger problem as part of the treaty that I believe you would be able to assist me with. I have a secondary problem that past data indicates would intrigue you enough to lend your expertise.”

Brainstorm peered up from the datapad, ailerons twitching in what his EM field indicated was suspicion. “What’s the larger problem?”

Perceptor unsubspaced the datapad he had loaded with a copy of the briefing on the Quintesson’s weaponized quantum pockets and passed it to Brainstorm, who plugged in and started processing immediately. That didn’t stop him from continuing to squint at Perceptor. “Alright, seriously, what happened to your voice?”

“I performed an experimental brain surgery to wipe and overwrite my emotional subprocessing routines.”

“What?” Brainstorm’s wings canted up and he set the datapad on the table. “When’d you do that? Why’d you do that?”

“Two million three thousand stellar cycles ago.” The date was in the forefront of his processor. “I missed you. The quality of my work declined. I could not take action on the laws banishing flightframes, but adjusting my own processor was within my capabilities."

Brainstorm had gone completely still. “And now you’re not happy with it?”

“The procedure was successful, so no, I am not. I am also not dissatisfied, upset, or experiencing regret. But the modifications have served their purpose, and I no longer require them.”

Brainstorm leaned forward, carelessly dangling the datapad from his fingers. “So why are you here?”

“You are the expert on quantum mechanics and your assistance with the Quintesson’s—“

“No, no, I get that, I’m a genius,” Brainstorm said, circling his free hand. “It’s why I’m already working on the problem, they brought it to me last week. What made you come here?"

“A request for your assistance. I do not know how to reverse the modifications myself and I would trust no one more than you."

Brainstorm was silent, field indicating nothing. Perceptor calculated whether it would be more logical or illogical to wait, and concluded the latter. Brainstorm made rapid decisions, and had not formerly needed encouragement to voice them, but that had been millions of stellar cycles ago. “I would appreciate promptness in your rejection.”

“Who said anything about rejecting?” Brainstorm tipped his head to the side. “I’m just trying to make sure I’ve got this straight in my processor. You performed ethically dubious, untested, methodologically uncertain engineering on yourself. Because you missed me.”

“That is accurate.” So he was as quick as ever.

“And now,” there was a distinct tone of glee creeping into his voice and field. “You need my help to fix it.”

“The original conditions no longer apply, and all other options available to me seem insufficient. Yes.”

“Oh, happy days are here again.” Brainstorm swept all his datapads into the briefcase cuffed to his wrist. “I’m in. Where do we start?”

Chapter Text

They started with getting Brainstorm back to Cybertron and Perceptor’s lab, a project that Perceptor really thought would have been easier than it was. Unfortunately, Sentinel’s propaganda was the opposite of logical, and paranoia about the Decepticons hindered every step of the process from the ship docking to getting inside Metroplex to Perceptor’s own lab. 

Brainstorm bore it with good humor, tinkering away with one of his projects while Perceptor made greater use of his authority as a member of the Council than he would have preferred to shoo away a customs officer who had not been swayed by logical arguments. By the time Perceptor finally managed to convince the officer that yes, this was an authorized project, no, he did not need a security escort, no, this was not a hostage situation, yes, Brainstorm was to be permitted free access to the facility, the engineer had managed to completely disassemble and reconfigure the neutron blaster he had started with. Perceptor could appreciate his speed, and also take it as a sign that this particular officer should not retain his post. 

“You’re really not mad,” Brainstorm asked, or perhaps observed, as the official stormed away once he had been convinced—ordered—to update Brainstorm’s access for the labs. 

“I am not,” Perceptor answered, or perhaps agreed. “I apologize for the wait.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He stood up to his full height from one of his absurdly contorted ‘working’ positions, wing tips swaying close to the ceiling. Perceptor made a mental note to check all the dimensions of the labs and storage closets. Most of it should still be accessible to warframes. “I figured it would take a while for your new recruits to recognize my genius.”

“Considering how many of your papers are still on file, they should be well aware already,” Perceptor pointed out, and then paused. “Your affiliation may have been censored. Never mind.”

Brainstorm had perked up regardless, ailerons lifting. “My papers are still on file?”

“I have had to make many of them required reading for new lab technicians.” 

“Aw, Percy!” His field beamed with smug delight, before it abruptly fell away. “Wait, which ones?”

The conversation carried them all the way to Perceptor’s lab, and kept Brainstorm conveniently distracted from the Autobots staring at or backing away from the large weaponized jet walking their halls. 

Distraction proved impossible once they reached Perceptor’s lab facilities, and Technician Sprocket blocked Perceptor’s attempt at a tour to say “I thought they were kidding when they said you were bringing back a ‘con.”

“As you can see, they are not,” Perceptor said, trying to step around Sprocket. “Don’t you have work to do?”

“I refuse to work in a lab with a Decepticon in it!” Sprocket snapped, crossing his arms and blinking anger and pride through his field.

Perceptor accepted that with a nod and stepped around him, waving towards the nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer and continuing his tour for Brainstorm's benefit. “I do not believe we will have a need for it, but I would prefer for you to have an analytic method that doesn’t involve—“

“Did you hear me?” Sprocket demanded. “I said I refuse to work in a lab with a Decepticon in it.” He shot a vicious glare at Brainstorm, who was busy staring at them. Strange. Perceptor had expected the NMR spectrometer to hold more of his attention. 

“I did hear you, and I accept your resignation,” Perceptor said, switching his attention back to Sprocket. “Please inform me within seven solar cycles if you will require a recommendation letter.”

Sprocket opened his intake, closed it, and then opened it again. Perceptor decided to ignore him.

“Um,” Brainstorm said, sounding like he was trying to suppress his glee. “I think I’m good on a tour for now, if you just want to get to work.”

“Of course,” Perceptor said, and headed off to unlock his sub-lab. All the other technicians stayed well out of his way. 

The project on the quantum energy weapon took up an entire sub-lab, mostly because so far all their attempts to replicate it kept disappearing whatever they touched and it was safer not to have anything else important nearby. The privacy also kept mechs from registering complaints with Perceptor when Brainstorm did anything they found strange or suspicious. This included him doing perfectly normal things such as refueling through a digital line to keep his mask on, climbing on a table to get a better view of the equations he’d sketched out on the floor, cackling maniacally, interrogating other scientists about their projects, and collecting more project materials from whatever happened to be available. Perceptor eventually issued the entire lab with a particular line for ‘Decepticon-related reports’ and routed it directly for deletion. 

The sub-lab was also useful when Optimus was persuaded to bring in the Magnus hammer so Perceptor could run calibration assessments, but only on the condition that it be done privately. This was a simple enough request—Perceptor waited until Brainstorm had been forced into a recharge cycle and brought Optimus to the sub-lab so he could oversee the data collection and transmit it for collective review.

Optimus followed every direction, lifting and directing force and absorbing and releasing energy and changing vectors, subdued and quiet the entire time. Eventually, during a moment of rest, he asked, “How did you handle it? Inviting a Decepticon in.”

Perceptor paused halfway through recalibration of a monio-sensor array, adjusting his EM field viewer in front of his face. Optimus was positively roiling was small flickers of suppressed, churning emotion, all overlaid by doubt and uncertainty.

“Please clarify.”

“We’ve been at war with them for...stellar cycles. We were at war with them millions of stellar cycles ago. Ratchet says you were around back then. They’ve been your enemy for longer than I’ve been alive, and now you’re working with one.” He waved one hand at the lab tables, adjusted for Brainstorm’s height with access steps for Perceptor. 

“I believe it helps that I am not inherently afraid,” Perceptor pointed out. Optimus hadn’t sought him out for these kind of answers before. 

“You weren’t afraid of Blitzwing or Megatron either, but you didn’t start inviting them back to your lab,” Optimus countered. “Why—how did you know it would work?”

Perceptor carefully adjusted a dial. “My calculations never achieved more than a fifty four percent certainty rate, with a five point margin of error. However, Brainstorm and I were lab partners before his exile, so I had empirical data that we were capable of working together.” He did not request Optimus proceed with the tests. A distracted weapons tester was worse than a silent one. 

“Exile?” Optimus straightened up. “What did he do?”

“He is a flight frame,” Perceptor said. “After the Tyrest Accord, that was sufficient grounds for exile.”

“That’s it?” Optimus said. He sounded exhausted. “The Autobots really...”

“The argument was that even if not every flight frame was a Decepticon, they still shared frametypes, coding, battle protocols, with those who were. They could not be trusted not to sympathize. It was not a logical argument. After such a brutal end to the war, the Council was afraid. They wanted a united Autobot identity, compatible cogs in the great machine.” Perceptor had saved these memory files well and without forgiveness. “Flight frames would only engender envy, inflame desire for reformatting clinics, further confuse the lines already blurred by war. Further traumatize civilians who functioned most efficiently without reminders of danger.”

Optimus was silent. 

“Contact with any Decepticon adjacents was, prior to your recent efforts, regarded as treason. The largest unknown variable was whether Brainstorm would be willing to return.”

“Because he’s a Decepticon now.” Optimus spoke very quietly.

“Because it was the logical choice for him to become one.” Perceptor responded to both Optimus’s direct statement and his unspoken question.

Optimus looked away. “How many more tests do you need?”

Several mega-cycles into the project, between them they had reverse-engineered the samples of the quantum weapon to a stable state when Brainstorm declared that it was time for a break. 

“New project time! Gotta let the shiny ideas get some rust on ‘em before we slap them into place.”

“That is a particularly ineffectual metaphor,” Perceptor objected. 

“Well, completely unmetaphorically, I’m starting to get bored and I want to play with something shiny. And your brain is very shiny.” Brainstorm cleared a section of table and put a box on it. “Come on, experiments go on the table, hop up and let me poke around."

“I believe my brain module actually has several coats of motor oil on it,” Perceptor said, but he sat on the box anyway, extending one wrist for Brainstorm to plug in a diagnostic cable. The baseline functions of his code proceeded to scroll across the large screen positioned to his left. 

“Metaphorically shiny,” Brainstorm said, already distracted by watching the code scroll across the screen. He extended his own cable to monitor it better without actually making code-to-code contact as the data from Perceptor’s processor trickled through the monitor completely passively. “I started looking into how the psychs do emotional calibration and most of it was pretty useless, but there was some interesting stuff on subroutine activation. Tell me a story about something you’ve done.”

Perceptor began to describe the process of designing upgrades and coding modifications for the adaptation of the Jettwins. Brainstorm listened, his ailerons twitching and eyes squinching in what Perceptor’s EM field reader clarified as concentration.

“What was that?” Brainstorm asked, cutting off the part where Perceptor was describing the development of flight-capable frames from colony materials. His field flared with interest and suspicion. “There! Whatever you just did.”

“I consulted my EM field reader,” Perceptor clarified, indicating the device on his face with his free hand. “It informs me of the emotional state of the mechs around me, as I require it.”

“Because you no longer have the subroutines to read fields yourself…” Brainstorm was speaking mostly to himself, activating a second monitor to scroll back through the code processes. Perceptor was aware of slight adjustments to his processes as subroutine sequences were pulled up and examined. “Can you take it off? It’s filling the gaps I would expect to see, I want to get deeper.”

Perceptor removed the small visor and set it in his lap, returning to the story. 

Brainstorm didn’t speak up again until Perceptor reached the sequence of the twins’ first, hindered flight experience and Ultra Magnus’s orders to build a flight simulator. 

“Hang on again.” Brainstorm reached out and scrolled back through the transmitted code. It tickled. “What was that calculation? Right before you were talking about the flight simulator there was this subcalculation. It went by too fast for me to catch.”

Perceptor sorted through his short-term memory and began to relate the statement again. “Metroplex’s old anti-aircraft weaponry activated on the Jettwins’ first flight. I suggested that we disable the anti-aircraft cannons and release statements to the general populace to inform them of the new development to calm—“

“Got it!” Brainstorm leaned forward towards the screen, his cannon barrels rotating. “There’s this whole other priority tree running in your background protocols, it’s been activated and re-checked enough times that it’s all shortcuts by now, but I think I found the way to trace…it…back…”

Perceptor’s processor started sorting itself to comply with his search, retrieving old files and expanding on notations. He was unsure which subroutine Brainstorm was referring to, so it seemed simplest to unpack as many of them as possible. It took him several astroseconds to notice that Brainstorm had stopped his work to stare at the screen.

“Is there a problem?”

Brainstorm turned his head to stare directly at Perceptor, and then looked back at the screen, and then back at Perceptor, and then back at the screen. “I’m at the top of this priority tree.”

That priority tree. Perceptor repacked the rest of them, leaving it centered. “Yes. I have a set subroutine to consider any decision that could affect you in light of your well-being.”

“You’ve been running this subroutine…” Brainstorm considered the data. “You have to have been running it since you deleted your emotions in the first place. It’s been run over fifty-eight million times. Your processor has dedicated entire neural pathways to it.”

“Yes. An absence of emotion made many judgements harder. It was most difficult concerning the Decepticons, since I was being exposed to so much biased data that it was beginning to corrupt my logic proofs. I required a counterbalance. I could not prioritize the Decepticons as a whole. I could very easily prioritize you.”

Brainstorm did not respond. Perceptor considered building an equation to attempt emotional analysis again, but past data had shown that would be a futile endeavor. 

In an absence of certainty, Perceptor continued explaining. “In the incident with the Jettwins, there were several options for their short-term flight training. However, only accustoming the Autobot populace to once again having flight frames overhead and removing the active threats to the well-being of Cybertronian flight paths had a long term impact that could potentially benefit you. I presented that as the best option, and was overridden. Ultra Magnus had other priority trees.”

Brainstorm straightened up from the screen. While they were positioned like this, with Perceptor on the table, the two of them were at exactly the same optic height. Not that Brainstorm was meeting his optics. He just stared at the cable connecting Perceptor to the monitor before unplugging his own cable and spinning around.

“I just had a brilliant breakthrough for the quantum project. Unplug and we can get to work."

When Optimus Prime’s team had first brought the Allspark back, the Council had (in their collective wisdom) decided it should be transported around Cybertron and some of the more well-defended colonies for morale and propaganda purposes. The influx of Quintesson warships—and having Megatron out in control of his fleet again—had made them panicky enough that they had brought it back to Cybertron and demanded that the Ministry of Science start making it produce sparks again. 

Wheeljack was leading that particular project, but Perceptor checked in when there were new developments. Such as the arrival of a chunk of Allspark fragments from the organic planet it had been shattered on. 

“It’s still unresponsive,” Wheeljack reported, showing Perceptor into the larger lab-cum-display area. Brainstorm had chosen not to come, claiming he had “better things to work on than a broken baby-maker.” “We thought getting the extra shards might help wake it up a bit, but it hasn’t responded. To those.”

“I see,” Perceptor said, observing the little chlorophyll-based organism set up at the edge of the platform holding up the Allspark. The organism was in a small rounded container formed from hardened kaolinite and painted bright red, perhaps to match the organism’s own bright red and orange flowers. “But it has responded to the organism?”

“It’s an earth plant. The little indigenous technoform running Earth’s spacebridge called it a zinnia.” Wheeljack scratched at his faceplate. “I wasn’t entirely sure why she sent it, but she said to put it near the Allspark. It didn’t do anything, but when I took it away all the monitors stopped working, so I put it back. Now they’re fine.”

“Fascinating,” said. Perceptor “Has Jazz come in to repeat whatever procedure reassembled the Allspark initially?”

“No one’s seen him since they let Megatron out. Can’t pin him down,” Wheeljack said. His head fins flickered. “Yet. Which reminds me, I need you to sign off on an authorization for deploying that new electropulse net inside Metroplex.”

“Denied,” Perceptor said. He sent a message to Cliffjumper as acting administrative helm of the Elite Guard requesting that Jazz come by to test a new weapon. If the rest of the lab didn’t have anything ready, he could just see what Brainstorm was cooking up while unsupervised. High probability it would be weaponized. 

It was not weaponized. 

“Stealth generator,” Brainstorm said of the small box now attached to his front plating, scribbling more notes on the quantum weapon. “Hides an EM field. I figured you’re a good candidate to test it since you’ll see if anything leaks through faster than anyone else would feel it.”

“I see,” Perceptor said, and discarded all the behavioral models he had built to be tested and modified based on Brainstorm’s reactions. 

“Anything interesting with the spark?” Brainstorm asked, not looking up.

“It is non-reactive, except for a slight attachment to an imported organism.”

That gave him pause. Briefly. “Really? Weird. Bet what we just found about the quantum thing is more interesting, come check it out."

“We?” Perceptor asked, following him to the side of the lab. Someone large and purple with a large back turbine was bent over the lab table with a wrench.

“Nautica, Perceptor, Perceptor, Nautica,” Brainstorm rattled off. “She’s not me—“

“And thank Primus for that, one’s enough,” the femme cut in, straightening up. Her field showed amusement. 

“—but then, no one is,” Brainstorm said. “And she does good work when she’s not, y’know, viciously insulting me.”

“You two are acquainted?” Perceptor inquired. He didn’t see a Decepticon insignia. 

“We’ve corresponded, but today’s our first time meeting in the metal.” Nautica said, extending one hand. Perceptor carefully shook it, absently calculating how far she could throw him. “I’m from Caminus, I came over with the delegation for treaty talks. I’m, you know, a quantum mechanic by specialty, so they sent me here.”

“Thank you for coming,” Perceptor said firmly. He set a timer to remind him to inquire with Brainstorm about weapons and turned his attention to the present situation. “What have you found out?”

Nautica gave far more concise explanations than Brainstorm, with the attitude of someone used to talking to people with no quantum background whatsoever. She also had far more precise ideas about the best ways to rig something to counteract the effects of the device. “Of course, it has a fifty percent chance of dumping whatever’s in it on your head, but for quantum, that’s pretty good!”

Brainstorm was paying close attention to her explanation, drawing out ideas on a sheet of glass that were skewing a little more towards guns than they probably should be. Perceptor made a note to continue making sure Wheeljack was too distracted to come be friendly. 

“Still, if the counter-weapons were deployed appropriately, it would ensure--“ The timer went off. “Brainstorm. Do you have a spare weapon that requires testing?”

“Huh?” Brainstorm’s head jerked up, and he swiped at whatever drawing he was making. “I—yeah, I do, I’ll get it—“ He swung his legs off the table and headed over to the other side of the room, leaving Perceptor and Nautica with the weapon.

“So,” she said. “No feelings, huh?”

“Yes. As I was saying, deploying counter-weapons would ensure that the Quintessons were no longer able to breach the lines quite so effectively, even if it did not destroy the contained drones.”

“Oh, yeah.” She looked back at the weapon. “What’s it like, thinking all the time about using the things you make for war?”

“I have not had to consider it as much recently,” Perceptor admitted. “But the protocols are very deeply ingrained. Did you not discuss weapons with Brainstorm? Those are most often his passion.”

“We talked about a lot of things.” Nautica leaned against the table, studying him. “He liked bragging about all the stuff he did with you.”

“That is believable. He likes boasting.”

Brainstorm came back over a nearby lab bench with a crash. “Are you talking about me? I do like boasting.”

“Just telling Percy here how much you like to talk about him,” Nautica said. Her field had some aggressively cheerful spikes in it. Brainstorm’s blocking device continued to function.

“Ha, ha, ha. You want to test weapons?” He waggled a blaster at her. “I made a gun that shoots ennui.”

“Why, and also no.” She pushed away from the table. “I’m going to get back before anyone comes looking for me. You two have fun.” She glanced at Perceptor, sliding her visor back up. “Do you have fun, the way you are?”

Perceptor considered this. “I have things that satisfy the most possible parameters of any given situation.”

“Do that,” she ordered him, and waved on her way out.

“She’s great,” Brainstorm said, and Perceptor had no idea if he meant it. “Check out my gun." 

Chapter Text

Brainstorm’s attempts to explain his ennui gun were far from clear. Or rather, his attempts to explain the workings of the gun were clear—his attempts to explain the point of it were rather less so. Perceptor’s continued questions eventually had him grumbling and picking at the mechanisms of the weapon.

“Maybe I just wanted to? Maybe I just like making things sometimes. Maybe it was fun.”

“Was it?” Perceptor asked. 

“It was, actually, thank you so much for asking.” His ailerons twitched. 

Perceptor considered. “Will you shoot it at me?”

Brainstorm lost his grip on the gun momentarily. “No! Are you kidding me?”

“We don’t know if it will do anything,” Perceptor pointed out. 

“Look, even if I wanted to shoot you—which I don’t, thanks for assuming—I’m not suicidal. I’m a big scary Decepticon in the middle of an Autobot base, I’m pretty sure me shooting you would lead to my imminent, unwanted death. If not from your side, then from Megatron’s punishment from screwing up his latest grand plan.”

“What grand plan?”

“Whatever he’s got in his processor for making peace, I avoid knowing more about Megatron than is good for my health.” Brainstorm waved the hand that wasn’t holding the gun. 

“I can lock the door.” The unknown result of this potential experiment was taking up too much processing power. “The data on its effects on my processing centers could be extremely useful."

Brainstorm dropped his head to thunk against a table, muttering, “Ah, Primus.” Perceptor waited for him to finish whatever crisis he needed to go through. “You’re going to do this yourself if I don’t, aren’t you.”

“Yes.” It was useful that Brainstorm still remembered him well enough to form predictive models. 

“Fine. Why not, lock the door, let’s get this over with.”

Perceptor keyed in the codes to set the double blast layers on the door, with an extra warning appended to the outside that the rest of the lab would understand to mean volatile experiment in progress, do not enter. When that was done, he turned back to find Brainstorm setting up the screen and cord that had been abandoned since their last foray into Perceptor’s brain coding several megacycles ago. 

“Alright,” Brainstorm said firmly. “Back in the fun chair, if we’re doing this I want data the whole time.”

“Very well.” Perceptor climbed up on the table to sit on the box again while Brainstorm double and triple-checked the ennui gun. The diagnostic cord slotted smoothly back into his wrist port, code visibly unfurling, new sectors lighting up as his brain filed away hypotheses and prepared inquiries. He retrieved a datapad from his subspace and activated the voice recording function. “Ennui gun, subject: Perceptor, first test.”

”Only test,” Brainstorm interjected. “Because I hypothesize it will have absolutely no effect and you’re not getting me to do this twice.”

“I propose a counter-hypothesis that it will have an as-yet-unobserved effect on my standard processes.” Perceptor set the datapad to the side. "You may fire when ready.”

Brainstorm took position—holding the weapon in one hand, terrible technique—and fired.

The experience was boring. There was nothing to be gained from this. No worthwhile data. No point sending his code anywhere—Perceptor tucked it all back in his brain to save energy. Not that he had anything he needed to save the energy for. Brainstorm was right in front of him, talking about something that somehow failed to be interesting. Perceptor shut off his optics. With nothing happening, it would be most efficient to go into power save mode. He had no projects. He was useless with nothing to do. His plan had succeeded and Brainstorm was here, but he couldn’t remember why that was important. Nothing was important.

A jolt ran through his systems, flooding his joints with hydraulic pressure and sending his senses up into high alert. There was a connection in his main port—there was code running over his own—why did that matter, he couldn’t remember why that mattered, something was working in his brain to make immediate sensory processes run faster and send all other projects pushed to the wayside.

“Percy, perce, c’mon, I know you’re in there, move something—“

Brainstorm. Brainstorm was diving through his code, picking and jolting directly at his sensory clusters—

ooh shiny thread on laws of thermodynamics but not useful right now my stance is fine you snob why am i at the top of your processing tree you’re going to hate me for this please wake up you’re an idiot i’m an idiot what have i done

“I’m afraid,” Perceptor said, vocalizer shaking, and Brainstorm jolted up, the extra code in their currently-shared processes flying into a swirl.

afraid what do you MEAN you’re afraid I’M afraid

“Percy, stay with me, keep talking, what happened?”

“I’m afraid,” Perceptor said again, marveling at the situation, the wash of extra neuronics through his systems increasing his speed and reaction times and delivering him ever more information about how he was still on the box and Brainstorm had climbed up on the table with him, the gun discarded so Brainstorm’s wrist access could plug directly into the port closest to Perceptor’s brain. “I’m afraid.” And now the neuronics were arranging into another pattern, conjuring up codes that ran in alignment with the cascading inquiry branch unfolding now that he was making sense of the situation, he was excited, he was curious. Brainstorm was following it along, his connection to Perceptor’s brain letting him duck into the active processes and pull even more neurons into alignment, his own excitement feeding into Perceptor’s. The process was starting to build up demands for a physical reaction, the neuronic impulses piling signals into key joints demanding release, and so Perceptor reached out and grabbed onto Brainstorm’s arms, seeking some sort of purchase and grounding for this new electric feeling through him, there was so much of it to process and nowhere for it to go—

A sharp shape moving too fast to track whizzed through the few astroinches between their faceplates, causing a clang against the far wall. 

“Alright, I’m only gonna say this once: step away from the doc.” The voice, cold and sharp, made Brainstorm freeze up and start tearing his code in two, half of it pulling down the connecting cord and the other half latching onto every contact point in Perceptor’s processing functions that it could reach, and Perceptor latched back even as he shoved all the emotions somewhere out of the way to remember why that voice was here —right.

“Jazz,” Perceptor said, turning his head to see Jazz staring down the two of them with throwing stars in his hands, looking extremely dangerous. “You are here fifteen cycles earlier than predicted.”

“Looks like I got here just in time, actually.” There was a soft whisper of metal on metal as he moved another throwing star into position. Perceptor began rapidly unlatching his code from the remnants of Brainstorm’s, bracing for disconnect. 

Brainstorm moved to put himself between Perceptor and Jazz instead of doing something helpful like helping with the disconnect process. “Percy, you know this bot?”

“This is Jazz. He is a member of the Elite Guard.”

“Which means I know a lot of ways to take you out, ‘Con, and you’re not doing yourself any favors—”

“Were you just— hiding in here? That’s really creepy, actually—“

“Brainstorm, your cord,” Perceptor said, releasing his grip on Brainstorm’s arms to reach up and pluck at the connection. “Jazz, please stop threatening my lab partner.”

Jazz lowered the throwing stars by a very slight degree, watching Brainstorm carefully tug his pug out of Perceptor’s port and hastily spool it back into his wrist. Perceptor began disconnecting his own cord from the screen. 

“As I have told you, repeatedly, this is not a live fire lab and I would thank you to not throw things around,” Perceptor said, shunting away the logical inconsistency of his own recent weapons test as a more complicated situation than that. 

“You were the one who wanted me here, doc.” Jazz tucked the throwing stars away in a move so smooth it was almost invisible. “Least, that was the word from Cliffjumper. He said you had some new weapon for me.”

“Yes. Brainstorm, would you care to explain your invention?”

Brainstorm looked up from where he had turned away from the conversation, bent over the gun on the table. “I wouldn’t, actually.”

That was an anomaly. Brainstorm loved explaining things. 

“It’s broken,” Brainstorm added, bending back over it. “Some of the parts got crushed when it hit the floor, it won’t work for a while.”

Brainstorm hated damage to his inventions. “Understood. My apologies for having deceived you, Jazz.”

“It’s cool.” Jazz leaned back against the wall and folded his arms. “Wanted to talk to you anyways.”

“Convenient. I wish to talk to you as well.” 

Perceptor waited for Jazz to speak first. Brainstorm continued to tinker.

“Alone,” Jazz said, field flaring with a hint of sharp impatience.

“If it is related to the current project—“

“Don’t worry about it,” Brainstorm blurted, standing up. He was taller than Jazz, who was not a small mech. “I need to go see a mech about a brain anyways.”

“Very well. Will you need any assistance?”

“Nope, I’m good, totally good, all good here, it’s—“ His wings stilled as he prodded at the door panel and it beeped at him instead of cooperating. “—still…locked?” He turned back to look directly at Jazz for the first time. “How’d you get in here?”

“Cyberninja secret,” Jazz said.

Perceptor climbed off the table to let him out, noticing that the lab technicians looked up and then looked away, collectively, very quickly. Sprocket’s station was still empty.

“Travel safe,” said Perceptor.

“Oh, you know me,” said Brainstorm, which was not any kind of agreement, but the door closed behind him anyways. Perceptor turned back to Jazz, ran a brief predictive model, and pulled up the files consulted during his conversation with Optimus with the assumption this conversation would be similar. 

What Jazz came out with instead was the question, “He hurting you?”

Perceptor was immediately forced to discard all the recently-pulled files to free up processing power. “Of course not."

“You didn’t exactly look happ—look like you agreed to let him into your code, there.” 

“I had not,” Perceptor admitted. “But it was necessary. An experiment had an unforeseen consequence.” He gestured at the screen, and caught sight of the datapad on the table next to it. Audio data. He went to retrieve it. “We worked together for a long time. I trust him.”

“Doc, he’s a con. They’ve been trying to kill us all since before the Great War. They already almost succeeded.” There was a flare of grief in his field, brief and quickly contained. “In the dojo, we talk a lot about not letting fear overwhelm you, but not shutting it down, either. Fear tells you when you’re in danger. You don’t get those messages from the universe anymore.”

Perceptor picked up the pad and turned off the recording function, flipping through the playback to see what he’d missed while he processor had disengaged. “Your concern is noted, Jazz. However, I will point out that the primary effect of the experiment we performed was the disengagement of my motivator drives. My processor is heavily organized around these drives and began to initiate shutdown protocols. Brainstorm prevented this.” He found the time stamp that matched up with the firing of the gun and started playing it back.

Jazz had his mouth open to respond, but closed it again as Brainstorm’s voice started coming through the speakers.

”Alright, Perceptor, what’re you feeling?” There was a pause of several nanocycles. ”Perce? Missing important data here, Tell me what you’re thinking.”

A briefer pause.

”Percy, c’mon, I can see you making decisions—what was that. No, stop deleting that, what are you—Perceptor? Percy. PERCY.”

A clatter that Perceptor matched to an object of roughly 50 astrograms, most likely the gun, hitting the floor.

”Stop it, stop that, get BACK here, what are you doing—no, no, don’t shut down, stop that RIGHT NOW. I just got you back, Percy, don’t do this to me.”

Brainstorm’s voice on the recording got louder as he got closer to the datapad. ”Frag. Frag, fraggit.”

This pause lasted precisely four nanocycles. ”Well. Not that you needed another reason to hate me…”

Several soft clicks that echoed in the latches on Perceptor’s neck plate.

”Alright, nice and professional, just another debugging. Why are you locking everything down, you silly—oh, yeah, that would do it. Definitely not doing this again, we’ll have to find another way. Percy, Perce, c’mon, I know you’re in there, move—“

The timestamp matched up with where his sensory files began again. Perceptor shut the datapad off. He was feeling an echo of that earlier fear, the synapses activated by Brainstorm’s code merge firing with ghost signals. 

Jazz’s field was a mosaic of emotions. Grief washed up and overwhelmed them all for a moment, and when it cleared, Perceptor couldn’t see what they had been. 

“Alright. Guess you’re on top of the situation.” Jazz pulled himself away from the wall with a shake of his plating. “Sorry I interrupted.”

“Apology accepted. Wheeljack wanted me to contact you. There has been a shipment of Allspark shards from Earth.” Perceptor paused. “Do you know why the Allspark would be attached to a specimen of Earth flora?”

Surprise and then hope bloomed in Jazz’s field like a supernova. “Earth flora?”

“Yes. A small organic specimen called a zinnia.”

“Maybe it’s just gotten close to nature,” Jazz said, already halfway out the door.

Perceptor did not bother responding, since Jazz was too far away to hear. He saved a copy of the audio recording from the datapad and returned his attention to the quantum generator. 

Brainstorm had still not returned by the time the wall fell in. 

Perceptor glanced up from his work on the quantum weapon—it was reaching a state where he was fairly confident he could assemble a disruptor field with a rotating frequency that would work on any iterations the Quintessons deployed—at the crash of three mechs colliding with the floor. Perhaps four? Four voices arguing, anyways. He climbed on a lab bench for a better look. 

“—someone who could help. This isn’t help!”

“Look, Metroplex is ancient, he’s trying and I’m trying but there are still going to be—“

“—knew you useless incompetents would only slow me down—“

“And you can shut up, headcase, it’s your fault we’re being chased in the first—“

“Guys, please stop fighting, we—oh, hi Perceptor.”

The tangle of frames trying to get off the floor cut off in the middle of their argument. One of them—a red femme jet he didn’t know—slipped and went crashing back down again. 

“Ow!” a shrill voice complained. 

“Hello, Bulkhead,” Perceptor said. The large green mech seemed to have been most successful in extracting himself from the others. He could see Bumblebee wriggling out from under one of the jet’s wings, annoyed. The source of the fourth voice was not presently visible. “Do you require assistance?”

“No!” “Yes, actually—“ 

The red jet and the fourth voice spoke simultaneously. A scowl crossed the jet’s painted faceplate, and she twisted around to grab something off the floor. “Stop it or I’m putting you back in the passage and telling Metroplex to close the wall.”

“Oh, please,” said the something, which Perceptor could now see was a head. “You’d be lost without me.”

“Wanna bet?” Bumblebee muttered. 

“Is that Starscream?” Perceptor asked, curious despite himself. 

“No,” Bumblebee and Bulkhead said together. Bulkhead got to his stabilizers and came towards Perceptor, blocking his view of the other three. Two? Two and a head. “We just, uh, brought one of Professor Sumdac’s bots back from Earth. Starscream? That would be weird.”

Perceptor chose not to engage with the obvious lie. “What brings you here?”

“Uh…” Bulkhead considered that. “Spelunking?”

Perceptor could not match that word to any in his database. “Clarify?”

“Wait,” the jet said, coming up from behind Bulkhead. That was indeed Starscream’s head she was carrying—Perceptor could recognize it, up close. “You’re Perceptor? Nautica told me she met you. Maybe Metroplex was right.”

“You are in communication with Metroplex?” Perceptor pulled up a datapad and checked his messages. “I was not aware the Camien delegation included a cityspeaker.”

“Oh, please, you’re asking him? He’s barely better than a drone,” Starscream’s head sneered. The cityspeaker turned around and pulled her arm back in preparation to throw him without a single flicker in her field. “I’ll be quiet! I’ll be quiet!”

“Heh,” Bumblebee snickered. “You’re a lot easier to handle this way.”

“Come over here so I can bite you,” the head growled. 

”As I was saying,” the cityspeaker said firmly, turning back to Perceptor. “Maybe Metroplex was right to bring us here, and you can help us. I’m Windblade."

“Hello, Windblade. With what do you require help?” Now that the argument had stalled, Bulkhead had drifted away from the conversation to look at the boards full of quantum equations. 

“We’re trying to get to the old parts of the city,” Bumblebee said. “And…we’re trying to do it fast.” He looked nervously at the door. “No one’s coming in here, right?”

Perceptor could reactivate the locking codes from where he was, as long as he wasn’t setting the blast doors. “They should not.”

“We need to know about the history of the Magnus Hammer,” Windblade explained. “And where flight frames used to live.”

“I am unaware of much of the Hammer’s history,” Perceptor admitted. “It was invented long before my time, there are no blueprints remaining, and our Ministry’s study of it has been limited. Ultra Magnus argued that it was too important of a defense component to permit intensive study.” He pulled up the files from Optimus’s recent tests. “We do not know, for example, its upper stress limits or the majority of its interior components. The housing is superdense and does not allow close examination. I can provide you with a copy of data from our most recent examinations.”

“Where you did what, take image captures of it?” Starscream grumbled. “You Autobots refuse to practice true rigor in your method.”

“You had seventeen major ethics violations in your last paper published within the Autobot Commonwealth,” Perceptor reminded him. “Eight of them severely compromised your results and conclusions.”

“How dare you!” Starscream snapped. Windblade put a hand over his vocalizer output before he went any further. 

“The data would be great, thank you. And flight frames?”

“Most flight frame housing has been repurposed since the end of the war. Ultra Magnus embarked on a major revitalization and rebuilding campaign.” Perceptor found an old map in his long-term quartz storage, one of the first things he had saved after freeing up space from deleting his emotions, and set it on a visible screen to mark off areas. “These were the major areas within Metroplex that served flight frames.”

“Uh,” Bumblebee said, peering at the map. “Most of that is outside Metroplex.”

Perceptor highlighted the borders of Metroplex that had been established after the Titan's last transformation. “No, it is not.”

”Um," Bumblebee's vocalizer squeaked. “Big?”

“Hey, are you working on spacebridges?” Bulkhead asked. He was still studying the equations.

Perceptor copied the map onto the datapad to hand to Windblade. “No. Why do you ask?” 

“Well, you’ve got the math for it.” Bulkhead pointed at one of the equations Brainstorm had written earlier. “That’s the Jump Cannon hierarchy, the one that maps out where all the stars are in relation to each other in quantum space. How space bridges bridge instead of crashing into anything."

“Really,” Perceptor said, and didn’t have time to ask further. 

“Oh, this is perfect,” Windblade said, studying the map. “Thank you so much, Perceptor, please don’t tell anyone we were here.”

“So you know where we’re going now?” Bumblebee said. “Please tell me there’s no more wall crawling.”

“I think I do. And sorry, can’t.”

He groaned. Perceptor was still curious—still capable of being curious, and wasn’t that novel, that those synapses that had been silent for centuries were once again active, making him want to poke and prod and question. But the four explorers were already back on their way into the wall, Windblade waving right before it slid shut again.

Chapter Text

Brainstorm didn’t return for the next megacycle. Perceptor attempted to check in with the current events feed to see if there had been any reports of him getting into trouble, but the only thing Decepticon-related anyone on there wanted to talk about was the abrupt return and even more abrupt vanishing of Starscream. The other main topic of conversation taking up most of the discussion was an apparent bid by the leader of the Camiens for the position of Magnus, citing ‘a failure of leadership caused by a degrading spiritual life.’ Thankfully, that was Wheeljack’s problem as official Council liaison, at least until he remembered that this century was supposed to be Perceptor’s turn. It looked like he hadn’t yet. At least having the Council distracted would delay any demand for results from the Allspark project and let it keep for a few decacycles. 

No one had gotten frustrated enough with Perceptor's closed Decepticon reporting hotline to bring their complaints to his regular inbox, and Brainstorm had neglected to provide his new comms code before departure. Perceptor worked on the quantum weapon countermeasures until his efficiency ratings had begun to drop below 50%, and then set himself for a recharge cycle on the emergency berth, with an alert built in to wake him if Brainstorm returned. Or if someone fell through a wall again. 

Thankfully, he cycled up to the first one.

“Good, you’re still here.”

“I am,” Perceptor agreed, standing up from the berth. Brainstorm's field blocker was still on, but if Perceptor had to guess—and he was curious if he would be right, the curiosity still hadn’t gone away, how novel—Brainstorm was pleased with himself.

“First, I just want to announce that I’m brilliant and I solved your problem, so you were right to come to me for help, but I was more right, actually, because I’m a genius.” He had his briefcase chained to his wrist again, and he settled himself on the closest lab bench to Perceptor to empty it out. There were several data chips. “These are for you, by the way, Chromedome said before you load anything else you’ll have to start clearing about a galactabyte out of long-term storage or you could fry your processor.”

A frisson of fear ran down some of his circuits at the idea of the damage that could result from an overloaded processor, and Perceptor catalogued it the same way he might an especially useful class of results. “What will I be loading?”

“Copies of the diode patterns that stimulate emotional responses, along with circumstantial activation data.” Brainstorm’s ailerons twitched once. “I figured it out when, uh, I was in your head. The pathways are all still there, they just need to be reactivated.”

“How did you obtain these patterns?” Perceptor asked, beginning to partition data for download. He was even more curious now, and his muscle fibers were tingling with excitement, lending speed to his processes. He understood what Brainstorm meant about the pathways, with how active just these three were. It was a heady rush. He could not be sure yet if he enjoyed it. 

“Chromedome’s good with brains and his conjunx has a crazy amount of storage,” Brainstorm said, flicking one wing. 

“If this works, I am going to demand a full report from you,” Perceptor warned him, beginning to dump archival records of completed astrolysis experiments onto one of the drives. 

“Sure, sure.” Brainstorm wandered away to look at his progress with the quantum weapon. “Oh, hey! You’re almost done!”

“I would appreciate your input on the final results. Quantum is your area of expertise, after all.” Perceptor finished the astrolysis report, freeing a small but useful chunk of his long-term quartz storage. The next files marked low-priority were some designs for anti-Decepticon weaponry, and he considered whether it would be more efficient to transfer them or delete them directly. Logically, they were closer to peace than they had been for countless stellar cycles. The Camien Mistress of Flames was hardly going to renounce the Decepticons even if she did succeed in her leadership bid. Optimus Prime was dragging Autobot society into this alliance with a determination that seemed like it might actually hold. Then there was whatever Windblade, Bumblebee, Bulkhead, and Starscream were up to involving flight frame housing. 

Besides. The deployment of any of them would likely result in harm to Brainstorm’s well-being. Perceptor had only retained them this long for fulfilling the requests of Ultra Magnus and the Council. He was not excited to build more weapons, and he was no longer curious about war.

Still, science demanded records. The current utility of evidence outweighed the improbability of theft and deployment. Perceptor dumped the files onto one of the petabyte drives and tucked it into his subspace, instead of leaving it with the others. 

“All fields are my field of expertise if you give me long enough,” Brainstorm said, blithely, unaware of Perceptor’s internal calculations. “But I am pretty good at quantum, it’s true.”

“You have reminded me,” Perceptor said, thoughts fuelled by the curiosity subroutines trickling up through his main cortex. “Why did you never provide Decepticon command with spacebridge technology?”

Brainstorm froze halfway through arranging his wings to best get a closer look at the quantum weapon, and then let out a laugh that did not sound amused. “Well! You know. Reverse engineering’s more your thing than mine, Perce.”

“And yet quantum tunneling has been one of your primary interests since before we met. Well before you were exiled and joined the Decepticons.” Perceptor continued dumping data, even as he was caught up in studying Brainstorm. “You have been using spacebridge equations in our analysis of the Quintesson’s quantum weapon. The Decepticons have been attempting to gain access to the spacebridge network for over four million stellar cycles. They would have highly valued any research you brought them.”

“Well.” Brainstorm’s wings relaxed slowly back into place and he turned around to face Perceptor. “Tell you what. You get through the manual reactivation Ratchet’s going to have to do to your brain to put most of that in and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“And if I asked you to tell me now?” Perceptor wanted to know what Brainstorm was feeling. He was curious, so curious it felt like it was going to consume all of the processing space he had just freed. 

“I need to get data on a question first.”

Perceptor considered this, feeding it to the raging curiosity subroutines. They subsided briefly, and then started to maddeningly obsess over the implications of that statement. So many possibilities, and he wanted to know all of them. It was giving him a headache. It was wonderful. “Very well.” He set the last drive aside. “I have cleared a galactabyte of data. Have you already confirmed with Ratchet?”

“Yep. He’s uh…got a lot going on right now. I figure we’d better get you in and out.” Brainstorm swept the drives into one of his spare briefcases, keying in the lock code where Perceptor could see it and setting it on a lab bench. He swept one hand at the door. “After you."

Ratchet was in the Elite Guard’s empty medbay, pacing restlessly back and forth, field spiking aggressively when he saw Brainstorm and Perceptor.

“Look, whatever nonsense you two are up two, I want no part of it!”

Perceptor looked at Brainstorm. “You lied about confirming this with him.”

Brainstorm’s wings shifted. “Was it a lie or was it a not yet kind of thing, really?” He was still facing Ratchet. “Look, we just need a hand with some nice, simple brain surgery.”

“If you are too busy for it, I will go clear some time with First Aid,” Perceptor said, already pulling up the other medic’s contact information. 

“Busy? Busy?” Ratchet snorted. “How could I be busy when no one will tell me anything? First Optimus charges ahead with his damnfool plan and starts getting all buddy-buddy with Megatron—“ As he talked he strode over to a medical berth and started prepping it. Brainstorm gave Perceptor a thumbs-up and began slowly moving closer. “—and then those Camiens come in with the Mistress of Flame complaining that things aren’t sacred enough for her, and then Bulkhead and Bumblebee go missing and I’m the only one who seems to notice, but that doesn’t matter because I’m just an old, crochety has-been who doesn’t get to know what’s going on!” He thumped a screen into place. “Sit down!” 

Perceptor sat, and obligingly opened a cable port for the medical hookup’s monitoring systems. Ratchet swiped through his code, muttering.

“Well, it doesn’t look any worse than the last time First Aid sent me the scans…you know, this was a real dumbaft thing you did, Perceptor.”

“It was, at the time, the best option,” Perceptor said.

”Sure,” Ratchet said, irony thick in his field. “I need to get a sedative calibrated for your sparktype. Wait here. And you—” He pointed at Brainstorm, whose wings shot up. “Don’t touch anything. And don’t take anything.”

“Who, me?” said Brainstorm, putting one hand on his chest. A drive fell out of a compartment on his wrist. “Okay, that looked bad, but I swear I already had that.“

Ratchet sighed, and headed towards the other end of the medbay. Perceptor watched Brainstorm place the drive back into his wrist compartment. 

“What is on the drive?”

Brainstorm shrugged. “Eh. Schematics for an old project. Not important anymore.”

Perceptor considered his mental state, and realized that he was beginning to compile scenarios of all the things that could go wrong with an unfamiliar urgency stemming from a clenching in his joints.

It seemed he was afraid again. An inconvenient emotion to have back.

“Please tell me about it. My processing trees are preoccupied with dangerous scenarios.”

Brainstorm hesitated, then moved closer to the medical berth. “Uh. Sure.”

He started talking, wings drifting up and down and hands fiddling with his briefcase handles as he outlined a shrink ray he had been “—tossing around for a while, but couldn’t quite get anything urgent enough to let me focus on finishing it.” His science, what he had started to determine before getting distracted, seemed sound. Perceptor watched him speak, letting it take up his processing power until Ratchet came back.

“Alright, this should be good.” The medic wiggled a chip at Perceptor. “Standard neuralgesic and spark depressant, should take you down enough that I can get in there and start reshaping pathways without your consciousness making too many demands of them.”

“I’ve got the code here.” Brainstorm held up his briefcase. “Checked over by a mnemosurgeon.”

Ratchet’s field expressed skepticism. “Now, are you sure about—“

“One I trust,” Brainstorm said, with a rock-solid confidence Perceptor rarely heard from him about other mechs. 

“Alright, alright. Hand it over.”

Perceptor’s subconscious processing presented him with a list of all the new and terrible scenarios it had produced without his awareness while Brainstorm had been talking, beginning with never waking up again—entirely illogical but extremely, unfortunately compelling to the fear subroutine. It pushed up into his processing when Brainstorm turned to leave, causing the spark monitor to let out an alarming chirp.

“Wait,” he said, and Brainstorm stopped immediately, looking back over his shoulder with wide optics. “Please stay?” It took Perceptor a moment to remember he should ask Ratchet. “If that’s acceptable.”

“…He can stay till you go under,” Ratchet allowed. “At least, I’ll let him.”

“No, I mean, yeah, I can.” Brainstorm pulled a stool up to the open side of the berth as Perceptor locked his joints in a sitting position and waited for Ratchet to apply the chip. Even more illogically, the subroutines were distracted from calculating things to fear in the surgery by calculating the likelihood Brainstorm was going to leave again after this. That was somewhat dispatched by concentrating on his presence here, now.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Perceptor said to him, opening another port for Ratchet to insert the chip.

“You can keep talking,” Ratchet said, monitoring the screens. “It’ll let me see when the code kicks in.”

“Oh, you know. Who would I be to deny you my presence?” Brainstorm preened, slightly. “You couldn’t have done it without me, after all.”

“Incorrect,” Perceptor said, feeling his spark pulse slower and sub-processes begin to cycle down. “I could have sought other options easily.” He couldn’t remember anymore why he hadn’t been going to say that. His optics were cycling down now. “Nothing else would let me see you again so quickly, so there is some…”

He never did finish the sentence. 

Perceptor’s processes came back online extremely slowly. He was conscious of his sub-routines running first, primary processing rebalancing as his brain adjusted to the new alignment of his neuron networks. It seemed he had lost several progressions that had been crunching in now-occupied secondary processing, but he could probably reconstruct those on another computer. At least, he hoped he could.

How strange. Hope. Another thing he hadn’t felt for over two million stellar cycles. 

Perceptor made sure he had enough space cleared for visual processing before powering up his optics. How odd. There was a scorch mark on the wall across from his berth that hadn’t been there when the procedure had started.

“Brainstorm, did you—“ He turned to the side to ask if Brainstorm had been doing anything to cause scorch marks, only to be confronted with empty space between his berth and the next. His primary processing seized on Prowl’s frame, in living saturation, spread out on the other berth and surrounded with a truly excessive amount of monitors. Worry over Brainstorm’s absence was deferred to secondary processing, which now had not only fear but frustration and that obnoxious longing to devote to the problem of being alone. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake!” First Aid pulled away from the nest of wires hooked up to Prowl’s torso to come over and plug into the medical reader.

“Wasn’t he dead?” Perceptor said, instead of agreeing, because his being awake was obvious and the curiosity was getting to him.

“According to the scans I have of his autopsy, yes,” First Aid said, delight creasing in her field. “You missed a lot. Ratchet’s banned me from doing any experiments on him. How do you feel?”

“Confused,” Perceptor said, cataloguing the impulses flashing along his circuits as he hadn’t had to do in centuries. “And worried. Where’s Brainstorm?”

“No idea. Hang on while I check your spark.”

For lack of any other answers, Perceptor continued looking around the medbay. There only seemed to be the one new scorch mark, but the unoccupied berth closest to the door was hanging off one hinge. Another berth was being occupied by Starscream, head reattached and optics off. The med-bay was otherwise empty.

“Where is Ratchet?” Perceptor began rotating his joints, checking his range of movement in his impatience to be up and away. Fortunately, First Aid was happy to chat.

“Checking over Optimus’s reformatting. He wanted to do it in here, but Megatron is refusing to leave him alone, and Ratchet refused to have anyone else in the medbay with you and Prowl and Starscream here, so they compromised by doing it in the old Allspark room.”

“The old—reformatting?” Perceptor was baffled. Checking his chronometer only made him more baffled. “I’ve been unconscious for five cycles. What did I miss?”

The answer to that question was, clearly, ‘a lot.’ 

Bulkhead, Bumblebee, Windblade, and Starscream had found what they were looking for, which had turned out to be proof from below Metroplex’s spark chamber that flight frames had lived on Cybertron for millennia before the Protectobots had risen to power. They had also turned up some fascinating evidence about the ancient Solus Prime, founder of Caminus and the creator of the Magnus Hammer. 

Which, apparently, had all kinds of powers linked directly to the Allspark that hadn’t been active until the artifact had been reassembled. That repair was courtesy of Jazz and the Earthen technoform, who had locked the scientists out of the Allspark lab long enough to do something —they were refusing to explain what, to the Ministry’s collective despair—to draw Prowl’s spark back into his frame. They had also reintegrated all of the retrieved Allspark fragments by the time Optimus had used the Hammer to break down the door, with assistance from Megatron. 

From there, despite having multiple witnesses, the story became extremely jumbled. The undisputed end result, however, was the Allspark Matrix integrating itself into Optimus’s spark chamber and reformatting his frame. Megatron had since refused to leave Optimus’s side, which was less concerning than it might have been considering that Metroplex had woken up enough to speak for the first time in centuries and politely but firmly insisted on a ceasefire.

Perceptor’s newly activated emotional circuits had gotten a thorough activation before First Aid had even completed this much of her recitation. 

The Camien Mistress of Flame had apparently withdrawn her call of no confidence and bid for Magnus in light of recent developments. Perceptor honestly couldn’t blame her. That was the most recent information First Aid had, since that news had come in right before Ratchet had thrown all visitors out of the med bay and put her in charge while he went to check on Optimus. 

“But the good news for you is that your code looks clean, everything’s reintegrated beautifully, so you can leave whenever you like,” First Aid wrapped up cheerfully. “Just let me get you some med grade because your processor’s energy demands from being out are probably going to hit soon.”

“Thank you,” Perceptor said, already unhooking from the med berth and preparing to depart. 

Logic dictated that he wait for the med grade. Urgency that he hadn’t felt in far too long had him out the door, looking for Brainstorm. He had a hypothesis to confirm. 

Perceptor wished he had access to whatever tunnels Windblade had been sneaking through. The halls of Metroplex were even more crowded than usual, mechs rushing back and forth like iron filings skittering on a negatively charged surface. Perceptor was small enough that he could duck between even most of the Autobots, but newly-returned flinch responses were proving irritating. 

Eventually the irritation grew strong enough to override the instinctual fear, and he stopped flinching and could just shove his way through to his lab.

The main lab was—unexpectedly and blessedly—abandoned. It seemed like all the scientists had decided they had somewhere much more interesting to be. Operating purely on a hunch—a spark feeling—Perceptor went straight for the sub-lab.

Brainstorm was inside, bent over a subspace generator, his back to the door. He had removed the EM field blocker and Perceptor could see what he was feeling now now, a faint haze of distraction and business. The lab was so clean it sent a twitch of wrongness up his spinal strut. The only things still out were all…the old things. All Perceptor’s things. 

“Brainstorm,” he said, shoving his reaction to that back into secondary processing as an unnecessary distraction. “What are you doing?”

Brainstorm’s wings mantled as he straightened up, surprised and nervous. “Oh, uh, Perceptor! You’re done…early.”

“That’s not an answer,” Perceptor said. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. And locked it, for good measure, because he was starting to get nervous. “What are you doing?”

“Just getting my stuff together.” Brainstorm bent over again, turning his face away from Perceptor. He was still nervous, but it smoothed out quickly. “I wrapped up the quantum thing because, you know, genius, and I figured you’d want me out of here ASAP.”

“What? No, why would I want that?” Perceptor shook his head, trying to use the physical gesture to ground his twisting processes. “I don’t want you to leave. I want—“ It was so much harder to say things now that he could be afraid of them, embarrassed at how much of himself was going into them. “Brainstorm, I never wanted you to leave. I want you to stay. You staying is the only…” He reset his vocalizer, striving for accuracy as something to hold on to in the rush of all his emotions. “The main reason I wanted my emotions back.” 

Brainstorm’s field sparked with panic, and his laugh came out staticy. “No, I—yeah, I got that, but the thing is I’m pretty sure as soon as everything takes a minute to settle into place you’re going to hate me, and I really don’t want to have to stand here long enough for that to hit me in the face, I’m just going to—“

Perceptor marched over, deliberately bringing his field into contact with another mech for the first time in two million four thousand stellar cycles and noticing the way Brainstorm yanked his wings in like he was shrinking from a vacuum. He climbed on top of the subspace generator to gain just that much more height, so he only had to look up from the level of Brainstorm’s shoulder. “Stop. I don’t hate you, Brainstorm.”

“You broke your brain because of me, Perce.” His field was pulled in along with his wings, but where it brushed Perceptor’s it was sad and angry and longing, and the hypothesis was accumulating more data any minute. “That’s not…you can get angry now, you should be able to get angry at that. At me.”

“I’m only angry at you because you’re not paying attention,” Perceptor snapped, and had to reel in his anger subroutines before they dictated any more of his actions. And then he had to fight down a wave of embarrassment as he was abruptly treated to the memory of all the things he had said and done to Brainstorm’s face , he had told him, Perceptor had showed him and Brainstorm still didn’t get it. “I—“ He had to reset his vocalizer again, why did this have to be so hard, could he just delete some of his emotions again and come back— “Brainstorm. I love you.”

Brainstorm’s field spiked wildly in a surge of glee and panic and fifty other things that broke against Perceptor like a storm in themselves before dying down again. “No, you don’t.”

“I do.”

“No, I’m really sure you don’t, because all the feelings you’ve got right now are straight out of my head, Chromedome ran me through a bunch of scenarios to get the schematics for the subroutines right. You only think you love me because I love me and as soon as everything settles down you’re going to realize that I’m right and you should hate me, actually.”

Perceptor had to reset all of his logic centers to absorb that statement. By the time he had, Brainstorm was, unacceptably, turning away. Perceptor reached out to grab his faceplate and drag him back in. He wasn’t sure what he was feeling.

“You,” Perceptor said, “are undisputedly the single most brilliant mech I know.” Ah, that was despair, that emotion that was coming up. He let it wash out into his field, coming up against Brainstorm’s thick confusion. “I don’t understand how you can be so egregiously dense.”

“Um,” Brainstorm said, but Perceptor wasn’t done. 

“First, even if it worked that way—which I am fairly certain it does not, considering I also feel no urge to immediately run off and perform an impulsive, ill-advised experiment, nor the urge to befriend every friendly face I see—I am conclusively certain that none of my own emotional responses would lead me to hate you.”

Brainstorm talked even faster than usual, reaching up to very gently pull Perceptor’s hand away from his face. “Perce, you came to me because you wanted to undo deleting your emotions, you had to live with that for two million stellar cycles, if you only did that because of me you should hate me for it--“

“I missed you,” Perceptor said, steadfastly ignoring the rush of energon to his helm activated by that particular emotional subroutine. “You know this. I told you. I ‘broke my brain,’ as you put it, because I hoped it would help me get you back. Second, if we raise the question of who should hate whom, here, you have far more reason to hate me.” He pulled his hand out of Brainstorm’s grip to retrieve the chip of weapons designs in his subspace and set it in the engineer’s palm. “That chip contains every uncompleted design I have made for the express purpose of killing Decepticons. Killing your allies. Some of them could have killed you. Third,” Perceptor took a very deep breath and adjusted his EM viewer. His voice was starting to shake. He’d forgotten that side effect of being worked up. “I have been in love with you for over three million two hundred thousand stellar cycles.” 

Brainstorm wasn’t even looking at the chip. His optics were wide. “Percy…”

“And while feeling nothing else was preferable to missing you when there was a war-sized treaty in the way, I did not enjoy the situation and don’t wish to undergo it again, and if you leave I will have to spend a lot of time and effort trying…to follow you, and…” Perceptor reset his optics, trying unsuccessfully to clear the shadows from the corners of his vision. “…I honestly…don’t think I’m…” A medical warning finally made it past the overrides he had established a long time ago to block all alerts until and unless he was on the verge of shutting down. “…oh, dear. First Aid will…”

His overtaxed systems powered down before he had a chance to warn Brainstorm of his imminent collapse.

According to Perceptor’s chronometer, he had only lost twelve centicycles by the time he powered back on, med grade energon trickling into his lines from a medical splice. He could hear First Aid talking over his head.

“—and there he is! That’ll teach not you to run off before I can finish your outpatient instructions.” First Aid sounded far too cheerful for someone who had to know that Perceptor felt like all of his lines had gotten painfully compressed. 

“Brainstorm,” he said instead of responding, because First Aid would probably be reiterating this lecture for the next couple of centuries. 

“Here,” said Brainstorm, which was about when Perceptor’s sensors kicked back in and he realized he was flat on the ground, helm resting against Brainstorm’s leg. 

”Anyway,” First Aid said, still aggressively cheerful in a way that made Perceptor wince. “I’m giving you another cube of med grade and big and blue here is going to make sure you drink it or I’m siccing Ratchet on both of you.” She patted Perceptor’s leg. “Gotta go, I’ve got Ambulon watching the medbay and he gets nervous.”

“Thank you for your assistance,” Perceptor said, begrudgingly polite. He waited until he had heard the door hiss shut again before attempting to sit up. “That…did not go as I expected.”

“I kind of figured,” Brainstorm said. When Perceptor turned to look, his wings were ever-so-slightly vibrating. 

“Thank you for not leaving,” Perceptor said. With more power to run all of his processor, and with the emotional subroutines no longer clamoring for space, he could think more clearly about his actions. Right now, though, he could mostly only think about how poorly he had handled this. “I…apologize for my actions. If you want to leave, you are free to go. I will comply with your wishes.”

“Where, exactly, do you think I would go?” Brainstorm tipped his head to one side, studying him.

“You seemed very comfortable in the lab where I found you,” Perceptor said, truthfully, calling up the memory to run a comparison against an image of his lab prior to Brainstorm’s packing. The difference was stark. Brainstorm had made far more use of his old space. “If you would like a more favorable position within the Decepticons, you are still holding enough intelligence on Autobot weapons to gain you all the acclaim you could desire. Certainly all the acclaim you deserve and have avoided by not studying spacebridges.”

“Perceptor…”

“Or you could go to Caminus. Nautica seemed to enjoy working with you, and it is unlikely the Mistress of Flame will begin ceding to Autobot demands anytime soon.” Perceptor could have continued, but he was distracted by Brainstorm shoving a freshly unsealed cube of med grade in his face.

“Just drink this for a cent, Perce. And people say I talk too much.”

“You don’t,” Perceptor said, but he obediently took the cube and sipped from it.

“And while I’m giving you things, take this back too, it’s more of a problem than I need.” Brainstorm put the chip with the weapons schematics down on the floor between them. “And I mean, c’mon, if I wanted fame I’d have it by now. I’m happy without being the darling of Decepticon High Command. Strika’s a nightmare to get grant money out of.” Brainstorm ran an audible vent cycle. “That’s not important. You remember what you were saying before you lost power, right?”

Perceptor took another sip of med grade energon just in time for what was already in his lines to move up to his helm, slow and sluggishly distributing heat away from his working processor. “Yes.”

“You…” Brainstorm’s wings stilled, but his ailerons were flexing nervously. “You meant it?”

“I should not have threatened to follow you if you left to avoid me,” Perceptor admitted. 

“Not what I asked.”

“Yes, I meant it.” Perceptor took a sip of medgrade. “That. And everything else as well.” 

“Everything?” Brainstorm’s voice was higher than usual. 

Perceptor reached out his wrist, sliding open a port. “I can show you.”

Brainstorm paused, and then reciprocated, opening his own wrist port and extending a data cable. “Tradesies.”

They met somewhere in the middle this time, that strange constructed space of code that only existed in swapped cables, and Perceptor pulled up a series of memories, laying them out like arguments in a paper. The panic of the last few years of the war. The signing of the Tyrest accords, and Brainstorm’s abrupt disappearance, and the refusal of the entire Autobot High Command to give him answers. A series of, in hindsight, increasingly poor decisions made without sufficient recharge, born of frustration more than anything else.

“Wow,” Brainstorm said, without judgement. In the code space, he turned over the memory of one of Perceptor’s particularly…unwise sessions like it was an interesting weapon. “And I thought I was doing weird experiments.”

“Like?” Perceptor asked out loud, extending one careful coding thread of inquiry and sitting on the rest of his curiosity.

“Oh, you know,” said Brainstorm, transmitting a data packet that included a counter of failed experiment attempts currently at 10,235. “Tried to build a time machine.”

“Time travel isn’t possible,” Perceptor said automatically, digging into the data packet.

“Yet,” Brainstorm pointed out, glee bristling in his field and twining with Perceptor’s code. It was briefly infectious, until Perceptor got further into the data packet and found where Brainstorm had stuffed long lonely cycles into counts of quantum revolutions, and hidden bitterness at the side he had been forced to inside schematics for wiring briefcases together.

“I guess if we’re being honest about this, I missed you too.” Brainstorm’s vocalizer was on its lowest setting, but the words came through the connection loud and clear. As did his amusement a moment later when he picked up on Perceptor noting a confirmation of his hypothesis. nerd i can’t believe you built a hypothesis for my behavior

“You seem to have made better choices about it,” Perceptor said. what was i supposed to do you didn’t exactly make it easy to tell what you were feeling

“That’s only because I haven’t shared all my dirty secrets with you yet.” aren’t you supposed to know everything

“You don’t have to.” i have never once claimed that and you know it

“I know.” i do.

They sat there in silence together, picking at half realized plans and incomplete memories. Perceptor finally thought to latch onto the quantum weapon, curious what Brainstorm had been up to in his absence. It was the work of moments for Brainstorm to pass over the new schematics for the neutralizing ray. He had left it at a place where it would simply cancel out the effect of the pockets, as discussed with Nautica, but left a marker on an interesting idea for an adaptation that would effectively loop the quantum pockets back in on themselves creating an endless recursing sealed wormhole if they managed a null-arc radius terminating connection to this particular corner of spacetime

“That’s genius,” they spoke simultaneously, neither sure which of them had originated the thought, and Brainstorm’s optics were bright with the smile hidden behind his mask. 

“Look at us,” he said cheerfully, yanking up a very old memory of their first time working in a lab together. He had jumped in and finished Perceptor’s conclusions. It had been baffling to the point of being obnoxious at the time, but now Perceptor could regard it somewhat fondly. “Still simpatico.”

“We do good work together,” Perceptor agreed, face cables creaking after long disuse as he smiled. please stay please stay please stay

“Course we do.” only ever wanted to be asked

Perceptor leaned forward into Brainstorm’s space, shutting off his optics to rest his head against the jet’s chest.

you didn’t finish your med grade

i’ll get to it later less important

“I love you too, Percy,” Brainstorm said out loud. as long as we’re being honest

Perceptor added that piece of data to his compiled results. hypothesis requires rigorous testing for further data please repeat

Brainstorm’s chassis rattled with laughter. as long as you can manage to replicate the results

That would be easy enough. Though right now, illogical as it was, Perceptor was happy enough that it felt like he could manage anything.