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"Hot Rod! Come here," Kup called. "Time for presents!"
The kid's optics brightened as he whipped around towards the words. "Okay!" he yelled, and scrambled down the side of the playset.
Hot Rod's vents were whirring hard from running when he reached Kup. "Hi! Let's go, let's go," he said.
"Hi yourself, kid. Alright, we'll go." Kup greeted him with a pat and turned to find the elevator. Hot Rod's light footsteps rushed behind him. "Are you ready?"
Hot Rod squeaked. "Yes! Yes!"
---
When Kup lived on his own, his habsuite stayed fairly bare during festivals. When he had little creations running around, that changed. Now, decorations for the Festival of Stars lay strewn across most of Kup's surfaces at Hot Rod's request. He'd been unusually enamored by the festival's origins, rapt with attention while listening to Kup's stories. It wasn't every day the kid got the opportunity to imagine Cybertron without a sun.
"Really? It was night all the time?" Hot Rod had asked.
"Yeah, kid. That's why there's so many street lights and heaters all over the place. If we hadn't had them, you would've had to use your headlights. For everything." What a nightmare it had been when the power went out.
"But..." Hot Rod said. "We've got a star now."
"That's right."
Now, Kup captured an image of the little pile of presents before Hot Rod got into them.
Hot Rod's optics brightened again at the sight of the gifts. He darted forwards and grabbed the closest container - then he remembered himself. "Can I?" he asked sheepishly, looking back at Kup.
"Is your name on it?"
Hot Rod turned the thing in his hands until he found the label. "Yeah!"
"Then go ahead," Kup said.
The kid gasped and ripped at the latch. The sides of the container peeled themselves away and Hot Rod held a plain metal alt mode toy in his hands. "Woah," he said. "A racer!" Hot Rod interrupted Kup's chance to explain further by rolling the toy around on the floor, compensating for his undeveloped engine with his vocalizer.
Kup checked that he was recording in high fidelity.
After a minute, Hot Rod remembered that there were other gifts to open and returned to the pile, searching. "Oh," he said. He'd narrowed in on a large gift, which he picked up. "This has your name." He dropped the container, too large to maneuver out of the pile easily.
Kup fished out the gift himself - which Springer dropped off, last time he visited - and opened it to see... a smaller gift. He set the larger outer container aside and opened the second - again, to see a smaller container. Kup sighed. Hot Rod giggled, amusing himself by sitting in the largest box and watching Kup's plight. At the end of the ordeal, Kup unearthed a cygar. A nice one, too, in a bed of meshes.
"I'll tell you about these when you're older," Kup said, in answer to Hot Rod's questions.
---
Hot Rod opened several more alt mode toys before finding his own gift from Springer.
"Woah," Hot Rod said, pulling out a plush cyberhound. He poked the toy's eyes and nose, stroked its mesh plating, and shook it gently to watch its limbs flop. It certainly looked softer than Hot Rod's plush photovoltaicat, which left scratches behind on Hot Rod's nanites when he hugged her.
Hot Rod thought for a few moments. Then he declared, "Turbo."
Kup asked if that was the cyberhound's name, and Hot Rod said yes it was.
"He's fast," Hot Rod said, patting the plush gently on the head.
Well, Kup had come up with more unimaginative names in his day, so at least Hot Rod was doing better than that. "Is there anything else special about him?" Kup asked.
Hot Rod blinked. Kup could see the gears turning in his head. Hot Rod looked at Kup, looked at the turbohound held in his arms. "Turbo can fly," he said, immediately.
---
"Brrrt!" Hot Rod simulated a horn as he conducted a car crash. "Woop, woop, woop! Oh no!" The ambulance scooted off with another car placed on top.
Kup had gotten up from his chair to put away some of the empty containers. His return caught Hot Rod's attention. "Kup!"
"Hey, kid. Having fun?" Kup crouched at the edge of Hot Rod's scene.
"Yeah!"
"Can I join?"
"Yeah."
"Alright. Where am I in all of this? Is that me?" He plucked the now-empty ambulance off the floor and turned it over in his hands, examining it theatrically.
Hot Rod beeped. "No!"
Kup traded the ambulance for a race car. "What about this one?"
"No!" Hot Rod swept an off-road vehicle off the ground and held it up for Kup to see. "This is you!"
Indeed, Kup had chosen that one for its resemblance to himself. "Hmm, you're right," Kup said. "Thank you. That was my mistake."
Hot Rod smiled and drove a toy car into a partially eaten energon jelly.
---
In the end, Hot Rod sat on the floor with his car toys of different sizes and shapes. He'd frowned at his new paints, so the cars stayed metal gray while he played with them late into the night. Turbo sat nearby, keeping watch. Hot Rod's optics slowly dimmed and he laid down, pressing his cheekplate against the ground.
"Hot Rod," Kup finally said. "You ready to recharge?"
"Noooo," Hot Rod said. He sluggishly rolled one of the toys back and forth.
"Okay then," Kup said, and waited until Hot Rod gave into exhaustion and fell into recharge on the floor. He scooped the kid up and plugged him into his berth. Then Kup gave in and recharged as well.
---
Kup woke the next morning to banging noises in his kitchenette. Hot Rod looked back at him, raiding the cabinet where Kup had stashed the jellies from Devcon. The kid held his ravaged case of sweet jellies, one of them halfway to his mouth.
"You said I can eat what I want," Hot Rod defended, before Kup even said anything.
"I did," Kup said, standing in the doorway. "Just remember: if you eat them all now, you won't have any left for later."
Hot Rod thought about it for a moment. Then he popped the jelly in his mouth. "Okay," he said, muffled.
---
Later, Hot Rod finally decided to crack open the paint tins. He hadn't held a paintbrush before, apparently, though he was mildly practiced at dry mediums. Predictably, the first attempt ended up a blotchy mess; Hot Rod didn't seem to mind.
When Kup wandered over to check on the state of his table, Hot Rod held out the Kup-toy and asked, "Wanna paint?"
"Paint myself?" Kup said. "Sure, kid, if you want."
Hot Rod's T-cog couldn't handle an alt mode yet. Nevertheless, Hot Rod slathered his race car in red. Then he ignored Kup's warning about wet paint and dabbed on shapes that maybe could have been orange and yellow flames.
Kup's paintjob was much less complicated; he got away with painting the whole thing a dark green color. After Kup completed his car, he excused himself from painting anything else. He'd gotten all this for Hot Rod for a reason. He hung around, though, and read a datapad, careful to not set it down in any paint. Hot Rod didn't seem to discriminate between his toys and the protective tarp over the table.
"Okay, I'm done," Hot Rod said later, most of the toys painted.
Kup assessed the toys - and the damage. "Good job, kid." All of the paint stayed on the table, which was a plus in Kup's datapads.
---
"Hmmm," Kup hummed, looking at his calendar.
Hot Rod paused his sipping at his energon cube. "What is it?"
"Ah. The Festival of Primes is just around the corner," Kup said.
Hot Rod narrowed in on Kup, optics bright.