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"Oh my goodness, guys! " Scrapper's voice echoed through the Constructicons' quarters as he looked at Megatron's five new children with nothing but awe. "They fit in my palm."
"It's not surprising," Hook replied. "That's how most younglings are, and it won't last long."
Scrapper snickered as he played with the kids, "Just let me have fun while we babysit! In a year Megs is gonna have 'em shooting at Autobots, but right now they think this rattle I made from garbage is the coolest thing ever. Wildrider keeps growling at it, or trying to, at least.
"Where'd you even get them? No way Megs just gave them to you," Mix wonders, leaning over Scrapper's shoulder. He snorts in amusement as the tiny newspark tries to grab at his nose.
"She gave them to me," Hook announces, not glancing up from his data-pad as he logs the Stunticons' weight and spark types and strength into the Decepticon medical database. "You know I have to document all new Decepticons."
"Yeah, but," Mix tries, optics flashing reds and purples as he struggles to find the words, "I can't believe she just gave them to you. They're babies."
"What, you wouldn't let anybody touch them if we had some?" asks Scrapper as Mixmaster grabs Breakdown out of his lap. Breakdown just looks at him, eyes glowing purple. Hook wonders, very unrealistically, if Megatron somehow enhanced the possibility of purple optics in her offspring. He wouldn't put it past her.
We're having what? asks Scavenger through the bond, in a burst of energy.
He winces and pulls up his blocks. He's had a long day of stitching the coneheads back together. He isn't even sure how they managed to get damaged on cleaning duty. Then again, when has Decepticon cleaning duty ever finished without a causality?
We are not having a sparkling, Hook responds. They are in a war, they cannot have children. Not that any of his conjunxes have ever brought it up. They couldn't have any anyways, not before the war, not with the Senate and the laws and the fact that they were all considered property. None of them have the time to look after one, and the Decepticons need Devastor. Having a sparkling would put a pause on everything.
(Then, Hook looks at the babies in Scrapper's hands, in his lap, and his spark pangs with want and wonder. He could never have one before— and— and he cannot have one now.)
"It wouldn't even be that hard to do," Mixmaster continues, spark swirling around Scavenger in their own little bubble. "Spark merge with sex. E— easy."
Hook scoffs and rolls his eyes under his visor. "Gestalt sparks can't reproduce. Nobody has even tried it before. What happens when we need to become Devasator? We'll kill it."
They are quieter now, and Mixmaster looks a little guilty. "Sorry, Hook," he says, "I didn't think about that."
No. He thinks bitterly, you never think.
Scrapper's visor shimers, determined. "Even if we can't have our own, we can make sure Megatron's are okay. She's probably not going to look at them as sparklings."
Hook clicks the final button on his data-pad, and then sets it to the side, "they're her soldiers. We're all soldiers."
It's kind of awful that she's making her kids into soldiers, Long Haul states, trying to stay neutral, like he's trying not to upset Hook. Hook hates it. He doesn't want to be coddled. If his conjunxes want to play fantasy and imagine that they can reproduce, fine, just keep him out of it. He has had to take miscarried, rotting newsparks out of bodies before. He has given termination shocks and put temporary blocks onto sparks so many times he would have to think about it to count, and he doesn't like thinking about it.
More like making kids to become soldiers, Bonecrusher signs, showing each sign in succession through the bond.
Hook was the only "doctor" in his field. He was a medic, really. He had no certification, not for a long time. Mechs would come to him because they knew he wouldn't say anything, because they knew he could help, and because they knew that mechs considered non-sentient could not have children. They weren't even supposed to have interface equipment, but, then again, what if they needed to be multi-purpose? What if a shift manager got bored and needed a release?
Yeah, well, Scrapper responds, setting the sparklings down, four of them in his lap,we can do something.
We have to do something, presses Scavenger, pulling emotions from Scrapper's side of the bond. Hook wants to tell them it's pointless. He wants to tell them it will only make their wanting for sparklings worse. They cannot have their own, and watching the Stunticons grow up from newspark to adult Cybertronians will only make it worse. It might hurt. It won't hurt Hook. He can handle it. He's always known he can't have sparklings. Non sentient mechs cannot have sparklings, and that sentiment is still important. What would a war do to a sparkling? They would go hungry and the sparkling would die. Megatron would send them down onto the assembly line of canon fodder she's constantly producing, the MTOS. There is no way that they would survive. He isn't even sure the Stunticons would survive past today, newborn split gestalt sparks haven't ever even been heard of, let alone have any chance of survival.
What are we gonna do? Look after them? Mix questions.
Scrapper smiles behind his mask, and Hook can only tell by the way his visor glows, catching the attention of Drag Strip. He knows that once Scrapper starts a project, he doesn't stop it until it's finished (Or, halfway finished). The Stunticons have become his project, looking out for them has become his project, and they're one he's most proud of.
It can't be that hard to look after sparklings, Bonecrusher responds, people did it before us.
Those people were trained, reminds Scavenger, buzzing with excitment. Hook isn't sure he has even ever seen a sparkling before, and he's waiting very patiently, finishing the project Megatron has him working on.
They had coding. Can we even get coding? asks Long Haul.
You don't need coding to be a decent person, Scrapper counters, and Motormaster beeps sleepily at him, his cheek against Scrapper's adominal plating.
Bonecrusher scoffs. Megatron is not a decent person.
So we need to be better, Scrapper states. What is a decent person? This is a war. There are no moral standards. They crush buildings and melt faces off and Scrapper makes art out of greyed corpses. What is decent? They cannot hide them away. They cannot stop them from becoming soldiers. Megatron had adapted Henry Ford's principals of the assembly line before it was ever an inkling in his mind. What can they teach the Stunticons that a battle wouldn't?
Hook looks down at the sparklings, his chest hurts, burning up in throbbing, pulsing flares. Hook wants what he can't have, what he can never have. The war will never end. The war will never end and it doesn't matter. Megatron will probably create even more sparks, all of them like the Stunticons, and all of them children that Hook will need to care for. None of them will be his.
(Hook thinks about the mines, about watching mechs sparks fall and stutter in their chest when he told them they were carrying. They all knew that no sparklings were born down there, in the dark, wet caverns. There was no life in there, and everybody knew there could never be life down there. He never was good at comforting people, even back then.)
The Stunticons are alive. They don't even know why. They don't know that they were born to be raised into soldiers, and were only babbling and playing and finding interest in things as small as a scratch on Scrapper's arm.
"You wanna hold 'em?" Scrapper asks, holding up an angry Dead End and pulling Hook from his memories. It's almost as though Scrapper has a sixth sense for Hook's thoughts.
Hook feels his faceplate warm, though with comfort and not embarassment like he is used to. He isn't being ridiculed or taken advantage of. The way Dead End's helm bobs almost makes Hook feel like the kid understands him, even though logically, he doesn't understand a thing.
With Dead End in his arms, a small hand curls around Hook's thumb. Hook knows he cannot have a child of his own, but for now he is focused on caring for the Stunticons, and making sure they live to be more than just lackeys for their mother. He shouldn't be helping them so much, but he knows he has to. Such rare Cybertronian life deserves to be more than a weapon, even if their mother won't allow for it. He has a chance to do some good now. Why shouldn't he take it?