3: I Wish the Wars Were All Over

            “I think it’s terrifying.”

            “It’s definitely given Virginia nightmares.”

            “It reminds me of a reanimated Ronald Reagan.”

            The three teenagers stood awkwardly in front of the aberration, ostensibly a half-built android sitting innocently in a corner of the Cato’s basement.  It was still in its “protoform”, as Perceptor had put it; it had no skin, and at present only had thousands of metal, plastic, and hydraulic bits that would act as bone and muscles.  As Perceptor hadn’t yet decided on what the android would look like, aside from being “male” and “Caucasoid,” there was much of the facial structure that hadn’t yet been filled in.  At this point, it resembled a mechanical death’s head. “But why is he building it here?” asked Mikaela.  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to do it at the Ark where they have more tools and stuff?”

Miles shrugged. “He doesn’t like keeping anything of ‘value’ over there. I don’t think he’d admit it, but he really hates having to keep Starscream over there.  Er, Dóchas,” he corrected himself.  Perceptor had decided that Starscream’s name, as he was in a body that was neither “Idioma” nor “Starscream”, was now “Dóchas.” While Miles had known the name “Idioma” to be the Spanish word for “language”, Perceptor had corrected him in that it was the word’s Greek meaning, “peculiarity” from which he’d gotten Starscream’s former-self’s English name. Miles hadn’t the faintest idea what “Dóchas” meant (aside from apparently being a Celtic band, thanks to some rushed Google-fu), or why Perceptor seemed to prefer names with hidden meanings.

            “He does have a rather weird naming system,” said Mikaela.  “Well, you know, weirder than the rest of them.  At least they stick to English for the most part.”

            “Has he got a name for it yet?” asked Sam, pulling the sheet back over the mechanical man-thing.

            “I guess the same as his human pseudonym: Percival Aidoneus.”

            “Another weird name,” said Mikaela.

            “Well, maybe he wants his clients to think they’re dealing with a nice British-born Greek guy,” offered Sam.

            “Oh, the android’ll need to be hairy,” said Mikaela.

            “Yeah, I wanted to call him Milton,” sighed Miles.  “Or at least Mortimer. You know, something that starts with an ‘M’ that is dorkier than ‘Miles’. But I think officially it’s ‘PAL’- he is ‘Percy’s android liaison’, so… we heart acronyms!”

            Mikaela cocked an eyebrow.  “You know, he is really inconsistent on that with his stuff, hidden meaning with this name, über-literal acronym with that one.”

            “The Percy works in mysterious ways,” said Miles, turning to lead the other two out of the basement and upstairs.

            “Seriously,” continued Mikaela as she hopped up the stairs.  “Like why is he afraid to leave anything of ‘value’ over at the Ark?  He certainly didn’t have a problem leaving Gus, Roger, Robert and Diadema there all those times.”

            Miles winced guiltily.  “Well, heh, I dunno how ‘of value’ we want to consider them. Heh.”

            Mikaela crossed her arms warningly.  “Starscream takes priority over them?”

“Well,” squeaked Miles, crunching his shoulders uncomfortably as they entered the kitchen. “He’s his bro! He’s all he’s got left, besides me.”

“He nearly killed you!”

“Well, if you want to get technical that was all on Thundercrackhead,” muttered Miles nervously, wincing.  Ooh, that one was beneath even me.  Miles hopped onto a barstool at the bar, kicking his legs out occasionally.  “But mostly… he… I dunno, he knows Ironhide wants Starscream twenty shades of dead. He’s scared of Ironhide. He knows Ironhide’s not going to hurt any humans, but… IdiomaStarscreamDóchas?”

“Why?” asked Sam, hopping onto the stool next to Miles.  “Percy’s rational, right? Even if he is kind of a robo-dickhead. Sorry, Miles,” he added in response to a dirty glare.  “He should know Ironhide’s not going to do anything. Not with Prime always keeping him in check.”

            “Try telling him that,” said Miles crossing his arms, looking over to see his mother and Virginia entering the room. Virginia instantly set her sights on Mikaela, carefully inching towards to her in wonder.  “Like, whenever Ironhide’s brought up it’s ‘Polemor’ this and ‘brute’ that. Like, he will not refer to Ironhide by his name.  He only calls him ‘the Polemor.’”

            Sam frowned.  “I guess he’s just taking things to their logical extreme,” he said, “especially with that whole POW thing.  I dunno, he really needs to get over it, but I don’t really blame him.” He chuckled nervously.  “Ironhide scares the sh-“ he glanced at Virginia. “bejeezus out of me, too, sometimes.”

            Mikaela then noticed Virginia, standing next to her, awed at the beautiful teenager, and beamed at the girl, sitting down at the third barstool and hoisting her into her lap.  “You have such pretty hair!” Mikaela announced.

Virginia grinned. No amount of My Little Ponies in the world could have brought her more joy. “Thanks,” she said.  “You’re really pretty.”

“Thank you!” said Mikaela.  Ceres smiled. Mikaela, after instantly becoming Miles’ other (human) best friend a few weeks ago, was remarkably good with children, and children positively adored her.  They had much more respect for her than the awkward Sam at any rate, who often became a punching bag for Felix and Virginia. Mikaela noticed a strange, almost Cybertronian sliver of a device in her hand, slightly bigger than a floppy disk.  “What have you got there?”

            “Whoa, careful,” said Miles, realizing what it was and taking the object from Virginia.  He almost commented on how odd it was for Percy to leave things out like that, but then remembered that it hadn’t been Percy’s carelessness, but his. “That… Percy won’t like you playing with that.”

            “What is it?” asked Sam.

            Miles’ eyes darted to the ground for a moment.  “I don’t know, actually. I think it’s like some sort of Cybertronian flash drive or something,” he said, shoving it in a drawer haphazardly, the nervousness in his action not completely evading Mikaela and Sam. 

            “What’s on it?” asked Mikaela suspiciously.

            Miles shrugged.  “Beats me!”

            Suddenly the three were aware of a big black SUV that had just pulled up into the driveway, conveniently blocking any exit from the cars already in the driveway.  Ceres peeked out of the window, and sighed. “Oh, no.”

            “Gotta go!” said Sam, all but knocking over his chair as he fell out of it, scrambling towards the back door. Mikaela followed suit, unable to suppress a laugh.

            “You don’t even know where Bee is!” said Miles, following them.

            “We’ll find him!” assured Mikaela as they swung the door open, falling outside. Virginia looked positively crestfallen, the veritable goddess having so thoughtlessly abandoned her.

“’Ginia, why don’t you go work on your picture, hmm?” suggested Ceres as tiptoed over to the front door just as the bell rang, her son clearly also about to make a break for it with Sam and Mikaela. “No, Miles, no!” she half-whispered.  “You do not leave me in here alone with him.”

            “Mom,” whined her son, slowly going to take a seat at the kitchen bar as if he was about to receive a spoon full of cod liver oil.  He glared out the back door as the front doorbell rang; Sam and Mikaela were already gone from view.  Damned fair-weather…

            “C’mon, sweetie,” Ceres pleaded, as the dejected Virginia silently trod back to her room.  She knew who was visiting anyway, and she didn’t particularly like him, either. Ceres, taking one last centering breath, placed her palm on the doorframe gently and opened it, not bothering to force the air of pleasantness she’d used the first few times he’d come to visit.  When Reggie Simmons came to call, it was never for something happy.  Simmons took his sunglasses off and gave Ceres that very pointed once-over look which Miles was growing to appreciate less and less, then shot a plastic smile over to Miles.  “Morning, folks!”

            “It’s one o’clock,” said Miles, trying not to sound too contrary.

            “Well, you’re a kid, it’s summer, still recuperating, it’s morning for you, right?” he asked, not waiting to be asked inside.  Lately he hadn’t been donning the Men in Black attire, opting instead for the more obscure and fashionable military-esque wear, complete today with a beret.

            “So how’s it going? What have you kids been up to?” he asked. Ceres almost mechanically walked into the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee while Simmons alternated glances between her and Miles, tapping a newspaper on his hand.  Uh oh, newspaper was involved. That couldn’t be good.  Miles just wondered if said news was something he knew about and could therefore cover for, or one of Percy’s many “omissions”.  Miles didn’t know everything Percy was up to when he went off on his own merry business.

            “Would you like some coffee?” asked Ceres, well after having put the pot on.  During Simmons’ visits, she quickly came to realize that Simmons was a veritable coffee fiend. Miles did notice, however, that she pulled out the old Folgers instead of her nice Starbucks coffee she’d received as a gift.

            “Why yes, thank you!” he said, taking a seat next to Miles, whose tenseness was already portraying a clear sense of guilt.  Simmons stared him down for a moment before speaking.  “So, how are you feeling? How’re the ribs?”

            “Pretty good,” said Miles.  “Doesn’t really hurt at all anymore.”

            “That’s amazing,” said the man.  “Six weeks ago we look at you the wrong way and you burst into spontaneous internal bleeding! Now you’re out doing cartwheels, simply amazing.”

            “Well, I had a giant… alien… robot… scientist.  You know how it is.” Miles forced a smile.

            “Yeah, I know how it is,” said Simmons, his faux-pleasantness starting to drop. “So, where is our comparatively small Einstein?”

            “I don’t know,” muttered Miles.  “What’d he do this time?”

            This certainly wasn’t the first government-related C&D Perceptor had received, or of which Ceres and Miles bore the brunt. In his first few weeks of life on Earth, Perceptor had been a right busybody. While at the same time spending several hours a day constructing new bodies for the two Prometheus subjects and repairing his own defunct communications systems, Perceptor had immediately plunged himself right into the world of American capitalism, deciding that while the system was inherently corrupt, it was also remarkably easy to exploit with an intricate knowledge of economics and consumer patterns.  Within about two weeks, Perceptor had turned the hundred dollars he’d borrowed from the Catos into over ten thousand dollars simply through investing.

            That had prompted a comically sizeable investigation.

            It had been quite a trick trying to convince them that he was, in fact, not insider trading, nor was he hacking into any corporate computers.  Perceptor had once gone so far to explain to Simmons his methods of tracing market patterns and consumer stability (or lack thereof).  Miles had enjoyed watching Simmons’ eyes boggle with incomprehension, though he had to admit that he didn’t understand Percy’s theories and explanations, either.  But not too long after that had calmed down, Simmons’ MI unit noticed that Perceptor was using his money, which by now had turned into the millions, to buy real estate, some in the United States, but most in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Africa.

            That had prompted an even bigger investigation.

            This time, Perceptor didn’t bother explaining his motivations, which even to the relatively-hippy Miles, were amusingly hippy (“What do they think I would do with rainforest land? Surely they know how important it is for the thermoregulation of this planet, and should therefore be preserved! Not to mention the doubtless thousands of species of flora and fauna that have yet to be discovered…”) By this point Simmons was a pretty regular visitor ‘round Chez Cato.

            Then there was the issue with Perceptor making stock portfolios for all of the Autobots shortly thereafter, rather adamantly demanding to Simmons that he receive his green card and work authorization (which had really prompted an investigation), actually having a will written up and naming Miles his sole benefactor, the whole “cows” incident…

            It had been kind of a long few weeks.

            “That’s what I’d like to know,” said Simmons, opening the newspaper.  In the lifestyle section was a picture of a family so happy the picture could barely contain it, at the center an equally happy, very bald child.  The headline read, “Divine Intervention?”

Ceres looked over the bar at the article. “Right, I saw that,” she said, trying to keep the situation calm.  “You think Percy did that?”

“Right, that,” said Miles, figuring the best to do would be to come clean.  “Well, I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“Yeah, your robot did,” said Simmons, suspicions confirmed.  “Got bored and decided to go screw with some cancer patients. Really, what good are you kids if you aren’t going to remind the aliens what is and is not completely and totally illegal and immoral?”

“What’s immoral about it? They were dying anyway,” countered Miles.

“They?” spat Simmons.  “You mean there’s more than one?”

“Nye- well…” Miles sighed, looking up at the ceiling.  “Percy, where are you?” He paused for a moment.  “Would you come home?  We have a guest.”

Simmons snorted.  “Please tell me you were contacting him telepathically.”

Miles looked at him for a moment, mulling on whether he wanted to go there. He sighed.  “Orac, out,” he said, placing a hand to his ear.  Pulling it away, Simmons recoiled slightly at the device in his hand.  It looked like a granddaddy longlegs with an even tinier mechanical body.  “The little leg things coil around the ear canal and vibrate, like little speakers,” he explained to the slightly horrified Simmons.  “It’s a really clear sound, you’d be surprised.  And it fits right in the ear canal; I can’t feel it at all.”

“And he… talks to you though that,” Simmons deduced.

Miles nodded. “He calls it ‘organic-receptive audio-communicator’. So I call it Orac.”  Simmons just stared at him, a little dumbfounded.  “I’m creative.”

“That is… creepy,” said Simmons at length.  “I don’t even know if ‘creepy’’s the right word for it.”

Ceres sighed, pouring a couple of cups from the pot of coffee.  “It takes some getting used to,” she said quietly.  “Son enters co-dependent relationship with alien robot who hates cows and declares EasyMac the work of Satan.”

Miles sighed and stuck Orac back in his ear, by now quite weary of being the centerpiece of this debate.  “Okay, mom, you really can’t blame us, he does not know why we are the way we are, he doesn’t get the unhealth, and he doesn’t get the excess, he just doesn’t get it, and basically he wants me to live forever.  You really can’t blame him for trying.  And here’s the thing,” he said, turning to Simmons.  “Percy’s all up on the whole human-excess-needs-to-stop-for-our-own-sake thing.  Like obesity, global warming, addiction, hell, even war, all of it stems back to this human inability to control itself and restrict its consumption, and this is what he’s planning on doing with all the money and investing, it’s really for our own good!  Try to help stem that from a corporate and cultural level. So don’t go back and like… aggrandize the alien trying to infiltrate and destroy our economy from within, cause he wouldn’t do that.”

“What does this have to do with doing experiments on a seven year old leukemia patient?”

“I’m getting there. So, basically, he was fixating so much on humanity’s self-created problems, of which, I admit, there are many, and then I was like, hey, Percy, what about our problems that, you know, we didn’t create? Like, disease and… well, disease, mostly.  If your big thing is to improve the standard of living for humans, then… well that’s a big thing, right?  And we have plenty of time to get our ducks in a row anyway, so… he decided to do a little cancer and AIDS research and… well,” Miles’ voice shrank, his eyes darting to his mother and then out the window. “Well, he found the cure for cancer.”

Simmons looked a little insulted. “So, you guys were just out fucking around one night and then decided, hey, let’s go find a cure for cancer.”

“Well, if you put it like that-”

“And he just swooped in on some unsuspecting child and, without anyone’s authorization, proceeded to do-what-he-wilt with her, and… found a cure for cancer. And didn’t tell anybody.”

“Not a cure for blanket ‘cancer’, Agent,” said a voice from the back door.  The humans looked over to see a large alien robot fluidly maneuvering his parts to fit inside the door.  “Only certain strains of leukemia and melanoma.”

“Oh, well that’s different,” said Simmons, cocking a sarcastic eyebrow.  Miles reached into the drawer next to him and drew out the device he had hidden from Sam and Mikaela earlier.  “Virginia got a hold of this, sorry,” he said, genuinely contrite.  Perceptor bore a heavy glance on him before turning back to Simmons.

“Moreover, I had the consent of all of the patients, all of whom were terminally ill and would have shortly expired but for my intervention.”

“Well what did you do?” asked Simmons incredulously.  “Just stroll right up to them and ask… hey, how about the cure for cancer?”

Perceptor slowly approached the man, scanning him curiously.  “Something like that,” he stated.  “I merely propositioned them, in a disembodied way, of course, that they were dying, that their condition was irreversible with human medicine, and that I could remove their maladies if they would consent to an experimental procedure.”

Simmons snorted.  “Did you ask them to accept you as their Lord and Savior first?”

“No,” replied Perceptor, irritated.  “I simply relieved them of their consciousness entirely.”

“Well,” said Simmons, pointing to the smiling bald girl in the picture, “that would explain why this kid thought it was Jesus.”

“Their own misguided spiritual interpretations are their business,” stated Perceptor nonchalantly.  Miles stole a glance at the little gold cross around Simmons’ neck, as well as the conspicuous death glare he was shooting Perceptor.

“He saved their lives,” stated Miles outright, trying to calm the situation.  “They were dying, Percy stopped it, if only in the name of science; it was still a good thing, right?”

Simmons put his own personal offense aside for a moment and looked at Perceptor. “Okay, officially, officially, this is bad, you cannot do this, I don’t care how much they consented; the kid is a minor, and the others, it’s experimental, it’s illegal, I don’t care if it saves lives, you can’t do it, okay?”

“Completely illogical,” said Perceptor.

“But, you’re a citizen, you’re not supposed to have any more or less rights than anyone else; even if they do kind of fudge that logic a bit, this includes experimentation on your fellow citizens. Capiche?”

“Understood,” said Perceptor tonelessly.

“But off the record? You’re not expecting me to be too terribly upset that you saved some kid’s life, and now she’s going to grow up to be a veterinarian?” He chuckled, and both Ceres and Miles relaxed a little. “That’s, okay, that’s mad science flying off in directions that I feel a little weird reprimanding, but… you… just don’t do it again? You want to do it, great, I guarantee you we want cancer cured way more than you do, but you do it through us, okay?”

“I find your environments far too stifling,” said Perceptor.  “But I would be willing to come to some compromise should I choose to further such research.”

“What about what you’ve already got?”

“The overpopulation of your planet is a far worse situation than your problems with disease.  If I were to grant you my research, I would only be contributing to a wildly uncontrollable problem.”

Simmons looked a little dumbstruck, then snorted.  “Is that all we are to you? Statistics? You’ve already done the research, why not-”

“One could definitely argue that humans have evolved past natural population checks, which you need right now, sorely. Growth, expansion, everything; for your own sake, it needs to stop.  There are far too many of you as it is, and far too many even now dying of starvation and illness.”

“Well if you want to help, why don’t you-”

“My preoccupations are with the larger picture of humanity, your future as a species, and whether or not you even have one.” Simmons was taken aback, and perhaps even a little frightened by the scientist’s downright apocalyptic prediction. “Stemming your population should be your first priority. When and if this ever occurs, perhaps then I will consider solving your problems with illness, not before.”

Miles was a little surprised to see how disappointed Simmons looked.  Apparently, like most people, this was a subject that hit very close to home for him.  Simmons arched an eyebrow.  “Well, then…”

Perceptor stilled suddenly in the way that Miles had come to recognize meant that he was receiving an incoming transmission, probably from Optimus Prime. “We must leave. Come, Miles.”

Miles hopped off the barstool obediently and followed the Autobot.  “Pushy, pushy,” remarked Simmons, a little bitter. 

Miles turned and shrugged.  “I’ll be back later, Mom,” he said.

“When later, Miles?”

“I…d…”

“Soon,” filled in the scientist, now in the backyard and already transforming into his compact car mode.

“Soon?” called Miles as the door to the smart car popped open, and Miles all but collapsed gracelessly inside. 

“Percy,” called Ceres, “Could you not… in the yard?”  The car ignored her, speeding off on its merry way.

            Perceptor was always nervous in front of the Prime, a fact that certainly didn’t escape Optimus.  A large part of that nervousness came from Perceptor’s choice to stay behind on the planet Dis after his brother, the Inventor, had tried to convey his certainty that a coup was about to take place.  Perceptor had disregarded his warnings,  and the two had parted on bad terms. The Inventor’s premonitions had been right, of course, relegating Perceptor to several thousand years as a Decepticon prisoner of war. 

            Perceptor flashed his scanners around, running them over Miles, who was seated on a rock a few meters away, calm and oblivious.  It seemed that, after one crucial error of judgment, a dozen millennia, and hundreds of light-years of distance, fate had brought the Inventor and Perceptor to the same planet at last.

            “Your senses did not deceive you,” said Prime.  “He is in this country, approximately two thousand and ninety seven miles away.”

            “Why would he wait to contact you?” asked Perceptor anxiously.

            “The transmission we received indicated that he was up until recently too badly damaged for remote communication.  We are still decoding some of the message, but apparently he has the ability to repair himself, and is requesting an escort.”

            “Wouldn’t Ratchet be better suited to this?” asked Perceptor, now uncaring of how cowardly or subversive he sounded. “If my brother is injured…”

            “You are nearly as qualified to deal with it as Ratchet. I need Ratchet here to monitor transmissions. The others I need here to aid with the situation between the Prometheus subjects and the government. He is your brother; I would think that you would be glad to accept this assignment.”

            “My brother?” Perceptor found himself no longer able to meet Prime’s gaze. “My brother would not have done the things he’s done.”

            Prime looked away from the scientist, off into the setting sun over the desert.  “War has made monsters of all of us,” he stated simply.     

            Perceptor turned to look at Miles, who was staring off into the desert and picking his ear blithely.  “I would take the boy with me, if it is permitted,” he said quietly. 

            “I will leave that to the discretion of you and the boy’s mother.”

            “That is my only request,” stated Perceptor somberly. “Save to do a quick monitor of my other brother.”

            “Agreed,” said Prime.  “I expect you to depart before the day is out.”

            “Yes, Prime,” he said, placing his hands behind his back reverently.  The scientist then turned to go inside the Ark.

            “Perceptor,” said Prime.  “Times have changed.  None of the other Autobots use the formal greetings with me anymore.  Perhaps you should learn to shift what you consider appropriate.”

            Perceptor looked up to meet his gaze. “I ask very little of you,” he said. “All I ask is that you leave me some of our past, the way it was.” With that, he again gave a little reverent bow of the head, and looked over towards his human charge.  “I will be with you shortly,” he said.  The boy waved goofily.

            The storage compartment in which the body of Dóchas was now being held was deep within the Ark, far from any natural light, and as the Autobots had very little to store by this point, rather desolate.  Perceptor clicked open the compartment, which slid a few plates away before ejecting, the little body perfectly still and almost lifeless.

            During his work at the Ark on creating new, symbiote-free bodies for the Prometheus subjects, Perceptor had often stolen away to tamper with this new being that he called Dóchas; not Idioma, certainly not Starscream, small, helpless, and most importantly, with no memory of his life.  The being now hardly resembled Rumble at all, Perceptor having rebuilt him entirely, fixing his injuries and reattaching new arms that could do very little damage, besides grasp things.  The most delicate work he had done was on Dóchas’s neural net and processor.  As it had been placed in the body of a Quartan symbiote, Starscream’s Secundan consciousness had been far too complex to function within the simple brain of Rumble.  Perceptor, therefore, had salvaged several parts from Starscream’s body while the Autobots and the US government were dismantling it, mostly neural components, as well as the small sliver of hardware that was Starscream’s memory core.  That, he had very intentionally kept away from Dóchas, storing it in the Cato’s basement.  A perhaps unwise decision, as apparently little Virginia had gotten a hold of it.

            “Careless on my part, Idioma,” said Perceptor quietly, drawing the memory core out.  “I shall find a better place to secure it.”

            The door to the storage compartment shot open, and Perceptor quickly slid the memory core out of sight, looking up nervously.  As though fate hadn’t had enough of making him its whipping boy, Ironhide stepped in, apparently to retrieve some energon containment units, before stopping to sneer at the scientist.  Perceptor stood back, looking at Dóchas nervously, refusing to look up at Ironhide.

            Ironhide stood still for a moment before approaching the opening in the wall, glaring at the small being menacingly.  “It still escapes me why you’ve wasted such time rebuilding this creature.”

            Perceptor stepped back, still not looking at him.  “I considered it cruel to leave him in a body that was barely functional.”

            Ironhide huffed at him irritably.  It had been clear right from the very moment they met that Ironhide deplored Perceptor, and the feeling was mutual.  Everything the scientist did offended him: his size, his craven nature, his fixation on the humans and their culture, his choice in organic bond-mates, his disdain for conflict, and especially his fear of Ironhide and all Polemors.  “Of course it also escapes me why we allow it to stay here, alive,” continued Ironhide pointedly.  Perceptor felt like he could shrink into the floor.  “And now your other brother here as well. I agree with you; I find it highly suspect that he would wait before contacting us, and more curious still that he only requested an escort.”

            “I would not claim to know his motives,” snapped Perceptor nervously, edging back towards Dóchas’s containment unit. 

            “And I would not claim to understand Prime’s motives,” said Ironhide, glaring at the small body.

            Perceptor approached his unconscious brother carefully. “I still have hope for him,” Perceptor admitted, not even sure why he was saying this aloud to the Polemor. “He is my brother, he wasn’t always like this.  He wasn’t always a monster.”

            “Perhaps you were far too passive in your part in this war,” said Ironhide bitterly.  “You don’t understand that in a conflict, there are sides, and when you are on a particular side, you kill those on the other side, even if they are your brother.”

            Perceptor closed the compartment. “That would be unnecessary,” he stated calmly.  “My understanding of your sect’s position in this conflict is to prevent the unnecessary loss of life, no matter whose.  Perhaps I was misinformed, but he is no danger to you now.”

            “Wait,” stated the Polemor warningly.  “Just wait.”  Perceptor’s comment seemed to strike something in Ironhide as he gathered up the containment units. “You seem to have a penchant for being drawn to those who are efficient at taking life, necessary or not,” he said. “I know little of your Inventor, but I do know this; he is unstable.  That would bring in two liabilities, two dangerous ones, and both connected to you.” The Polemor looked over at the scientist once more before exiting.  “It would be a great strategic mistake to allow two such liabilities in our midst.” Ironhide then allowed the door to close silently.

            The moment his fellow Autobot was out of earshot, Perceptor tore open the compartment that housed the small body of his brother snatching it up in a panic.

War has made monsters of all of us.

            Starscream was a monster, of that Perceptor was certain.  He had never quite been able to connote “Idioma” and “Starscream” as the same person, though in actuality they were very much the same. He could use the name “Dóchas”, or his preferred “Starscream”, but this being was still his brother, Idioma, the one to whom he was bonded, and it was that being, no other, that Perceptor still held his hope out for.

            One, he reasoned, gathering the small body, contracting it into a smaller, more portable shape, he would not allow to be quashed by violent, bloodthirsty Polemors.  “Once again, Idioma, I know I am sorely going to regret this,” he said, tucking the body away beneath his chassis and exiting the Ark.  “Sorely.”

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