Loop-de-Loop

[hat_writes_stuff]

Title: Loop-de-Loop
Author: Almighty Hat
Fandom: Transformers Animated, Transformers IDW, Keferon's Death Loop Blurr AU (so, Continuity Soup)
Characters: Blurr, Swindle, Bumblebee, Sari Sumdac, Sundry Others (less so Shockwave)
Word Count: 23,405 (total)
Rating: Teen & Up
Pairing(s): Swindle/Blurr
Warnings: Canon-typical violence, Blurr's weird-ass relationship with death, valveplug nudity (chapter six only), mechpreg (chapter seven only)

Author's Notes: This is an older fic, based on Keferon's Death Loop AU, which I hadn't initially planned to share with anyone but Celaeno (because it was written as backstory/RP hooks; Celaeno is the Shockwave to my Blurr), but now I know Keferon's AO3 handle, so!

For those who clicked because you're starving for more SwindBlurr content: Fear not! Here is all you really need to know about Keferon's Death Loop Blurr AU (you do not need to click the links I just like linking) is:

- Every Transformers series is an alternate universe
- There are a whole lot of Transformers series
- There is only ever one Blurr alive at a time
- When Blurr dies in one series/canon, he wakes up in the next
- Each death leaves a new mark on Blurr in subsequent lives, looking like scars/repairs of that death (he thinks of these marks as his "death map")
- "The Narrative" tends to punish Blurr (with an early death, with people he cares about getting hurt) if he tries to avoid the tropes Transformers canons tend to use him for
- Blurr confessed all this to Swindle in IDW-1 while high on pain meds after they saved each other's lives
- The last thing Blurr did before being shredded by Unicron in IDW-1 was send (the missing, presumed dead) Swindle a text-only comm promising to miss him if he looped again (I have tweaked the exact wording of this message)
- Swindle did not take Blurr's canonical death in IDW-1 sitting down, and paid Brainstorm to build a 'find my boyfriend across all realities' device

And although you should go forth and admire Keferon's art and writing and the works of Keferon's extremely creative readership, if you're just desperate for rarepair content? You are now up to speed even if you wanna jump straight to Chapter 3, where the shipping gets going.

The major difference between what Keferon cooked up and this is... I haven't watched most TF series. I'm an adult, I run a business, I have cats and hobbies and ADHD, TF Wiki exists if I get curious, I just don't have the time or focus to watch that much cartoons. It's fine. So instead of a few series between IDW-1 and TFA, I put them one right after the other, since I'm only familiar with Armada-Energon-Cybertron from, uh, Insecticomics, and Celaeno sent me TFA on DVD for Christmas a couple years back. So it's basically this post, then he wakes up as a freshly-onlined TFA sparkling. (TFA clearly does not have gestation tanks, but it clearly DOES have sparklings. Arcee's teaching-unit monologue is not the way you talk to a bunch of brand-new adults, like Mixmaster, Scrapper, Wreck-Gar, Soundwave, or Grimlock, it's the way you talk to a bunch of five-to-nine-year-olds... like Sari.)

This first chapter is... pretty much purely Velocity, from Blurr's point of view. I subscribe to the Canon Divergence AU advice that you should start at the divergence and not rehash more of canon than absolutely necessary... but that either comes many loops ago, or when Blurr stands up, so I figured I'd just use Velocity to establish how fucking tired this version of Blurr is. If you haven't seen Velocity and feel a little lost because of the stuff I gloss over cos Blurr wasn't there or was dissociating a little, no worries, Hasbro has it free to watch on YouTube. Heck if I know what regions it might be locked to, however.

Watch it here!

That should be about everything for a foreword, but! I figured why not put Blurr through some human AUs in his history? If official canon is allowed why not Whatever Else? This is fanfic of fan-concepts, I'm just playing around with stuff here, but it amuses me to have the fanwork of a fanwork include universes that may also be fanworks. But that and having been to various Earths a few times means Blurr's narration gets all the curse words. (This is a Blurr who at least needs to be able to think "Fuck.")

Summary: The multiverse is infinite, but there is ever and always only one Blurr-- alive, anyway. He lives, he dies, he remembers all his past lives, and he is extremely tired.

IDW-1 gave him hope that maybe, maybe, that loop would be the last.

Then he woke up in TFA.

Blurr decides to just-- just take this life off from caring. Sure, there's a load of lethal narrative coming for him eventually, there always is (there's a red-or-yellow speedster he'll have to show up, and probably a sacrifice play to make, a dramatic death that might be heroic or messy or both), but until then he's just going to let events shove him where they want him and privately grieve. He'll be more of a person, he promises himself, in the next life.

But this life does have a few surprises for him.

(Based on a Keferon AU, but you shouldn't need to be familiar with it to understand the fic.)

One: Velocity

"So, you wanna drag, do you?"

If Blurr could have stopped, could have reacted physically, to words over open comm channels, he would have.

(It wasn't addressed to him, really, except that it was; he shouldn't have been able to pick up on it except that he was an Intelligence agent.)

Open comm channels.

Open, Cybertronian comm channels.

He could have wept, sobbed, fallen to his knees, but he wasn't in control of his frame and his vocalizer had failed him weeks (decacycles, Earth units of time were so uniformly short but so useful for Earth) ago, the selective mutism that came with this frame convincing his systems that Talking Bad and clamping down on his ability to do it.

Which was fine, it kept him from undignified begging.

"Not now," someone else said, over open comm channels, "those drivers need help."

"But I can catch this guy!" said the bot who was, evidently, the yellow-this-time harbinger of Blurr's death, the speedster he'd show up before his sacrifice play.

Thank fucking Primus.

Against his will (more or less), Blurr accelerated away from the little yellow sub-compact, who added, "... I think," to his assessment.

Bumblebee, then, one of Longarm Prime's Academy classmates and Sentinel Prime's first cadet class's wash-outs. It would be Blurr's job to show Bumblebee that he wasn't, actually, the fastest thing on four wheels, and possibly, hopefully, that speed wasn't everything.

This life sucked.

It sucked.

It had sucked from the moment he'd come online as a sparkling, of all the odd things, a Cybertronian child, in a frame and processor too underdeveloped to contain Blurr waking up again, remembering everything again, and certainly not the knowledge that the loop, the remembering, the curse, hadn't broken, he was another new Blurr, and he had to start over again without his bar or his friends or his hope or Swindle. (Apparently, most sparklings' first action wasn't to collapse into broken sobs and inconsolable wails. Luckily his speech issue had kept Blurr from babbling anything intelligible at the caregivers who tried to help him. Letting random people know how many times he’d been Blurr was almost never a good idea, especially right at the start of a new life.) Despite Cybertron being allegedly post-war, it had still sucked, rigid and borderline functionist if not for a need for workers to become warriors-- heroes, they liked to call them-- and Blurr had silently decided to just... set this lifetime aside for grief.

He wouldn't avoid the story, the narrative, when it came for him, but until the Red-or-Yellow Speedster had to be shown up and the sacrifice had to be made, he'd just... get along however, mourn his hopes, grieve a life he'd cautiously dared to live, and bow out of this life with some measure of grace.

Professional racing had been a consideration-- he could dredge his charisma up from wherever he'd dropped it, he knew how, and despite the death map across his exposed protoform, Blurr was certainly pretty enough to manage it. But there'd been mutterings that his voice wouldn't hold him back in the Elite Guard, and somehow that was where he'd ended up.

Kup was the first familiar face in this life, and it had nearly broken Blurr. He'd forgotten to expect to know people sideways, amid the annoyances of having to grow up.

But once a Wrecker, always a Wrecker, and the Academy wasn't really a challenge. The Elite Guard couldn't find a unit that wanted to tolerate him, but Highbrow Prime had poached him for Intelligence, and Blurr didn't fight that, either. (He considered pointing out that a game of Hot Rivet wasn't won by catching and keeping the rivet, but... he shut up about it.) He wasn't good at spycraft, however-- not unobtrusive enough, too distinctive, and not a dutiful enough little cog in the "great Autobot machine" to give a frag about appeasing his new boss... but Highbrow Prime wasn't going to admit he'd made an error in judgment, and made Blurr act as a bodyguard instead of as an actual Intelligence agent.

Blurr had figured that would be his sacrifice moment, and tried not to resent how much Highbrow Prime was not worth dying for.

Then Highbrow had gotten himself killed-- at least after leaving written evidence behind that he'd been the one to decide not to bring Blurr along, making the ridiculous mistake of actually going alone when a note promising important information on Decepticon High Command activities said ‘and come alone’-- and the new head of Intelligence, young Longarm Prime, was...

... Definitely a better boss. Blurr wouldn't have regretted dying to protect him.

Instead, Longarm had tolled Blurr's death knell, and sent him to Earth, to keep track of the bare handful of Autobots and Decepticons there.

The shattered Allspark wasn't diminished, and humans remained creative, and Master Disaster's control over Blurr was an actual fresh hell that he wasn't looking forward to remembering eternally.

Voluntarily mode-locked-- because Master Disaster couldn't figure out how to make Blurr stand up again, and Blurr wasn't going to do it for him-- silenced by his own frame's foibles, under the physical control of someone who cast him as the star player in an illegal demolition derby street racing... thing, and kept in perfect repair by an Allspark fragment that flawlessly healed him even as it powered the remote that drove him into vehicles and barriers, seeing Bumblebee, hearing that challenge, came as something of a relief.

First, show up the speedster.

Then, die to protect someone.

Escape was on the way.

It wasn't long at all before Bumblebee returned with some sort of rocket boosters, and Master Disaster unleashed Blurr on him. "Go show that buttinski that my races are by invitation only. Now!"

And he jerked at dials on the remote.

Blurr hated that part.

Master Disaster never forgot that Blurr was a person, and talked to him like he was a person, whether or not Blurr answered, giving orders Blurr would never have followed... and then just made him "obey" using the remote. Used like an object, spoken to like a person, and it was the dissonance of it that made it hard for Blurr to... not ignore it so much as get lost in his own processor. Let the human use his frame, it didn't matter because Blurr wouldn't be in it for too much longer, most likely.

(Most likely. There'd been a long, long time in his last life between the show-up and the final sacrifice.)

(... Primus, he missed Swindle. That hadn't been the final sacrifice, but-- Swindle had lived. It would have been worth it, if it had been his last moment in that life, just for that.)

(He couldn't think about Swindle now, not those wide fake-innocent optics, or the bitching about how someone so stupidly rich could be such a haphazard bookkeeper, or the perfect order Blurr's books were in once Swindle finished with them; not the wide salesmechanism's smile and especially, especially not the way he fit in Blurr's arms, the angle of his helm under Blurr's cheek, the reaction being whatever it might be, slick cheer, affected grumbling, but always, always coming with a nuzzle back, he couldn't think about that now.)

The human drivers fell back as Blurr was steered down the... culvert? Gully? Something meant for water rather than cars, he was at least sure of that much.

Bumblebee talked to himself.

"Wants a little showdown, does he?"

Blurr didn't, but the story did.

"Uh-oh," because Bumblebee was in a puddle of... something brown that Blurr didn't care to know the origin of. "Goodbye traction, hello scrap heap!"

That wasn't likely.

Blurr couldn't offline the Red-Or-Yellow Speedster, that wasn't how it worked, and he certainly couldn't muster up the kind of willpower that might, might let him shake off Master Disaster's control.

So he wasn't at all surprised when Bumblebee reversed his rocket things and blasted backwards down the concrete structure meant for water not cars. He only sort of paid attention to Bumblebee asking Blurr to wait, to, "Back off, will you?" because, nice as it was to hear another Cybertronian voice, it wasn't like he could.

It wasn't like he could avoid knocking his side into Bumblebee, either, or how hard a tap it was-- though, again, another Cybertronian. Living metal. Violent contact or not, it was almost dizzying in how it cut through the months of sheer isolation since leaving for Earth. His frame did what it was told, and he hated it but couldn't do anything about it--

-- And then Bumblebee stood up.

Blurr at least tried. He tried. He couldn't make his vocalizer cooperate, but he tried to tell Bumblebee not to do that, to transform back, to run run run go get gone as fast as he could don't let him see don't let him near you don't let him get you go go go run.

All he could do was brake, sharply, when he was made to brake, and try to force a scream when Master Disaster called down, "Oi! Don't move a muscle! Or piston! Or whatever it is you Autobot things move!"

Bumblebee fell for it all, agreeing to show up for an actual race, and he was-- young.

So young.

Blurr had forgotten how young it was possible for Autobots to be, here.

(Longarm Prime was Bumblebee's age, but never seemed so young as all that.)

And Master Disaster would kill the kid for money, because people watched races for the crashes, Blurr knew.

(Those were some of the pointless deaths, dying on the track. Blurr usually didn't mind them, because as traumatic, pointless deaths went, they were usually either fast or packed with painkillers. He knew in his spark that the pointless deaths were supposed to be punitive, the narrative getting back at him for not playing along, not finding someone to die for, but Blurr had a finely-graded scale of Good Death To Bad Death, and honestly anything that was fast, relatively painless, or blessedly both was pretty high on the Good Death side of the scale.)

He at least knew it wasn't going to happen-- Bumblebee dying for a more exciting race.

Blurr might, though.

Bumblebee was at the race when Blurr was moved into position.

"You don't fool me, Decepticon," he said, quietly, and Blurr could have laughed (hysterically) if he could have made any kind of noise.

The human child, Sari Sumdac, climbed out of Bumblebee's driver's seat a moment later, something glowing around her neck-- evidently the Allspark Key could glow, which was interesting.

(Blurr didn't notice how it pulled at her, couldn't know that the Allspark had decided this fragment was particularly urgent, that the Keyholder, the Allspark Speaker, needed to get this situation handled promptly, now, immediately, but then, Sari didn't pick up on all of that, herself. She just did what needed doing without very much prompting, which the Allspark loved about her.)

The child headed for Master Disaster's control trailer, which was dangerous, but Blurr couldn't do anything about it... except note that Sari might actually count as both red and yellow. It wasn't impossible that she'd be vital, somehow, too; he wasn't often around young humans, but he was familiar enough with them. Dying to protect a child wouldn't leave him with any regrets, for all it might not be great for the child in question psychologically.

But Sari returned to Bumblebee only a moment later-- clutching the remote.

Blurr felt several important processes stall out or crash.

She had the remote.

"Quick!" she said, hammering on Bumblebee's door, "Let me in!"

"Oi!" Master Disaster had either seen her or had gone right for Blurr's controls. "Give that back, you little thief!"

Bumblebee and Sari fled, and the human drivers mistook that for the start of the race, which further angered Master Disaster. He ran for his trailer while Blurr...

... sat there, trying to process faster.

Was he free?

Was he free?

Was it that easy?

"What did you get yourself into now, Bumblebee?" someone muttered, and instead of being stuck in a processing loop, Blurr sat there, frozen, trying not to indicate to anyone that he'd overheard. "I guess it's time for me to--"

The Autobot-- Bulkhead, certified space bridge repair technician with remarkably high test scores in that certification, and new mechanism to Blurr across realities-- grunted and froze.

Literally, not the way Blurr was frozen.

Iced over by the Decepticon Blitzwing making a sudden appearance, and that let Blurr know exactly how things would play out-- protect a human child and a young Autobot (or two) from a triplechanger, or die trying.

Blitzwing flew off after the racers, and Blurr-- ignoring Master Disaster's protests-- took off after Blitzwing.

He paid attention to whether or not Blitzwing noticed him (he did not) and to the fight, or flight, mostly, noting that, despite Bumblebee's record as a wash-out and screw-up, he held his own remarkably well for a sub-compact Autobot worker against a Decepticon warbuild triplechanger, and not due to Blitzwing's unstable nature in this reality. Bumblebee dodged bolts of ice with relative ease, and when Blitzwing iced over the entire... concrete thing that Blurr was still bothered not knowing the actual term for, causing Bumblebee to spin out?

Bumblebee transformed, stood up, and skated easily over the ice.

Blurr thought he could hear the child laughing.

It was good, actually, that the only thing Blurr would need to be an object lesson for was that speed was useful but couldn't be relied on-- maybe Earth had been good for Bumblebee, or being responsible for a child, or maybe he'd just matured over time, but-- this wasn't the bumbler from Sentinel Prime-then-Minor's logs as a drill instructor, or the well-meaning near-sparkling Longarm Prime had briefed Blurr on. This was someone young and still impulsive but, at least under pressure, capable.

And his thieving human companion had Blurr driving under his own power again.

If the sacrifice for this life was incoming, it would be one Blurr could accept. This was a pair of young people worth dying to protect.

(Objectively worth it, worth it by other people's standards, too. The last time he'd gotten between a triplechanger and a target, it had been Astrotrain and Swindle, and then Swindle had turned around and saved Blurr.)

And then Blitzwing brought down a bridge on his own head, and it seemed like maybe the youngsters had handled matters on their own.

Good for them. Bewildering, but good for them.

Blurr, however, had been heading for the bridge, and had to seek an alternate route to keep an eye on Bumblebee and Sari-- just in case. Just in case.

Just in case they rescued a second human from a barrage of Blitzwing’s missile fire, which was only the first barrage of missile fire.

What did Blurr have that could stop a triplechanger? A jet and a tank? He disregarded his saw out of hand; it could work, but Blitzwing was three times Blurr's height in robot mode. Making it work would take too long. If Blitzwing stayed in one of his alts, stasis cuffs wouldn't be any help.

The only weapon he had that was in scale with Blitzwing was if Blurr managed to use his own bumper to stab him with.

Which he considered, before Sari leaned out of Bumblebee's window and set Blitzwing spinning with Master Disaster's remote.

... Fair. Clever.

Unpleasant, but as long as she stopped, also probably deserved.

Until Bumblebee jolted, and the remote went flying, and Blurr's spark flipped over in its casing.

No, no, no, no that couldn't just sit there waiting for anyone to pick it up, no no no--

If Master Disaster found it again-- if Blitzwing picked it up--

Bumblebee drove down the watercourse thing, under the bridge Blurr had found as an alternate route and vantage point, and Blitzwing returned to jet mode to chase him down, weapons powering up once again. Ice would immobilize Bumblebee, if it hit him, but it could kill the humans instantly, and Blurr--

(He'd been under his own power, he'd been free, he'd been free, he wasn't going to let anyone take his frame from him again, this life wasn't worth that, not again not again not again)

Blurr made the sacrifice.

The guardrail shattered as Blurr hit it, between the shape of his alt mode, being made of sterner stuff than an Earth vehicle, and the speed Blurr was capable of; from there it was just a matter of hitting Blitzwing.

Red, yellow, young, speedster, bystander.

(Suicide.)

And Blitzwing--

Blitzwing veered away at the last possible instant, the crankshaft, clipping an office building and flying off. Blurr couldn't pursue in the air, and thudded heavily to the ground.

"Everybody stay back!" Bumblebee ordered, "I'll handle Blitzwing," which was crazy talk, but he ran off after the Decepticon anyway.

Sari and the other human ran down the concrete thing-- and passed Blurr, who transformed, then struggled to get to his hands and knees.

Okay.

That had not been a good landing.

And he wasn't used to not immediately being repaired by an Allspark fragment after crashes and hard landings anymore.

Fragging ow.

Sari had the remote in her hand.

"You are Cybertronian!" she exclaimed, and Blurr--

Blurr pushed himself, as hard as he could.

"Reh-- that," he pointed. "Don't-- don't let-- D'saster--"

The other human-- adult male, and from the badge, law enforcement-- put a hand on Blurr's pauldron. (Blurr expected to shudder at the touch, but it wasn't like Master Disaster's fondling. The hand was still small, still oily, but it was pressing comfort, reassurance, not petting possession. Human, but in the good way.) "We won't, son," the adult said, "That--" there was a pause Blurr recognized as editing language for a young audience, "jerk is going down."

Blurr sagged, forehead coming to rest against the concrete.

"You good here? Nothin' vital leaking?" the adult human asked, and Blurr lifted his head enough to nod. "Stay put unless somethin' comes after you, we'll get you help after the bust."

By the time Blurr realized he'd expected a sub-compact worker, an adult human, and a human child to take on both Blitzwing and Master Disaster, simply because one of the humans spoke with confident authority, they were done successfully driving off Blitzwing and arresting Master Disaster, which Blurr discovered by staggering in the direction they'd all run off in. No Blitzwing, crushed trailer, cuffed Master Disaster, the adult human having summoned more law enforcement and going through procedures Blurr vaguely recognized. It was a pleasant surprise, after half expecting to find nothing but paste and parts.

"You stuck around!" Bumblebee exclaimed, skidding down the slope of the concrete whatever to dart up to Blurr. "And you're an Autobot! ... An Elite Guard Autobot!"

"'M--" Blurr started, choking on it still, and instead waffled a hand.

"Still havin' trouble talking, kid?" the adult human-- the one he'd met before, there were others, now-- asked, and Blurr nodded.

Sari appeared out of nowhere, still clutching the remote in one hand-- but the other hand going to the Key around her neck. "I can help! The Allspark Key--" Blurr flinched away. "... Are you one of those bots who's weird about being repaired by anything but a medic? Because I promise it's okay."

Carefully, Blurr pointed at the Key, and then the remote, and gritted out, "S-same."

"They're the same? ... They're both... Allspark-y..." Bumblebee offered.

Blurr nodded again, vehemently.

"That chucklef-- head," the adult human said, carefully, "Had you in a bunch of his demolition derby crap, right? Been in it for a month and a half now?" Blurr nodded. "Against your will, controlled by that thing?" More nodding. Yes. Good human, smart human, if Blurr had some sort of human treat, he'd offer it. "But you never got a scratch on you, because if those things work the same, it fixed you right up, didn't it?"

Blurr had a new favorite human and didn't know his name.

"Guess you'd rather let Ratchet take a look at you," Bulkhead said. "Is all that from the crash?"

He gestured at... all of Blurr.

And.

Oh, right.

The death map.

Blurr shook his head, unsure how to explain it was just part of his protoform markings (which was true but not the entire truth) without access to his vocabulary. Instead, the adult human asked, "You got a long name, kid?"

He did not-- but he had better than struggling to spit it out.

Blurr produced his identification.

"'Agent Blurr of Cybertron Intelligence'," Bumblebee read. "Holy scrap, you're not just Elite Guard, you're a spy?"

Blurr tossed off a salute that could be generously described as 'sloppy.'

“Cool!” Sari said with a grin.

"You're here to spy on the Decepticons!" Bumblebee concluded, half right. "And then you got stuck in Allspark Fragment Stuff. Wow, that sucks a lot."

"Do you think Ratchet can fix your voice?" Sari asked, and Blurr shook his head-- then carefully tapped the adult human's wrist, where his chronometer was.

"It'll just take time?" the adult guessed, and again, Blurr nodded. "So you three can get him back to your place, right? Get him checked out and all that, give him the time to get his voice back?"

"Sure thing, Captain Fanzone!" Bulkhead answered-- and then jolted. "Oh, right-- I'm Bulkhead, this is Bumblebee, that's Sari Sumdac, she's like an organic sparkling, and this is Captain Carmine Fanzone, he's a police officer, it's like an enforcer but... more human."

Blurr committed his new favorite human's name to memory.

---

Later, a transmission to Cybertron went out from the Autobots’ base.

"This is Ratchet Minor of the Orion reaching out to Longarm Prime of Cybertron Intelligence. Agent Blurr revealed himself to my team’s younger members in the face of injury and exhaustion. He’ll have the full report for you soon, but around six weeks ago, he was taken captive by a human with an Allspark fragment, only ending up free a few megacycles ago, resulting in minor injury, understandable trauma, and an ongoing-- but ebbing-- nonverbal episode. He’s bunking at our base for now, and given how he keeps leaning towards the nearest EM field and gently prodding humans, I’m not inclined, as a medic, to sign off on his full return to solo fieldwork just yet.

"His prognosis is good, generally, but his spark readings are strange, and I want to keep an optic on those. They’re not unhealthy, exactly, but they suggest long-term isolation-- so long term the math almost can’t add up to Blurr’s age. He’d have to have been a loner since he was a sparkling.

"Please advise stat if there’s anything I shouldn't go poking at in my capacity as a medical provider."

Two: Interim Scenes
Scenes from after Rise of the Constructicons and Fistful of Energon

Notes: Blurr sticks around to actually do something! Sort of! Well, he knows he's still on the hook to sacrifice himself, probably for Bumblebee and/or Sari, so at least he's not going anywhere. He's trying not to involve himself too much in Autobot affairs, because his job is just to watch and report back on all these people.

I haven't really decided if Starscream is a also looping, here, so I tried to be vague about it.

And once again, these eps are on YouTube, posted by Hasbro: Rise of the Constructicons and Fistful of Energon

Rise of the Constructicons

"We don't have what Mixmaster and Scrapper think they most value," Blurr said, shrugging, "and even if all of us were in agreement that we wanted to teach them better roommate manners than they have? As it stands they were a danger to Sari who is considerably more fragile than the rest of us."

"I don't like that they chose Decepticon, no matter what I said to Bulkhead," Optimus Prime mused. He was so much younger than most Optimus Primes Blurr had known, and reminded him more of Rodimus, in a lot of ways. Except the average Rodimus valued fun, and this Optimus seemed to have forgotten he was still allowed to have any. (Blurr didn't want any; there was a difference.)

"They could change their minds," Blurr said, "but it is their right really. And it may-- it's important to remember and important for the younger bots to learn that Decepticons are just Cybertronians like any of the rest of us. They may be taller and stronger but that's how they're forged-- they have sparks and processors and T-cogs just like Autobots. The Constructicons aren't different people for having chosen the side with the pay they value. ... They aren't bad people for having chosen the side that will pay them instead of just... putting them up. I say that as someone getting paid while being put up," Blurr pointed out.

"... Is that... your view as an Intelligence agent?" Optimus asked. "That Decepticons are just-- people?"

"Everyone is just people regardless of faction or lack thereof," Blurr said, trying not to think of-- Swindle, yes, and the Tankors, of Sky-Byte and Zetca, and himself. "And that's more something that I remind myself of as a person with a functional moral compass who happens to be an Intelligence agent than anything related to Intelligence work itself. I effectively have a license to kill and as long as I don't go after someone politically important to the Autobot Commonwealth? The only explanation I'd have to give is that my victim was somehow a threat to Cybertron-- possibly to keeping my cover or completing my mission. If I don’t remind myself that people are people that even enemies of the state I serve are people... who else will?"

"And you really don’t blame the Constructicons for choosing Megatron?"

"They're very young Megatron has something they want and I'm fairly certain Megatron is charismatic like I'm fast." That had to be a special ability. "We don't have anything they want and aren't equipped to house them and Sari-- and honestly shouldn't Sari come first?"

"... That's... a surprising attitude for a member of the Elite Guard," Optimus said.

Blurr shrugged. "She's effectively a sparkling-- and one whose mentor is missing and who has therefore been given to your care. Her health safety and comfort should come first."

"You say these things like they're so easy," the Prime sighed, and Blurr... was reminded again of how young he was. Older than than Bulkhead and Bumblebee, younger than Blurr was supposed to be. Young. "So simple. Here’s the most right thing; do that."

"Simple yes easy no and also? I think very fast-- I have to or I could wreck myself all too easily." And he had a lot more experience than he ought to have. "And it helps to be able to say to yourself 'whatever the consequences of doing the most-right thing are I will weather them.'"

"There shouldn't be consequences for doing the right thing," and he sounded very much like an Optimus Prime, in that moment. "Rewards, maybe."

"Consequences can be positive," Blurr said. "When they're not and it's the right thing to do anyway it's usually because there’s some injustice forged into the system."

"And when the Constructicons decide to make use of their freedom of choice to hurt someone?"

"We stop them or put it right if we can’t get out ahead of them."

"As simple as that."

"Please note I am not promising it will be easy. But who else is there to do it?"

Blurr had expected to demonstrate for Bumblebee that he couldn't rely on speed and nothing else, and probably die defending him, possibly Sari, conceivably both. Helping an almost-too-young (and not at all sanctified) Optimus Prime work his way through command decisions after the fact was... unusual and surprising.

A Fistful of Energon

"I suppose you’ll want to tell me I overused mods, as well."

Blurr shrugged. "Mods are mods. I think if you made a mistake it was teaming up with Lockdown." Lockdown, like Bulkhead, was another new face, someone Blurr hadn't encountered or heard of in a past life, but... really. A neutral bounty hunter who liked to take parts of his bounties as trophies and graft them onto himself? Prowl should have known better than to trust him. Sari would have known better than to trust him.

Yikes.

"You don't use mods," Prowl said, and there was a question in there somewhere.

"Mods can be removed. I don't like working with things that can be taken away from me and used against me in the event of my capture." That, and he really didn't like the idea of getting a mod that seemed like it would be good for him, complete him somehow, and lose it in the next life. This reality had dizzying options for modifications; Blurr wasn't even sure a lot of them would be possible in any other reality.

"If you go into a fight expecting to lose, have you not already lost?"

Blurr sighed out a vent. Cyberninjas. "Having lost fights and been captured and by many legal standards tortured I would like to note that you can lose a fight despite confidence and preparedness as well."

"I hadn't meant to bring up--"

"I know," Blurr said. "And I'm not upset. Mods are-- what you do to your frame is your business no matter how prickly Ratchet gets. How you fight is your business."

"I don't disagree that Lockdown... was a mistake," Prowl allowed.

"Didn't he capture Optimus Prime last year while working for a ranking Decepticon?"

"I thought since he was after Starscream, he was after him for Ultra Magnus," Prwl admitted. "Why would Megatron pay to have Starscream brought in? Don't Decepticons take pride in hunting down their own traitors?"

... That entirely depended, in Blurr's experience-- but Prowl was old enough to have been drafted for the Great War, here, and Blurr? Wasn't, and didn't dare forget that. "I've heard that," Blurr allowed, "but in more modern times it hasn't been my experience? Particularly given that only Megatron has the rank to enforce a bounty on Starscream among the Decepticons and he is as far as we know a pretty busy mechanism what with catching up with the last fifty--" years. No, "stellar cycles and all. He doesn't have all his forces here on Earth and no one really wants that so it makes sense that he'd outsource dealing with Starscream to whoever has the time and bearings to attempt it."

Although last time around, Starscream had turned out to be a shockingly decent political leader, once given the opportunity. Megatron, here, seemed better at it than Starscream, and considerably better at it than the average Megatron, so if political acumen was most of what Starscream had to recommend him, it was perhaps no wonder he'd gotten 'overthrow the faction' frustrated.

That and the Allspark business.

"Is this-- were you in Intelligence, during the war?" Prowl asked.

"... I'm older than Optimus Prime but not by that much,” Blurr said, hedging. (This was not what he'd done during the Great War, any Great War. Most recently, he was a Wrecker, and he doubted Prowl would approve.) "How old do I look?"

"Forgive me," Prowl said, immediately. "The scarring-- it... implies age. Experience."

"It’s protoform markings," Blurr said. "I've had these since I came online-- I know they look like scars in the right light but they're really not."

And they weren't.

Scars were wounds that healed.

Blurr's death map... those wounds had killed him.

There'd never been any opportunity to heal from them.

"They're very unusual protoform markings," Prowl said, and Blurr reached into his subspace and produced a creche image of himself-- tiny and narrow, with wide optics, a solemn expression, and death's sketchbook across his baby plating.

It looked a lot worse on a sparkling. There was so much of it.

"That's... that must have been a lot to carry, so young."

"I've never known growing up without it," which was at least true. Every time Blurr had had to grow up, he'd carried at least some of those marks with him.

Prowl gave him a long look, mostly inscrutable behind both his visor and his cyberninja calm. "What do you think you would have done, during the Great War?"

Blurr said, "Realistically?" as he considered what he knew of this Great War. “It depends a little on what the Decepticons actually wanted over what we propagandize but-- realistically probably something I'd regret by now. Most wars seem to be like that."

"... You would have considered joining the Decepticons?"

"As I said it depends greatly on what they actually wanted and honestly depending on when during the war I came online if I would have been allowed to know what they were fighting for. Despite being a fairly high-ranking Intelligence agent now I'm not actually authorized to know anything much about the Decepticons beyond modern propaganda-- which I frankly disbelieve if for no other reason than that the Decepticons haven't been nearly as disruptive and destructive to Earth as they could be even with their numbers so low. You might know their original motives better than I could guess having actually been alive during the Great War."

"Do I seem so old to you?"

"... You were a Great War draft dodger plea-bargained into a position as one of Master Yoketron's apprentices and I know this because you have spent the last fifty-plus stellar cycles on a ship with four mechanisms of interest two of my direct superior officer's Academy classmates one record-breaking yet expelled former cadet and Ratchet Minor. I'd done a thorough background check on you stellar cycles before being assigned this mission." Did Prowl think Blurr was sloppy?

"... Why? Even before the Allspark?"

"Again: you were on a ship with two former classmates of the head of Cybertron Intelligence three potential embarrassments to Sentinel Prime and an Omega Sentinel pilot-- even without your own personal connection to Yoketron you would have been a person of interest." And Blurr had been using his clearance to check on various names he remembered, given the stark and alarming differences in just Ultra Magnus, and the sheer abundance of Primes in the world. But also because Prowl was a person of interest.

"You're such an able fighter that it's terribly easy to forget that you're also a spy."

"I'm a well-informed bodyguard," Blurr said, "on a mission that required someone Longarm Prime could both trust and spare and since his position generally doesn't require a bodyguard that was me. I'm not the best field agent he has but I send very thorough reports very quickly and I don’t shirk on my research."

That, at least, got a little smirk of a smile out of Prowl, and the acknowledgement, "You certainly do not."

Three: SUV
Society of Ultimate Villainy-- or, oh right, this is a SwindBlurr AU!

Notes: If I were fully, properly following the advice that a Canon Divergence AU should start at the point of divergence? I could have started here. The keystone scene is in this one. I didn't quite hit all the points, but... I really do enjoy writing Swindle, and TFA Swindle has that interesting little foible where he's always going to do whatever brings him the most profit. And I said to myself, I said, "Okay, but can I make that shit romantic?"

And for the last time in this AU, you can watch Society of Ultimate Villainy on YouTube. Much of the episode gets skimmed over, because... of course it does. Despite their obvious chemistry, Nanosec/Slo-Mo isn't what you'd call a major ship in the fandom.

Also Slo-Mo is named after an actual human woman, Samantha Lomow. S. Lomow. If you are planning to raise children and reading this fanfiction, please, do not name your children in such a way that their only options are supervillain or Monster High character.

---

The most disappointing thing about Brainstorm's little jobberdoo was that it worked.

It did work!

It let Swindle hop from reality to reality-- from Swindle to Swindle-- gathering useful, sometimes profitable memories along the way. It didn't make him actually live every other Swindle's life in real time, which was nice, but he still got the memories. And given that Swindle had paid handsomely for something that could get him to Blurr, Brainstorm did an admirable job of that, too. Swindle always popped up on the same planet as Blurr, an as close as circumstances allowed, usually on the same landmass, sometimes even the same polity.

Unfortunately, this tended to lead Swindle to a lot of rather mangled corpses.

Occasionally, he'd hit the big red button and find himself human, which meant that at least he was more likely to find a nice neat marker with a name that sort of invoked "Blurr" as a concept than a heap of decaying meat-- sometimes, those markers would effectively be shrines to a racer, a driver, who'd died doing what he loved, or once in a while, put his life on the line to protect someone else. (Always dramatic, usually messy, sometimes heroic. Certain phrases Swindle had committed to memory) Those markers tended to be covered in little scraps of tribute, a bit like seeing vials of innermost energon, only it seemed to be anything blue, pictures of Blurr as he had been in that life, or, with some regularity, lipstick kisses.

It got to the point where, if Swindle popped up human, he'd buy a tube of lipstick before looking for Blurr.

(Yes, he knew it was gendered. It was more or less gendered among Cybertronians. It was still a gesture he could make that wouldn't attract extra attention.)

So: the device worked.

But the trouble was, it was starting to look like there were infinite realities where Blurr could exist, but there was only ever one Blurr alive at a time. Swindle could find as many dead Blurrs as he could imagine, which was getting uncomfortable, because Blurr hadn't told him about nearly all the deaths.

Swindle gave himself five more realities before he went back to Brainstorm with that little revelation, and carefully didn't mention paying to have the science fine-tuned. Sometimes that worked, if the project was interesting enough. (He’d pay for it if he had to. The shanix were there. It was just nice not to have to pay for something like that.)

This time, he was on Earth, charming little planet, interesting fuel, in North America, which was familiar enough, in the city of Detroit, which was new to him. It seemed to be a bit further along the timeline than most realities-- not by much, only by a century or so, but enough that it looked like humans had started cleaning up after themselves in a 'we remembered we need nature' sort of way.

It was also, ostensibly, a post-war reality; neither Swindle nor Swindle's localized memories really believed the fighting was anything but on pause, but there had been an official accord signed, and there hadn't been more than skirmishes in millions of years.

But here was Swindle.

On Earth.

With the knowledge that a few select Decepticons and some notable Autobot names were on the planet, as well. (Not that his memories considered the names all that notable, but Swindle knew well enough to be careful around anyone named Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, Ratchet, or especially Prowl.)

So, with any luck, Blurr was also on Earth, and hadn't yet found a bomb to fling himself onto or a train to throw himself in front of-- which meant Swindle needed to work quickly, because the whole 'the factions have an accord' situation was definitely a limited-time situation, and the clock was ticking.

The plan he'd "inherited" from the local Swindle was a technology-stopping device to sell to Megatron, which was a refreshing change of pace from 'hand over whatever Megatron asks for whenever he asks for it if you value your life more than your equipment.' The key component it needed was in someone else’s possession, a temporal device powered by an Allspark fragment, but with a little bit of research into how to get an Allspark fragment, Swindle discovered that Detroit was chock full of human outliers he could use to "obtain" the components of his device without risking his own plating.

Granted, involving outside contractors introduced new points of failure, but Swindle wasn't as invested in the plan as he could have been.

Oh, he could practically taste the shanix-- credits-- money he could get from Megatron for solving his little Autobot problem, and he did feel a significant urge, practically a compulsion, to chase that profit down.

But.

But.

He wasn't the Swindle this reality had before, not completely-- he knew what Blurr was worth to him, and Megatron had never paid out quite so richly. On top of that, he'd been around a few more blocks and picked up some extra life experience on his little jaunt, and had a much better idea of what sorts of plots might succeed and which might fail spectacularly.

This plan had the markings of an interesting failure, and Swindle was ready to abandon it if it became convenient.

... Which, all right, was a lot easier to do if all the components he needed were stolen, by other people, who could be handled by the local authorities. Nothing he'd paid for, no one he gave a slag about, nothing of value lost. And he had the schematics, which he could still sell to Megatron-- just not for as much.

Never let it be said that Swindle worked without a backup plan.

Or at least the new, improved, savvier Swindle wouldn't, from here on out.

---

"It's not that I don't think I can catch them on my own," Bumblebee said, and Blurr tried not to hear I can't catch them on my own, "it's that one of them has some kind of Allspark-powered slow-down weapon thingy, and-- I'm fast. I know I'm fast. But you..."

"I wasn't given the name Blurr because of how fast I talk that's true," Blurr allowed. He hadn't even hit top speeds while he'd been on Earth. Bumblebee had no idea how fast he actually was.

"So you might be able to keep moving at at least regular-bot speeds while everybody else is stuck," Bumblebee agreed.

"I'm not technically supposed to be joining in on your work," Blurr pointed out, "And I don't-- I don't relish the thought of being hit by yet another Allspark-powered anything." He'd sooner give all the pieces to the Decepticons and wash his hands of the whole mess.

That wasn't going to be allowed to happen, but still.

"As far as we can tell, all she can make it do is slow things down," Bumblebee promised him, "and not for long, either-- just long enough for her and her crew to get away. I'm okay and, uh. I've been hit by it... a lot." Bumblebee offered a look that was equal parts wry and sheepish, and Blurr patted his shoulder.

(It was... odd, to be so integrated, especially into a group containing so much of what was usually Autobot brass. It made Blurr wonder when the other shoe would drop, since his shot at Blitzwing had turned into a minor fender bender, and there hadn't been any call for his protection since. Maybe this was it, but-- this didn't sound like Bumblebee was thinking 'speed is everything' so much as 'how to use speed creatively,' or possibly 'you don't have to ask everyone for help to get any help.')

Bumblebee filled him in on the recent, more inexplicable thefts-- the team-up of human “villains” (the local legal term for someone who not only committed crimes, but dressed up in a specific outfit in order to commit those crimes) seemed to be stealing components for something-- and swore he and Sari would be there as backup. Potentially extremely slow backup, but backup nonetheless.

And Blurr was, not unreasonably, better at tailing someone unobtrusively than Bumblebee was-- he lacked a police "cherry top" light, for one thing, and even a muscle car was more subtle than a light-up signal that the police were around.

Although like Bumblebee, Blurr was a lighter build-- even less armored. Climbing up the fire escape to the building where the villain team was constructing-- something-- at the behest of...

... well, for frag's sake, that was a new-to-this-conflict Decepticon. Did Bumblebee not know how to scan for energy signatures? Blurr finished hauling himself up the side of the building-- by climbing, not by running, he wanted to be a little more subtle, and it was hard to play with momentum versus gravity subtly.

"Do you not remember our deal?" the Decepticon asked Slo-Mo, the one with the Allspark-powered speed manipulation device. "I help you, you help me?"

"Attention humans if you haven't already worked it out you are in the process of being double-crossed by a Decepticon I would strongly advise dispersal to a safe distance while I find out if this device is a bomb or something considerably more esoteric."

Slo-Mo raised her device, and it was like trying to run through ballistics gel-- but Bumblebee had been right, and Blurr still moved quickly enough to make a reasonably good grab for the Allspark fragment. Nanosec, however, was unaffected by the beam and moved faster still, sweeping Slo-Mo out of the way.

The Decepticon stood up.

"If you good people would excuse us," he said, warm and smiling and that-- that was Swindle's face, Swindle's face on a bulk instead of a minibot, Swindle's colors, Swindle's optics. Swindle's smile. Just-- taller and broader and-- and-- not the Swindle who'd welded scrap to his exposed leg strut to carry Blurr to medical treatment. Not the Swindle who'd been in the medical berth next to him, listened to a drugged-up Blurr babble on about loops and curses, and how many Blurrs he'd been. This wasn't the Swindle who'd done his books for him, who'd kept an optic on him for a few months, who'd finally asked tell me about the alternate realities again, but without the painkillers and at a steady speed? This was just-- some local Decepticon with a familiar name, who told his human allies, "I do believe I can handle this particular Autobot. No need for any of you to put yourselves at risk."

He looked more like Swindle than he sounded; maybe that would help. "Yes why don't we dance a round or two I do enjoy being underestimated."

It was fine. Blurr would have the mechanism in stasis cuffs in seconds-- minutes, if the Allspark-powered human interfered.

"Ought we to abandon an ally in such a moment?" the Angry Archer asked, so Blurr did something he rarely needed to do, and only used here as a scare tactic.

He drew his saw, and set it to reciprocating.

Slo-Mo raised her device again, and Blurr tried not to shiver at the Allspark fragment so prominently displayed; Nanosec stepped half in front of her, not blocking her shot but covering her body, which was not what Blurr would have expected of him, frankly. The Angry Archer raised his bow, and Professor Princess brandished her wand and cried out, "Nasty yucky weapons!"

"It's a tool, sweetie," Swindle told her, smiling. "Autobots are only allowed to fight with tools, or they get into trouble. But tools can be dangerous, and Blurr here-- well. Once again, why don't you all get to a safe vantage point and let me handle him?"

"You think he won't take you apart with that thing?" Slo-Mo asked. "Take point all you want but let us handle support, see?"

"I find it interesting you're willing to address me by name," Blurr said. He wasn't famous, here, not a racer or a Wrecker, he was a dour, unfriendly nobody who just happened to be an important official's bodyguard. There was no reason Swindle should know Blurr's name at all, and there seemed to be a cultural thing about naming your enemies, at least among these Decepticons. "Generally Decepticons seem to ignore that Autobots have names and stick with things like 'little Autobot' or 'puny Autobot.'"

Swindle smiled, wide and warm. "Let me once again suggest that a little bit of distance might be the best way to have this discussion? A mechanism like me does pick up a lot of interesting information..."

It was Slo-Mo who got it first. "You've got dirt on him! I gotcha not every pesky Autobot can be squeaky clean huh? Don't need extra ears messing up your deal. We won't be far-- Nanosec grab the Professor, Archer? Cover our exit."

Blurr waited for the humans to file out.

"You can put your tool away," Swindle said, casually suggestive. "I assure you, I'm better equipped."

"But are you faster without your backup in range?"

"All the more reason," he said, spreading his hands, "for you to put that thing away and not make them nervous. I just want to see how you react to... a little information I've been sitting on."

Which made very little sense, really; Blurr hadn't actually done anything in this life worthy of blackmail. He’d cooperated with the narrative when it pushed at him, but otherwise? He’d been using this lifetime to try to process the losses of his previous lifetime. "I'd be very interested to hear what you think you know." He put his saw away anyhow. He rarely needed it.

"I know how you flinch," Swindle started, and Blurr frowned, "when you have to remind yourself this isn't the same person you knew in another life, this is someone new," and Blurr felt the bottom drop out of his fuel tank. "I know you're the worst bookkeeper, the absolute worst, and it's because you don't want to care about anything you can't take with you," and that was-- gentle, it wasn't supposed to be gentle, there was supposed to be a whole exasperated argument about it, but it did boil down to if I can't take it with me what does it matter? versus you have it anow, use it properly and take better care of it. "And I know how long I've been trying to find you alive, Blurr."

"Swindle," Blurr choked out, and before anything could get silly, just saying names back and forth, "My Swindle you're my Swindle you know me--"

"The last thing you said to me was a message in basic text-- 'I'll miss you if I remember,'" Swindle confirmed, and Blurr ran into his arms, whether or not his arms were open. He ran, he jumped, he threw his own arms around Swindle's neck, and he clung there.

---

On an adjacent rooftop, Nanosec said, "That doesn't exactly look like blackmail to me."

"Nay," Angry Archer declaimed, "that is some private disagreement our investor has managed to settle through simple communication."

"The robots do romance," Slo-Mo mused. "Good for them."

"Ew, cooties." Professor Princess was only six.

---

For a long, long moment, nothing mattered but Swindle; his EM field, living metal that was his living metal, relearning the feel of him with Blurr's new, more useful crest, the way his much-larger arms came up around Blurr to hold him close, the feel of Swindle's faceplate against Blurr's, of Swindle's torso as Blurr wrapped his legs around to hold on that way, too. He said things, but-- mostly just Swindle's name.

Swindle.

His Swindle.

(He knew better, he'd told Swindle he knew better, than to think of anyone as my anyone, because that would mess up his ability to deal with the next iteration of them he met as neutrally as possible. He knew better.)

His Swindle.

"I missed you," Blurr said, and something he hadn't dared say before his last life ended, "I love you so much. How-- how are you here how did this happen what-- how do you remember-- did you die what happened?"

"I didn't die," Swindle told him, with an air of reassurance that Blurr could actually believe. "I hired Brainstorm to build me something that could find you, get me to you. I-- Blurr, I had to go through a lot of realities where finding you meant finding out how you’d died there." He freed a hand to touch Blurr's neck, the closest death mark to optic level. "This is the first time I've found you alive."

"I'm sorry you had to see all that-- you hired Brainstorm? You did this on purpose?" Blurr asked, because-- "You-- came for me?"

"You left me control of everything," Swindle said, softly. "Everything. You-- didn't need to tell me you love me, because you said it with that. You made me your executor and primary beneficiary." He cupped Blurr's face. "I love you, too."

He hired Brainstorm. He spent money-- Blurr didn't know how much, but it didn't matter, because... Swindle couldn't bring it with him. He'd spent money, and then he'd walked away from whatever was left.

To find Blurr.

Primus, Primus, he wanted to ask if they could go home, it burned at the back of his mouth, can we go home, can you take me home, but if the answer was no it would hurt. And Swindle had come for him. Swindle might be able to come for him, come after him, every time, if they were careful, if the story always got Blurr first.

"Let's conjunx?" he asked, which was not the most romantic way to offer it. "Please. Please I want-- I want you forever I want-- I want-- I don't want to wait I don't want to try and hope anymore I want you I want us I want that bond for-- this life and every life after I want you Swindle I'll quit Cybertron Intelligence and go into racing again I'll make all that money back for you if you want it just--"

Swindle kissed him.

---

"Seriously," Bumblebee muttered, "how hard is it to turn enough so we can see your dang faction sigils? That’s too much purple for an Autobot!"

Sari peered through her binoculars. "Maybe he likes it because it matches his eyes? Blurr wouldn't let some random Decepticon kiss him, we know that, he’s too careful with-- everything."

"Yeah, but he's a spy, so he might let a specific Decepticon kiss him for spy reasons, or maybe there's some weird spy romance going on, spies are complicated. They gotta get close to the enemy, right, and sometimes they get too close, if you know what I mean?"

"It hurts me to say this, Bee, but I think you watch too much TV."

---

Blurr melted.

He missed how normal amounts of armor let him hide most of the evidence death left on his protoform, but there was actually a lot to be said for getting thoroughly kissed with only the absolutely necessary armor dimming the sensation of the frame holding you.

The kiss broke.

Blurr wanted more.

Frag. Primus. Fuck, he wanted more of that. Forever.

"... was I saying something..."

"Don't race," Swindle told him, firmly, and Blurr sort of whimpered at it, for some reason. "I just found you-- alive and whole-- and I'm not losing touch with you for Autobot racing contracts, not for a long while, because I can't see having your winnings being more important to me than having you for... a good long time. Don't race. Stay. We'll conjunx, and you'll stay."

Blurr made another needy little noise that was probably agreement, then, "... Decepticons don't race?"

"... Not the way you're used to."

"I could learn," Blurr offered.

"I still don't want you to. Not yet. You're worth-- that's a thing that needs saying," Swindle said. "You know how there are little differences, in a new reality, a new life, that seem to come with the frame?"

"Mm-hm I can't slow down when I talk," Blurr agreed, "it annoys people and then sometimes if I'm having a bad time I can't talk at all which annoys me."

"Right. I'm constantly calculating maximum profit, figured in shanix, and pursuing that profit is... almost compulsive? I literally can't not do what monetarily profits me the most, even if it gets the slag beaten out of me. A little frustrating, I'm sure you can understand. You don't have anything to worry about--"

"I'm not worth more to you than money," Blurr said, and Swindle kissed him again, his cheek, the corner of his mouth.

"You're worth everything you left me and everything I left to come find you and probably some loose change on top," Swindle said, and Blurr whined and kissed Swindle, very thoroughly.

He'd had a long racing career, back before, and knew better than to keep money he didn't want to evaporate in Cybertronian banks. The interest had been good, and he'd paid people who liked to invest in things to invest in things for him. The long and short of it was, in his immediately-previous life, Blurr had amassed more money than any one person should probably have-- he could have repaired, relocated, and run the bar on his savings for a lot longer than he'd gotten to without any worries.

Swindle could put a number on Blurr, on his feelings for Blurr, and that was worrying... but the number a couple orders of magnitude higher than any sensible bot would be willing to pay to get him away from Swindle, and that was reassuring. Swindle would only sell him out if the price was right, and the price was ridiculous, which meant, in every practical sense, that Swindle wouldn't sell him out.

Blurr would sell what was left of his spark before betraying Swindle, who had crossed frag knew how many realities to come to Blurr, and had turned himself into a lodestar in five exchanged sentences.

So that just left outside threats, and as long as Blurr went first, the worst possible outside threat could only briefly separate them. Swindle could find him again.

Probably.

They could hash that out later.

"What are you doing with the human 'villains'?" Blurr asked, instead, "Because you probably shouldn't be."

"I needed a reason to be here, and I do have an interesting weapons design-- it just needs one more component, and that shouldn't be too difficult to get away from Slo-Mo."

"Her Allspark fragment I surmise?" Blurr guessed.

"That is the only really esoteric thing she's got," Swindle said, warm in his agreement-- and Blurr sighed out a heavy vent and rested his forehead against Swindle's shoulder. "Though I think it needs to be the entire timepiece."

"Don't. Don't." He looked up at Swindle, after a moment. "Your people should be collecting those and dispersing them throughout the fleet or the empire or whatever you call it because each fragment still has all the power and capabilities of the intact Allspark."

"... All the...?"

"You can make people with it," Blurr clarified. "New sparks. Reverse the Autobot genocide of warbuilds. Fix everything. You should do it respectfully because the Allspark seems to be semi-sapient and capable of spite and I don't want to be nearer any active fragments than I have to be but-- they're not power sources Swindle. Not crystal batteries. Every single one of them is a tiny portable Vector Sigma and you could be--"

"-- buying a lot of leeway for my lovely Autobot conjunx-to-be by bringing that information, and every Allspark fragment the two of us can gather, to Megatron," Swindle filled in, smoothly. "Or if the old warmonger has gotten a little fixated-- good mech, this Megatron, one of the best, but he can get a bit of tunnel vision-- then to one of the more pragmatic members of High Command. Strika, here, or Shockwave, if I can find him. So weird to not have Soundwave as an option."

Poor Swindle had no idea how weird Soundwave was, here. At least not according to the bridge repair team's collection of reports. ... Speaking of which, "I have to go back to the local Autobots' base before I can leave with you," Blurr said. "If we're buying leeway I have a lot of information to steal. I should-- I should probably also at least-- Longarm Prime is a very rare Autobot in power who isn't a complete crankshaft I realize it's a weird impulse to want to send him a resignation message that confirms I'm all right not suborned and happy but-- he's been consistently kind and I don't want him thinking he has to rescue me from you."

"If it helps you rest easy," Swindle said, shrugging a little. "Comms only, or messages, I don't actually want you going anywhere near Autobot space again-- not here. It might not be easy for you to get back out again."

"... I've never actually defected before," Blurr admitted. "Everything before-- it was after the War which I managed to miss here."

"Good," Swindle said, firmly. "Good, Blurr, I'm glad you missed it, it was as bad as-- not our war, I can't say that, you've had so many." He settled Blurr's weight into one arm, again, hand free to stroke Blurr's cheek. Blurr leaned into it, hungry for it. "It was as bad as the Great War we knew together, only without all the interesting divisions on the Autobot side. No Senate, no Institute, everybody united under that deeply disconcerting version of Ultra Magnus, either loyally committing quiet atrocities or terrified by propaganda. You don't-- you don't deserve to be an Autobot here. You deserve better. You don't have to be a Decepticon if you don't want to be, but you're not-- you're so much better than a local Autobot."

"What will we tell people we don't want to tell everything?" Blurr asked. "I want-- we just met here. We don't have a history here nobody's going to believe love at first sight or anything like that--"

"You're an Intelligence Agent and I'm an arms dealer too useful for anyone to permanently damage," Swindle told him. "You have just enough loyalty to the so-called Autobot Cause not to detail how we met, as all evidence of it was scrubbed, and there's no incentive for me to blather on about it since it would upset my future conjunx. If pressed?" Swindle smiled, and there was a warmth in it that either made this face a very nice face, or that was just for Blurr, and either way he liked it. "We met, really met, in a bar."

Blurr kissed him again.

And then they started to plan.

---

"For a hot second there I thought things were gonna have to get violent," Slo-Mo said, hand on her timepiece. “Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you two managed to work out whatever it was you had to work out, got it all squared away, but at least one of you is still one of those Autobots."

"Allow me to introduce us properly," Swindle said, an arm still around Blurr, who was so much smaller than Swindle was used to, and who was also clinging like he was afraid to let Swindle go. "My name is Swindle-- I'm something of an intergalactic arms dealer. This is the lovely Agent Blurr of Cybertron Intelligence-- for now. I understand he's planning to quit that line of work."

Blurr flashed him a smile. "I didn't think there was any chance you would remember me," he said, which was an interesting way to shade the truth.

"Blurr. How could anyone forget you?"



"Let me rephrase I didn't think you'd be allowed to keep your memories of me." Clever, beautiful bot-- generally, the local Decepticons didn't stoop to nonsense like Shadowplay, but, one, the humans wouldn't know that, and two, the younger set of Autobots would easily believe at least that Blurr could believe that, if not that Decepticons would go around wiping short-term memory banks.

And the Decepticons would believe it was something Blurr believed, because, "Blurr, darling, that sounds like something your people would come up with. Can't be tempted to defect if you can't remember why you might want to defect. My side tends to take its time trusting defectors, but we do still take them."

"But you still need Slo-Mo's timepiece," Nanosec said, protective. Good for him.

"Technically--"

"Let me see your schematics," Blurr said, and Swindle blinked at him. "... Let me see your schematics I know you have them and I know more about Allspark fragments than you do."



"Aptly evidenced by the fact that I've no notion what an ‘all-spark fragment' might well be," said the Angry Archer.

"The crystal powering Slo-Mo's timepiece device is an Allspark fragment they have. Unique effects on machinery. Narrowly defined when the crystals are on their own but their capabilities can be expanded by installing them into other devices. That said they are not exactly safe for long-term use because the Allspark is not diminished by being fragmented and it is at least a semi-sapient artifact and capable of spite."

The humans processed all that, or tried to. Little Professor Princess looked close to dozing off. "So what's that mean for, just for example's sake, me?" Slo-Mo asked.

"If the Allspark doesn't like how you're using that fragment of it it may engineer situations where you're more likely to get caught and divested of it," Blurr said. "I've had unfortunately-direct experience with this phenomenon and the Allspark-using human in that case was duly arrested."

"It doesn't wanna be used against Autobots?" Nanosec guessed.

"I don't think faction matters to it but it wants to be used to create mechanical life it doesn't raise objections to that. So." He elbowed Swindle, more or less gently. "Schematics Swindle. Let me see."

And, well.

That was interesting enough, and if it were true, it would put a damper on Swindle's plans and, from what he understood, some of Megatron's. So he handed over a datapad with the schematics for the "pause button" device. "How do you know so much about the Allspark? My side has a lot of wild theorizing."



"Bitter firsthand experience and as much accurate research as my clearance level and assignment could get me," Blurr said. "How big is the area of effect on this thing it seems huge?"



"It should cover the city," Swindle said. "A Cybertronian city would be larger, of course, but--"

"This would backfire on you spectacularly Swindle either scrap this or make it a lot smaller."

Slo-Mo, possibly due to being mechanically minded herself, stepped closer, trying to get a look at the datapad. Blurr sat down, legs folded like a cyberninja, to oblige her, and pulled Swindle down to sit beside him. "How d'you figure that, Agent? Everything seemed pretty sound while we were putting it together."

"What you have to keep in mind is that the Allspark creates mechanical life-- us and others like us," Blurr said.

"Like that odd Wreck-Gar fellow," the Angry Archer offered.

"I didn't get the opportunity to meet him but yes. It creates-- people. Please do not get the wrong idea about that it creates people as unique and independent as you or I and it will equip them with weapons or abilities as it sees fit. You can't guarantee what kind of person you'll get any more than if you created a random human."

Slo-Mo glanced at her timepiece. "So why does it slow down electromechanical devices when it's mounted in here, and why would the scale of Swindle's machine matter to it?"

"You would think that slowing all electromechanical devices in the city wouldn't have any effect on the humans in the city right?" This got nods from all of them, Swindle included. "What about the humans in medcenters-- hospitals-- using electromechanical life support devices? Or those who have some sort of device installed in them for their daily lives like prosthetics or regulators?"



"Ye gods," the Angry Archer exhaled.

"I understand the four of you are thieves but I also understand that grand larceny carries lower legal consequences than whatever one might call 'whoops we didn't realize this could kill people.'"

"So, smaller device," Swindle said, "at least for the demo version, able to be scaled up when used against mechanical life forms, because we'd be slowed along with any life support, and I don't have to fight my sub-contractors over morality."



"And I won't sulk at you," Blurr said, "because I would sulk at you if you did something like that deliberately Swindle. Humans are also just people."

"Don't I know it," he agreed. "My apologies, folks, you think you have a handle on how an alien species works, and then it turns out you've missed a few key details."

"There's still the minor issue that this," Slo-Mo held up her timepiece, "is mine, and I don't feel like giving it up."

Swindle could just take it, he had a lot of ways to just take things, but Blurr said, "It would probably be overpowered for a miniaturized version anyway."

"... Blurr," Swindle said, "Look at the thing, it's tiny."

"Like fun it is," Slo-Mo said. "I built it to scale with the crystal-- find me a small enough crystal and I can build you one, oh..." she held her thumb and forefinger a distance apart that might have closed around the tip of Blurr's smallest finger, and his hands were smaller than Swindle's. "Yea big?"

"You, my dear, are capable of some delicate work," Swindle said, and Slo-Mo favored him with a smirk.

"The only trick is finding spark crystals small enough-- and the right shape. I made my timepiece the way I did because the crystal looks like clock hands."

Blurr peered at it. "Maybe if you used two crystals? They'd need to be very small fragments but-- the search for those fragments is ongoing and frankly they need to get found so they can't be... either dangerously misused or continue adding bots to the city's population."

"Wreck-Gar was a charming fellow, if a bit… scattered," the Angry Archer said, with deliberate charity.

"There are actually several developmental stages we're supposed to go through before maturity," Blurr said. "Creating bots as adults can lead to adults who are understandably if painfully naive at first and extremely focused on whatever task they were created for. It isn't ideal."

"You make kid robots?" Professor Princess asked, the sleepy little thing.

"We do on Cybertron," Blurr agreed. "I'm not entirely sure how I'd compare them to human ages though."

"Kid robots is actually cool," she said, and leaned on her hover-pony to doze back off again.

"But with all that said," Swindle addressed the adult humans, "I think that puts our arrangement on pause, as it were? Until components of the right size make themselves available, at least."

"Not to mention you've got a boyfriend to reconnect with," Nanosec said and Swindle valiantly did not correct him on the position of ‘future conjunx.'

"We do have plans to make," he said, instead. "Do you still want to quit right away?"

"If anyone else was close enough to see me climb you like a ladder then I may not have much choice," Blurr admitted.

"We'll work it all out," Swindle promised him, and hoped he wasn't exaggerating.

---

"So," Sari asked, when Blurr got back to street level, "What were they building?"

"... I talked them out of it," Blurr started. "It was a device to amplify the time-dilation effect of Slo-Mo's timepiece across an area the size of Detroit itself but I did talk them out of it as they hadn't realized that such a device could in fact endanger organic lives. We may in future need to be on the lookout for the effects of a smaller such device but they'll probably target something value-rich such as a bank or shopping center and avoid hospitals et cetera."

"Cool," Bumblebee said, examining his fingertips. "What was up with the Decepticon makeouts?"

Right. Frag. Okay. They'd been acting as backup, of course they would have been observing. But they evidently hadn't heard anything, so... potentially salvageable. Potentially.

"Do you want to keep a secret with me or should I save my explanations for the whole crew?" Blurr asked, instead. "Because if I have to explain it all I'd really like to explain it just the once."

There would be less opportunity to mess up the details.

And, since Sari and Bumblebee exchanged a look and escorted him back to their base, he had a little bit of drive time to figure out exactly how to present those details.

And a little more time than that, as Bumblebee set up events generally, explaining that he'd wanted to catch the so-called Society of Ultimate Villainy himself, which he knew was perhaps not the best idea. In an effort to keep the collar to a minimal number of bots, he'd asked for Blurr's help, on the off chance the "slow-down ray" wouldn't take him all the way out of the fight, and then...

"I'm not saying-- anything, not really, you know? Blurr's a spy, spy stuff can get weird and intense, right? I'm not saying that what we saw means there's a problem, because maybe it's just... weird spy stuff," Bumblebee went on.

"'Weird spy stuff,'" Prowl echoed. "Some sort of... handshake-across-the-aisle agreement not to cross specific lines situation?"

"How fine a line are we painting between 'handshake' and 'liplock'?" Bumblebee asked.

Before that could cause an eruption-- particularly from Ratchet-- Blurr said, "His name is Swindle he's a Decepticon yes but also an arms dealer who will cheerfully sell to all sides of any conflict and I-- love him," which was good to say, and came out softer than he'd expected it to, warmer. "I love him so much and I thought I'd lost him forever."

And, surprisingly, it was Ratchet who sat down across from Blurr. "All right, young bot," and if he was still gruff, it wasn't accusatory. A little stern, a little sympathetic, but he didn't seem as furious as Blurr might have expected. "You're young, but you're bright. Either you've got your reasons, or you're in over your head. Talk us through it so we can help you figure out which."

"I'd say it's both but-- it's probably not both." He offered Ratchet a wry smile, and then vented slowly. "There's only so much I can tell you-- I've been open with the fact that I act as a personal guard much more often than as a field agent which is a decision that dates back to Highbrow Prime as Intelligence head not Longarm Prime. I was tested in the field and..." If he said it just right, if he phrased it correctly, it wouldn't actually be lying to them. Hm. "Imagine a mission where so many things went so wrong that the whole thing was scrubbed from all records and the field agent involved was relegated to personal guard duty to a political official who had never before needed a personal guard."

"You got demoted that hard?" Bulkhead asked. "But-- Head of Cybertron Intelligence-- that's a big job. Personal guard to that bot isn't so bad?"

"Head of Intelligence is a desk job ninety-nine percent of the time and the remaining one percent is usually government functions. I do a lot of data filing and the occasional observation work but I've been fairly decorative for most of my Intelligence career," Blurr said, which was true, just not all of why it was true. Blurr hadn't been trying to be very personable either at the Academy or in his first weeks among the Elite Guard, so he'd been shuffled from unit to unit as they tried to find a place where his appearance and demeanor clicked; Highbrow Prime had seen the movement and decided that must mean Blurr was a hot property.

He was too good to just discharge, but the trouble was, nobody wanted to keep the dour, scarred-looking, talks-too-fast speedster, no matter how good he was in combat.

"But before that," Optimus Prime prompted, "Highbrow Prime sent you on a mission. What can you tell us about that mission? That's relevant to why you... have a close Decepticon contact?"

"... Well. First of all. I don't actually expect this to mean much to you bots but as Decepticon contacts go? Swindle is a very common one being an arms dealer and given the Autobot Commonwealth's preference for not dealing with alien species if at all possible. Swindle will. So for Intelligence agents or Elite Guard working near the borders or a fair amount of Autobot brass Swindle isn't exactly an unknown quantity. I met him..." Blurr paused, and let the moment linger, biting his lower lip. "It's safest to say we really met in a bar," he concluded.

"And you hit it off," Prowl filled in.

"He-- I-- we-- the thing about Swindle," and this? This would be true. "The thing about Swindle is that he sees everything and everyone in terms of value. Monetary yes but-- it's something like my speaking speed it's a running calculation he can't turn off. Swindle will do whatever profits him most and Swindle does look at people in terms of what they're worth to him. And. And he." Everything Blurr left him, everything Swindle left behind to find him, some loose change on top. Everything he'd spent hiring Brainstorm, all the time he'd spent looking for Blurr. "He saw more value in me than I'd expected. It was. In the moment I was surprised to find it so flattering."

Bumblebee tilted his head and said, "Huh."

"Bee," Bulkhead tried to hiss.

"No, it's-- I can kinda see it? You're a newbie spy on your first big mission, you're nervous, and this one Decepticon everybody talks to, apparently, so he knows a lot more Autobots than the average 'con, says you're worth a gazillion credits or something... I can kinda see it. I can't see it as a matter of taste," Bumblebee said, and ruined the moment of understanding. "Blurr my bot, you are a looker, you don't have to settle for a guy wearing that shade of... paint."

"When he doesn't bother to be subtle he uses metallic gold it's nicer. Suits him better." Blurr rolled his shoulders. "It wasn't a problem to get closer to Swindle because he's Swindle. If getting closer to him achieved the mission objective that was fine. ... I saved his life though. That-- I wasn't supposed to do that. Generally we're not even if it's useful the official line is that there's no Decepticon more useful alive than dead but-- that didn't matter. By then I was compromised enough that he'd stopped being a Decepticon to me and become just Swindle and I couldn't--" Blurr vented, and translated. "The incident itself is too searchable but I shoved him most of the way out of the way of something very fast and very heavy and he got clipped hard enough to lose a leg and I-- got hit harder than that.

"And Swindle turned around and saved my life," Blurr said, not fighting whatever that did to his expression all that hard. "He used one of his own guns to weld scrap onto his severed leg strut and sealed my biggest leaks and carried me to a medcenter. He didn't have to you know?" Blurr looked around at the Autobots, trying to quickly judge their reactions. "However valuable I might be I'm never going to be more valuable to Swindle than his own life is and it wouldn't have cost him anything to leave me there."

"Maybe he didn't want to be in an Autobot's debt," Optimus Prime said. He seemed to be trying to remain skeptical, but still looked... touched.

"If I'd died he wouldn't have been in my debt," Blurr said. "No one to collect so no real debt. But-- the rest of the mission-- the rest I can't talk about. We got closer but it's all bound up in--"

"Classified events," Prowl said, and Blurr nodded. Prowl looked extremely neutral, but his tone wasn't cold.

"By the time it all wrapped up I was-- I was pretty sure if I ever saw Swindle again he wouldn't remember me."

"Not to give you a swelled head, Blurr," Ratchet said, "but Bumblebee's right that you're a pretty bot. You'd be hard for anyone to forget."

"Let me rephrase," Blurr said, and told them what he'd told Swindle's humans, "I didn't think he'd be allowed to retain his memories of me."

"... Decepticons do that?" Optimus Prime asked, somewhat rhetorically.

"The mission went really really badly," Blurr neither confirmed nor denied.

"Some Decepticons would," Ratchet said, and he had fought in the Great War, so he might well know. "It's not something I'd put past their Intelligence bots."

"So when I saw him tonight I-- first of all actually," he looked to Bumblebee. "First of all you need to remember to scan for energy signatures you cannot visually discern the difference between an alt mode and an Earth vehicle unless someone is doing something idiotic. Knowing who Megatron has at hand doesn't mean you know every Decepticon who for example has their own ship and a reason to visit Earth."

"My bad," Bumblebee admitted with a shrug. "I thought they'd just boosted an SUV. One more thing to bring 'em in for."

"So there was Swindle and I-- he-- he sent the humans away ostensibly for their safety and he-- he--"

"He proved he still remembered you," Ratchet said.

"I don't know how he got his information but he came to Earth looking for me," Blurr said. "He remembered and he came to find me."

"And participated in a crime spree," Optimus Prime said. "What was the device they were stealing parts for?"

"An amplifier for Slo-Mo's time-dilation device that could cover the whole city and halt every electromechanical device in it but I talked them down to building a much smaller model that wouldn't result in so many human casualties none of them had realized that what they were doing could cause human casualties so in the hopes of the villains having either standards or limits as to what they want to be prosecuted for... well I put off a big demonstration tonight for a much smaller one sometime in the indefinite future at least?"

"A Decepticon cares about human casualties?" Ratchet asked, head tilted, disbelieving.

"Swindle cares," Blurr said. "People dying is business as usual to an arms dealer as long as it's on purpose-- when people die accidentally that tends to be bad business practices."

And Blurr would be upset. They'd both known too many humans not to think of their deaths as counting.

"While that may be an... impressive feat of diplomacy," Prowl said, "the question remains-- what will you do now?"

"Now I don't know for sure," Blurr said, shrugging. "When Swindle leaves Earth I'm going with him." The Autobots jolted, surprised. "Between now and then I suppose that depends as much on the six of you as on anything else."

It wasn't like hacking their computer and copying their reports and records would be hard, or take very long, or require him to connect directly over a hardline. None of them were Intelligence agents or security experts, and all of them were well out of date on standard security protocols.

"You're defecting?" Ratchet, possibly reasonably, seemed shocked.

"No I'll probably just strip my badge," Blurr said. "I-- I've never actually agreed with what we did to the Decepticons and if they didn't keep trying to use them to power weapons I'd think we should stay out of their way and let them have as many Allspark fragments as they can carry since Vector Sigma-- effectively your Key," he told Sari, "but massive and immovable-- is on Cybertron keeping the Autobot Commonwealth populated while the Decepticon Empire spent two million years searching for the Allspark and slowly declining. That's not right. That-- wasn't right of us we shouldn't have done that."

"That's the only way you guys have to make new bots?" Sari asked, folding a hand over her Key.

Blurr nodded. "And it was our side who launched the Allspark into an un... tethered? Undefined?" He looked helplessly to Bulkhead. "Into a spacebridge terminal that didn't have a destination slotted in."

"Which sent it off to a random location somewhere," Bulkhead agreed, slowly, "but really random. Impossible to find, random."

"Like a needle in a haystack?" Sari asked.

"You can get a needle out of a haystack with a magnet," Bulkhead told her. "Like a needle in a junkyard."

"The point of that was to keep the Allspark out of Decepticon hands," Optimus Prime said.

"Which would also probably not coincidentally reduce their numbers by attrition and we couldn't defend the Allspark-- being smaller and bot-portable-- as easily as we could defend the extremely-stationary Vector Sigma," Blurr more-or-less agreed.

"The Decepticons keep trying to shove the Allspark into things and misuse it," Optimus corrected. "I can't imagine it was any different during the Great War."

"Which is really weird actually. That's-- that's really weird. They know what it's for right? They have to know what it's for it's brought nine bots that I know of to life on Earth intact or fragmented they-- they have to know right? That can't be something that was kept from warbuilds or the general population pre-War right?"

Scrap, now he had something he really needed to ask Swindle.

"You need protoforms for it, though?" Bumblebee said. "At least on Cybertron, you can't just shove a garbage truck in front of Vector Sigma and say 'hey, make this a guy, would you?' You gotta have protometal."

"Protoforms are necessary to the process," Prowl agreed.

"I mean-- are they?" Sari asked. "Grimlock sure didn't have a protoform."

"Grimlock didn't start off as a sparkling, either," Bulkhead told her. "He's been an adult bot from the start, all the new bots-- and, uh, 'cons-- have been. So it might be you need protomatter to make a sparkling, which is better for getting stable adult bots someday."

Prowl was frowning deeply.

He'd been the one to find Yoketron, Blurr recalled, in the wake of the theft of all those protoforms during the Great War... but those protoforms had been destined to be sparked as adults and sent to fight the Decepticons in a rush, from what Blurr had found, as a backup in case the Omega Sentinels didn't work out. Master Yoketron had died trying to defend those protoforms, so if you could spark any old alt mode as an adult bot, what had he died for?

Sari said, carefully, "It's probably not a great idea to try to make a kid as an experiment."

"We're letting this distract us," Ratchet said, "from the fact that Blurr, an Intelligence agent, intends to run off with a Decepticon. Young bot, you understand how short that's gonna make your lifespan?"

As long as Blurr went first. "I've been a personal guard for the last eight hundred stellar cycles or so-- since just after being tapped for Intelligence. It was made clear to me early on that my life was likely to be short and spent to protect someone else. If I can spend whatever time I get happy instead of..."

There was an awkward pause as Blurr tried to think of a palatable, believable word for how he'd spent this lifetime-- and while everyone else reframed what they'd seen of Blurr.

"He smiled," Sari said, quietly. "With Swindle. Blurr smiled-- really smiled. Like, a full-on genuine I-didn't-think-his-face-could-do-that smile."

"Decepticons are the bad guys, Sari," Bulkhead reminded.

"Bad guys can still love people," she said, "and bad guys probably still deserve to have kids. And... how do you stop being a bad guy if all you get is fighting and other bad guys?"

... Which was an interesting notion, especially from someone Sari's age.

She clutched at her Key. "I know why we're fighting these Decepticons right now, on Earth, and it's because, you know, they're dangerous, and they wreck stuff, and sometimes it's because they mean to-- and sometimes it's because they don't know what's dangerous to humans." She nodded toward Blurr. "Which is fair. I mean." She looked to Ratchet. "You guys let me eat three cartons of ice cream for dinner and got scared when I threw up before I told you humans need other kinds of food. ... And way less ice cream at one time."

"I'm willing to believe Swindle didn't know that pausing every machine in Detroit would hurt humans," Ratchet allowed, "and even that he'd consider hurting humans he didn't mean to hurt to be bad for business. But he's an arms dealer, and one who's willing to sell anything he's got-- including information. Which Agent Blurr here is just full of."

"Okay yeah but I was gonna ask," Sari said, before Blurr could respond, "I was gonna ask, because I know why we're fighting now, but I don't know why you guys were fighting way back then. What started the war?"

"I don't know," Blurr said, quickly. "I don't and neither does anyone younger than I am. I'm not even a thousand stellar cycles older than Optimus Prime but I'm aware that most of the history we've been taught about the origins of the Great War is on some level propaganda to make our current government look good. We don't know. But Prowl and Ratchet Minor," he could use ranks, too, "were online during the War and might have a better idea of what set it off."

"Pretty sure it got set off because the Decepticons stole the Allspark," Bumblebee said, despite being far too young to have been there.

"They did," Optimus Prime confirmed. "We got it back, but they stole it in the first place."

Sari, though, squared her shoulders and said, "Okay, but that's what-- not why. Why did they do that? Why did they think they needed to do that?"

The Autobots were silent at that, another awkward moment.

"I can ask," Blurr offered. "I'd like to know the answer too."

Four: I Quit
Blurr films a resignation letter for Longarm Prime. Swindle "helps."

Notes: This one was purely written as an RP hook for Celaeno, as something for her Shockwave to react to. It's effectively the same origin story that got told twice in the previous chapter, but... somehow shippier.

---

The camera focuses on Blurr-- who is smiling, softly, at someone out of frame. (It's a highly unusual expression on him-- he smirks, rarely, and there's something predatory that could be called a smile in a really good spar, but Agent Blurr's general range of expression tends to run from neutral to dour.) "Okay please no more distractions this time? I really need to do this in one take it makes it easier to authenticate the vid."

The offscreen person says something indistinct.

"I know you don't think I look like I've been hit with a shell program or impersonated or something but trust me anyone at Intelligence who sees me is going to think that."

Another indistinct something.

"I'm starting now," Blurr says, and looks at the camera, making an effort at schooling his features. (He still looks happy, to the point where his optics are several degrees brighter than normal.) "This is Agent Blurr of Cybertron Intelligence reporting in to Longarm Prime to deliver my resignation effective immediately. I've failed in my mission and-- unrelatedly-- begun committing treason by consorting with a Decepticon."

The offscreen voice says something else, and Blurr tells the voice's owner, "Later," before focusing on the camera again. "That's him. My Decepticon."

The Decepticon, again, says something.

"Seriously I need to do this," Blurr tells him.

This time, the Decepticon is audible saying, "You don't need to do it alone."

"You're right there," Blurr says, "I'm not alone."

"You're dimming," the Decepticon says, coming into view. The camera refocuses; Swindle has joined Blurr, crouched in front of him where he sits, so they're at eye level.

"I'm what?" Blurr asks, clearly puzzled, and not remotely upset.

"You usually-- shine, sort of. You have a glow. Mostly metaphorical, in that 'you're like starshine' way. Before, when we first met? It wasn't bright, not really, but it was there. The last time I saw you, though, before we had to part ways, you were..." Swindle smiles, soft and fond and with an almost worshipful air. "You were luminous. You've just been getting your light back, Blurr, and this-- this has you dimming again."

Blurr slides from his seat, saying, "Swindle," with desperate longing, and melts into Swindle's surprised but willing embrace.

This goes on for a moment.

Blurr sighs, "Frag," and says, "Fine-- come sit here with me, then--" and the pair arrange themselves more or less decorously for the camera. There should probably have been a cut and a fresh start, but the vid plays on. "This is Agent Blurr of Cybertron Intelligence," Blurr says again, this time tucked under Swindle's arm, pressed against his side-- and happier still, "reporting in to Longarm Prime to deliver my resignation effective immediately. I've failed in my mission and somewhat obviously have begun committing treason by consorting with a Decepticon.

"This is Swindle." Swindle smiles, and waves to the camera. "I asked him rather clumsily to be my conjunx and he much more smoothly agreed we're-- I've never been this happy I don't think. We..." Blurr pauses as Swindle laces their fingers together, with Blurr smiling down at the gesture, looking happy enough to burst something from it. "The first thing you need to know sir is that this isn't new. It started before your tenure as Prime and I believed it had ended but-- I'm delighted to be wrong.

"I am not at liberty to discuss most of the details of the mission on which I met Swindle; it was sensitive and went very badly and was entirely scrubbed because of how badly it went and in a practical sense? It should not have been entrusted to me. You know or should know that Highbrow Prime overestimated my worth to the Elite Guard when he pulled me into Intelligence. I believe he expected me to be some sort of hyper-competent super-agent who could do it all in the field. Instead he got 'talks fast thinks fast moves fast.'

"The mission that was I believe supposed to be my proving ground..."

"You don't have to," Swindle says, his voice low and intended to soothe. "You can just vanish, if you want to."

Blurr twists to look directly at Swindle, his free hand coming up to settle on Swindle's cheek. "I love you," he says, with determination. "I am not having some ex-coworker come up with an idiotic scheme to rescue me from your fiscal clutches when I have never wanted to be anywhere more than I want to be in your arms."

Swindle's smile shifts a little, turning sly. "Really. You wouldn't rather be, say, riding on the back of a tyrannodracus?"

Blurr makes a face-- a fond face-- and pokes Swindle in the Deceptibrand. "Improved by having you sitting behind me with your arms around me at least if you and I and the predacon are all willing to be sharing this ride." Blurr then twists back around to resume something similar to his previous position, looking at the camera. "... Where was I. The beginning I know but..."

"Proving ground," Swindle prompts.

"I can't say much about the mission otherwise. There was a bar; Swindle and I met there. He-- he approached me and I-- I--"

"It wasn't magic," Swindle fills in. "I saw a bright young thing nursing his drink, I went to say hello with a line that could have read friendly or could have read flirty, and we just talked, for a while, at first."

"That was magic," Blurr insists. "People don't 'just talk' with me and you were-- are-- so-- so remarkably real."

"... That's not something I hear often," Swindle says, a little surprised, but evidently pleasantly so. "What with being the particular Decepticon who'd sell anyone to anybody, if the price were right."

"But I love that," Blurr says, with a note of bafflement. "Not just because the number you'd sell me for is so high either which is so sweet and I do love that but. I love-- that-- that's the reality part Swindle. The biggest lies promise things like always or forever or never-ever and it always hurts when they turn out to be conditional instead but-- reality. Reality has limits and boundaries and flaws and promises until and unless and only-if." Blurr smiles up at Swindle, openly, and it is possible to see what Swindle meant, earlier, in the claim that Blurr shines. "Only if the price were right or certain members of Decepticon High Command asked. And the price is so high."

"... And it's fewer members of High Command than it used to be," Swindle admits, looking bashful about that. "Even if Megatron asked, I wouldn't want to."

"I want your life to be worth more to you than mine is," Blurr says, in tones of a familiar reminder.

"You're going to have to explain that one to the camera, if you want you old boss to believe this, you darling mechanism," Swindle says. "I certainly don't understand how 'I'd betray your trust under these specific conditions' makes you so damned happy."

"Because everything is conditional," Blurr tells him, "and it's so rare to get to know the conditions. With you there was never any guessing any wondering if I was being too annoying had I crossed a line was I talking too fast was I asking for too much. It was probably the weirdest sense of immediate safety-- but it was immediate safety and I liked it. I knew what you wanted and what your limits were and the... the security of that is... a little bit addictive."

"A bit like seeing a sweet young thing like you go and turn on that starshine glow just for someone like me," Swindle replies. "You were very difficult to walk away from, sweetspark."

"And then there was that-- vehicle," Blurr says, dimming.

"Blurr," Swindle says, hands coming to brush over his shoulders.

"It's too distinctive to say what kind so just-- big heavy and fast. And it hit him. It hit Swindle."

"It hit Blurr worse," Swindle says, "because Blurr pushed me out of the way, saved my life. Cost me an arm and a leg-- Blurr had all his limbs attached, but there was energon everywhere."

"I remember thinking worth it," Blurr says, leaning against Swindle and letting his optics shutter. "That someone might tell me it wasn't or I wasn't supposed to sacrifice myself for a Decepticon but at that point the damage was so bad that I couldn't feel any pain which was nice and I knew Swindle was alive and seemed okay so. Worth it.

"Worth it-- and I wouldn't ever have to go back to Intelligence. To Cybertron."

"Unfortunately for Blurr's heroic sacrifice," Swindle says, without sounding like he finds it remotely unfortunate at all, "I'm actually a very sturdy thing, and it was deeply upsetting to watch Blurr's light fading and know it wasn't a reflection of mood, but the poor fool's spark guttering. I am also, as it happens, a veteran, and handy with a number of different tools, some of which only require one hand or a rudimentary set of claws to use, and I am never without first aid equipment."

"He sealed off my broken fuel lines," Blurr says, softly, "and then he used a gun with a tendency to over heat to weld scrap metal onto his broken leg strut hoisted me onto his shoulder and limped to the nearest medcenter. He saved me back."

"Cheap at twice the price," Swindle says, casually waving a hand.

"After that I-- would have been considered a defector by most legal standards on Cybertron today," Blurr says, carefully, "because I decided frag the mission frag heroism frag what I'm supposed to do I was going to keep what I had for as long as I could. And it felt-- so good. Right. It felt-- I felt-- it--"

Swindle strokes Blurr's cheek, and Blurr shutters his optics and sighs out a contented vent. "You were finally getting some of your emotional needs met, dearest. Your spark stopped hurting because you were letting it connect to people, like it's supposed to. You were living."

"I was happy," Blurr agrees. "And then-- you had to leave."

"I know. I was coming back."

"The mission."

"I know."

"It went so wrong."

"I know, love, I know."

Blurr turns to embrace Swindle, nearly hidden in his arms, and Swindle just holds him for a long moment. "I'd lost you. I thought-- I-- I thought if I ever saw you again you-- wouldn't remember me."

"And I still say that's not the sort of thing my side does to people, dear spark. You couldn't have known that then," Swindle says, soothing, "but I was all right. I remembered you. I knew to look for you, if I ever had the slightest hint you were anywhere but Autobot-controlled Cybertron."

Blurr, at that, smiles slow and bright and wide enough that it changes the shape of his faceplate a bit; he looks almost like he's someone else. "And you did. It took you some time and you didn't save me from that human and that's fine because I did get saved-- and if I hadn't you would have once you found me saw me-- but you looked for me you came for me you remembered me you wanted me enough to do all that-- put in all that effort and time and money--"

"You're worth that and more--"

"And that's why I'm quitting," Blurr says, firmly-- and proudly. "Highbrow Prime convinced me Swindle might not know me if he ever saw me again and certainly wouldn't actually care about some little Autobot and then made me a personal guard so there was minimal chance he'd ever be proven wrong but now I've got Swindle again and I'm staying with him. I'm conjunxing him."

He offers the camera a wry look. "I wish I were sorrier to be so sudden about all this and so immediate but-- I'm not losing him again. I'm not handing anyone else the chance to take one of us away from the other again. And Decepticons are just people. So I guess you're going to need a new personal guard except that-- you don't really need a personal guard you know. Hire someone you trust for the few times it might be useful to have extra security and you'll be entirely fine."

Five: Lord Protector
Swindle presents his future conjunx to Megatron, since there's, you know, a lot going on there.

Notes: Sometimes, a warlord has to make sure his con-mech arms dealer isn't falling for an incredibly obvious honey-trap. Especially since Megatron has a source of information who's spent several centuries very close to Blurr.

I don't know, I just caught the image of the whole thing with Lugnut and the rest of this wrote itself.

---

It had to be an outlier ability, or a special power, or whatever they called them here. It had to be. It was legitimately too distracting to be anything else.

Blurr did his best, however, spoke when addressed, enunciated as clearly as he could since he couldn't slow down, and was as respectful as he knew how to be without actually actively groveling on the floor. He'd do that, too, if it came to it, but according to Swindle, it was better to show some pride until and unless it became time to grovel shamelessly.

Meeting any Megatron tended towards the terrifying, if you knew who he was, but this one. This one.

Megatron was saying something formal to Blitzwing, who had said something random to prompt it, and Blurr murmured at Swindle, "I didn't think he'd be this hot in person." That amount of charisma had to be some sort of superpower.

Swindle shushed him, and from behind them, there came a bellow.

"The Autobot plots to betray you, Lord Megatron!"

Lugnut's outburst got the same answer-- "What?"-- in chorus from every bot in the room, if in different tones.

Megatron at least elaborated, "Explain yourself, Lugnut."

"As you looked away, he was muttering to this poor excuse for a Decepticon--"

Which-- "Hey now what do you mean poor excuse for a Decepticon not being a warbuild doesn't make him any less of a Decepticon--"

"Plotting with Autobot spies does!"

"I quit and I didn't want to be a spy anyway!"

"Blurr," Swindle hissed, and Blurr tried to disengage-- it was just. There was something about Lugnut-- hopefully not all the time, but arguing like this--

"I'm sorry Swindle I just--"

"If you weren't still an Autobot spy, you wouldn't be muttering in Lord Megatron's presence!" Lugnut declaimed, and whatever it was that made Blurr want to argue in the face of a Decepticon big enough to be mistaken for a wall kicked in again.

"So I can't have an aside with my future conjunx?" Blurr snapped. "It might have been a little rude all right I admit that but that doesn't mean I'm plotting or that Swindle's disloyal it just means I couldn't sit on what I was thinking anymore--"

"Perhaps," and Megatron sounded like he was trying to decide whether to be amused or exasperated, "you should share with Lugnut exactly what you found important enough to share with Swindle, but not worth stating plainly?"

Blurr tried not to shrink into himself, which was difficult when Swindle facepalmed.

But he facepalmed instead of readying a weapon, or reaching for his subspace, so maybe they were still safe.

"I--" Maybe if he just... Blurr turned from Megatron to Lugnut and said, hopefully in a voice that wouldn't carry all the way to Megatron himself, "He's. Megatron is a lot more attractive in person than I was prepared for?"

Lugnut's entire demeanor changed, and he reached out to pat Blurr on the shoulder, which was a little like being amiably driven into the ground. "It is a false alarm, my lord! This rude young Autobot is merely overwhelmed by the glory of your frame and the power of your charm, as so many before him have been!"

Blurr buried his face in his hands, as he hadn't been driven into the ground literally enough to escape this. Swindle reached out to put an arm around him.

"It is good that you feel secure enough to communicate such things with your intended conjunx without jealousy. Swindle will never measure up to Lord Megatron, of course--"

"Well," Swindle said, and Blurr didn't think it was too obvious how shaken he was, if you weren't the one being held onto like you could disappear or be crushed like recycling any moment, "Who does?"

"What I find interesting," Megatron said, idly, "Agent Blurr-- pardon me, just Blurr." Blurr had emphasized that he'd left Intelligence, and the Autobots, and Cybertron, and whatever else might be required to leave in the future, for Swindle. "I appreciate the strength of character it takes someone your size, and from your native faction, to stand up to, well. Lugnut. But the interesting matter is that I have trusted agents assessing the character of Autobots in strategically-significant positions, such as you were... and from the reports I've had of you? I wouldn't have expected such."

"I-- wouldn't have done it shouldn't have done it sir it was rude of me and impulsive all the way down Swindle is-- so much but I know he doesn't need me getting into a superior officer's face for him."

"It surprised me," Megatron agreed. "Much about you has surprised me. I'm sure you understand why an Autobot Intelligence agent suddenly claiming a position in Swindle's life-- Swindle, of all bots-- is suspicious on the face of it." And Blurr did, so he nodded, and kept his mouth shut. "But on revisiting those reports to see what we knew of this particular Autobot... You've been described as solitary, apathetic, and unambitious, as well as professional, dutiful, and extremely competent. Again, I trust my agent, but before me, I see a mechanism I'd describe as bold, outspoken, and passionate-- and perhaps if I were being charitable, young. I wonder if you can reconcile these qualities for me."

"I." Blurr looked from Megatron to Swindle to Megatron again, and tried to explain... himself. Without explaining that he'd basically written off a lifetime-- except he could explain that, couldn't he? "I didn't choose Intelligence sir it chose me. Highbrow Prime poached me from the Elite Guard-- which was itself the path of least resistance I was shunted away from civilian pursuits as an adolescent long story anyway. Highbrow was-- disappointed. With what he got instead of the super-agent he expected. Becoming his personal guard--"

"That was after we met," Swindle put in, and Blurr nodded. Technically, it had been, so it wasn't a lie, but it was also part of the story that what got Blurr 'demoted' to personal guard had been flubbing a mission while getting all compromised over a Decepticon.

"It was after that yes part of the aftermath of that. Being tapped for Intelligence with no real qualifications for it. Failing a mission so spectacularly that it had to be entirely scrubbed from any record." He hoped the lean against Swindle was visible without being obvious. "Not being able to speak slowly on command. It-- wasn't worth-- I know it looks like a trusted position personal guard to the Head of Intelligence but--" he'd told the repair crew that the Head of Intelligence was a desk jockey. He told Megatron-- "it was actually being sentenced to die for someone I didn't like who not only didn't like me but wouldn't just fire me in case he had to admit hiring me had been a mistake. Trying to... trying... Trying wasn't worth it so I just did the work that was in front of me and took the pay."

"And Longarm Prime? Was there no difference in serving him your life?" Megatron asked.

Blurr shrugged. (Much later, he would facepalm about that, as well.) "He's not a crankshaft sir but by the time he took over I'd accepted I was going to die there and..." Blurr let his feelings take over his face, let himself feel his grief and show it. "I'd lost Swindle. I hadn't-- hoped-- until Swindle not in a long time and losing him losing hope-- it broke-- I'd been broken since I think. Grieving. Depending on when your agent started reporting on me they may not have known I'd ever been different." Hopefully the agent was someone they'd slipped in after Blurr had become Highbrow Prime's personal guard, and not before, someone who had to trust records that could be redacted, and not rely on their own memory.

Swindle touched Blurr's cheek, and automatically, Blurr shuttered his optics and leaned into it. "When I met you? You were trying to get what you needed to really shine. It hadn't been ground out of you yet."

"That's funny," Blitzwing put in. "When I met him, he was throwing himself off a bridge, trying to offline us both."

Blurr took a little too long to try to figure out how to respond to that, and Megatron practically intoned, "I see," and then, "Congratulations, Swindle, I didn't know you had it in you."

Six: Compatibility
TFA is the Land of Size Differences, and Swindle has some concerns. Blurr has some issues. Also some kinks.

Notes: There's no porn in this one, but there's mention of sticky/valveplug (and some... comparing). Other realities have other methods for lovemaking, but because TFA is so bendy, in my head? They get valveplug.

Blurr also has no idea how long a long time is anymore, even for a Cybertronian.

---

"I'll admit to being a little concerned about the size difference-- I'm no warbuild, but I seem to be on the bigger side, for me."

"I don't mind it," Blurr assured Swindle. "I like how you hold me it's- it's good. I like-- I'd still like it if our positions were reversed but. It's all good?" He couldn't quite think of a graceful way to say that he'd want Swindle however he could get Swindle-- that Swindle was the important part, not the size of one or both of them.

"Not quite what I meant. How can I put this delicately..." Swindle turned thoughtful, and Blurr let himself admire it. "What are the dimensions of your favorite... intimate toy?"

"My what," Blurr said, before his brain could really process that question.

"Forgive me thinking you're a valve mech?"

"Oh! Oh. Uh. Usually? It tends to be safer for the other partner that way?" Though what that had to do with toys...

"Do you... prefer live partners to interface toys?"

"Are you asking generally or specifically in this frame because that sort of preference can change with a new life and uh. Well." He hadn't bothered, lately. "This frame isn't that old? And I was mostly just grieving with this life."

"... You haven't even self-serviced?" If Swindle had space for brows, they would have risen.

"I haven't been in the mood Swindle." Not graceful, not elegant-- but clear, Blurr hoped. He was... warming back up, thanks to Swindle; not just to interface or self-service but to wanting to feel good things instead of focusing on grief. It was hard to enjoy self-service when you wanted someone specific with you.

"I... do not know how I feel about that," Swindle said, slowly. "Does that happen to you a lot? Not being in the mood for a lifetime?"

"Not for a lifetime no-- but for a childhood always and for a couple thousand years? Sure." That wasn't an unreasonable dry spell, was it? ... Or if it was an unreasonable dry spell, well, Blurr had his excuses. "Longer sometimes depending on how a particular life handles intimacy."

"... Interface is one of those things you tend to ignore, isn't it, Blurr?" and Swindle's voice was soft and warm and gentle. Blurr wanted to curl up in it; he cuddled against Swindle's plating, instead.

"I wouldn't have to with you," he said. "I could spark-merge with you if that were how we worked. I could share a full plug-and-play connection with you I wouldn't have to hide-- how much I remember. The problems that come with it. You know me you wouldn't think I was-- was--" Wrong, crazy, lying about being Blurr, as though Blurr could be anyone else. Damaged, a victim of a shell program or something like shadowplay. People who could feel Blurr's spark or connect to his processor could think all sort of things, few of them good for Blurr in the long run.

"You darling thing," Swindle said, and rubbed at Blurr's back. "How have you handled the isolation?"

"You get used to it," Blurr promised.

"I hope so. I was part of a gestalt. I didn't like the rest of the reprobates who made up Bruticus, and I don't regret breaking that bond to find you, but-- it gave me a pretty good idea what those sorts of interface might be like, even if I didn't stop to sample any on my search."

"I've only tried them a few times," Blurr admitted. "Early on. When I wasn't-- when it wasn't so bad. And the first time around. Something tactile-- spikes and valves or when it's all just petting and touching until you go off or the way humans do it-- that's safer. There's nothing complicated shared usually. Feeling and physicality and sometimes hormones."

"Do you want it physically?" Swindle asked, casual but also somehow terribly, terribly gentle.

"I want you every way I get to have you."

"Well, that's a sexy thing to hear, darling. I'm still a little concerned about general compatibility, and while I don't remember seals being a thing back in my frame's youth, for all I know the regime that build you thinks they're a good idea..."

"I did generally pay attention to... uh not the cultural parts of those lessons but I didn't ignore the anatomy. No seals I remember hearing about." Blurr looked up at Swindle for a long moment. "We could just open our panels? Pressurize with no pressure just look at what we've got?"

"And if there are glaring incompatibilities, well, we do both have mouths and hands, and I have contacts among a lot of interesting craftspeople," Swindle agreed, and settled Blurr on one thigh instead of across his lap. "Same time?"

Blurr counted down and they slid their panels open.

He hadn't paid attention to his spike outside of medical situations that confirmed it was present and healthy, and might have spared a moment to regret that his wasn't as fun as past equipment had been, or as impressive (he had been told, by a medic who thought he needed some sort of pep talk, that speedster spikes were usually designed smooth and sleek and rarely more than moderately sized, for safety, which Blurr hadn't cared about at the time but had figured was the definition of damning with faint praise), if he hadn't suffered some sort of processor crash at the sight of Swindle's spike.

It looked somehow prosperous, with those purple bio-lights tracing over mostly-black segments with gold tracery. There was also definite shaping, contouring, to it that Blurr's spike lacked, for safety, and the size of it compared to Blurr's either suggested there were serious size-class differences in this life, or possibly that Swindle had modified things at some point, or possibly that it wasn't the size but how you used it, or that the medic had been being very gentle indeed with Blurr's pride, or. Something.

Blurr's mouth opened and "I want that in me," came out of it.

Maybe it had been a too-long dry spell after all.

"... And I want to be sure that won't hurt you before I cooperate, dear spark, but I appreciate the enthusiasm."

"You. I. We could. Hands?" Blurr said. "Hands in places and mouths. Valves get pliant as you overload right I usually go off fast and recover fast I. I want." The mental images he had were causing him bandwidth issues. "I want that in me now but I also want it in me after I've been worked over so hard I can't move my legs under my own power or remember how to words."

"I'll admit, part of me is just glad you're actually interested in interface, if that varies on a frame-by-frame basis," Swindle said, a little sheepish.

Blurr still wasn't running on all cores, because what he said was, "This frame might have a kink for it or something if I didn't have all my loops and lives to remember in this frame I might have had some scandalous accidents with oversized toys."

Swindle made a noise like trying to swallow a running fan. "Blurr. Don't make a mech with his spike out imagine you in predicament bondage, all alone in your isolated little spy's apartment, writhing and gasping because you mounted a fake spike big enough to get off on, but too big to get off of."

Blurr's spike twitched, and his valve clenched, and his chest ached because that mental image was-- he'd need to be rescued, from something like that. Ideally by Swindle, who'd play with his spike and toy with his chest as he worked Blurr off the toy and replaced it with something better-- but. But. Blurr bit his lip and hid his face against Swindle and said, "I gotta get a very specific mod. Doesn't have to be before our first time but I really really have to get a very specific mod."

"... Color me curious. What do you need, Blurr?"

"Refineries," Blurr admitted, half-sighed. "I've wanted them for-- the thing is-- I've been human," and Swindle nodded.

"Same, but I took the memories and moved on, once I was sure you weren't there."

"Nipples are pretty great and I've never had breasts but I've handled them and they're very nice and I want refineries. I want. I want them in your hands in your mouth if you're into that I want to know what it feels like when they're squeezed and I want-- I want-- that idea of me stuffed tighter than I can climb off of isn't complete without you looking for ways to get my valve so lubricated you can slide it out and the nozzles I don't have belong between your fingers." He'd wanted refineries generally for... a while. It was a desire that cropped up now and then, but it seemed safer to just not do that, rather than get them when they were part of the fabric of wherever he was and feel incomplete in lives where that extra layer over his spark wasn't even an option.

"That," Swindle said, "is a beautiful image, yes. And for a valve mech who likes the idea of refineries so much, I'm a little surprised you translate into male humans, or seem to have so far?"

"I'm not the wrong gender so much as gender is the least of my issues," Blurr offered, "but I'm a little surprised by that too? So many weird differences but never that one." Then he offered Swindle a grin and shifted a little on his thigh. "Want me to paint my mouth for you?"

"... Actually," Swindle said, grinning back, "I'd like to get my fingers in your valve. Plumb your breadths, before testing your depths, as it were."

Blurr moaned. "I-- okay. Always okay. Yeah. Do you-- if I can keep going that's not going to be a problem?"

"I'll just consider it you lapping me," Swindle said, "while we try to get ourselves to similar levels of sated. I go 'round once or twice, you go as many times as you need."

"Yes good," Blurr agreed. Frag, but he loved that mechanism. Swindle paid attention and understood him. "Where do you want me?"

Swindle stood, gathering Blurr into his arms as he went, and carried him off to the berth.

Seven: Consequentially
Whenever I watch TFA, I like to pretend the Allspark got the idea for gestation tanks from its initial scan of Sari, because it amuses me to see someone get Key or Fragment repaired and go, "Congratulations on your new gestation tank, [NAME HERE]!"

So, yeah. Did that to Blurr. Feel free to skip this one if that's not your bag, because I did that to Death Loop Blurr.

Notes: Not only does this chapter contain mechpreg, it contains mechpreg in a reality that has never (in living history, anyway) had it before. Because the Allspark is pissed, okay? Half its children won't let the other half have their own children, it got hidden, it got hidden some more, it got shattered, but in the middle of all that nonsense, it got to scan a technorganic pretender with human DNA up in there. So, it has decided to decentralize production of newsparks.

Swindle and Blurr are familiar with the concept, having been through a glimpse of infinities, but they're faced with the following:

- this is a surprise/unplanned pregnancy (because it's not supposed to be A Thing in this lifetime)
- Blurr doesn't want to reproduce, because he can't take anyone with him, and as far as he knows, only Swindle can follow him
- Being in the middle of the Decepticon fleet, where all the warbuilds who want to retake Cybertron (where Vector Sigma is) or find the Allspark (which powers Vector Sigma) in order to continue their culture happen to live and work, Swindle is not at all sure quietly terminating is going to be possible

So although I really do like how this one turned out, no hard feelings if you want to ignore this chapter completely.

And if you spot any other issues that need warning for, please do let me know!

---

Swindle had been oddly certain it wasn't a dent.

Yes, he had a fair sized spike, and a narrow little conjunx. But the shape of the lump was wrong, the angle of it, and just... it didn't feel right.

It didn't feel like The Narrative that Blurr more often than not threw himself under. (And last time, last time Blurr had let himself hope, live, shine? When Swindle had been... unavoidably detained, Blurr had gone and saved people, but not quite himself. For all he swore he'd tried to save himself. And he'd left Swindle six words (I'll miss you if I remember) and a mind-boggling fortune. Who knew what he'd do here, if he had some sort of medical mystery slowly destroying him from the inside?) So Swindle accompanied Blurr to the appointment with Knock Out (who'd done such a nice job on those refineries, and hadn't asked any questions about how they scarred through so quickly even though they should have been under Knock Out's cosmetic control completely) to see the "dent," more like a distortion, looked at.

There had been realities Swindle had searched through where gestation tanks were a normal-enough thing, like refineries and conversion tanks, sometimes for survival, sometimes for reproduction, sometimes a straight-up kink thing. Sometimes, as with Blurr's own refineries, it was just a way to feel like one's frame had all the right parts.

Here, though, here? Presented to a Decepticon medic, by the defector who'd supplied the faction with information on how to actually make the best use of Allspark fragments?

Here?

A gestation tank was a fucking miracle.

The sort of thing that might make a mechanism believe in a benevolent deity.

And Blurr's had a tiny little spark struck in it, kindling and growing.

It was just unfortunate that Blurr himself looked ready to expire on the spot. "Doc," Swindle said, "if you could give us a cycle?"

Knock Out looked at Swindle, looked at Blurr, paused, really looked at Blurr, got a cube of something that fragging smelled medicinal, and pressed it into Blurr's hands. "Drink that," he told Blurr, "Doctor's orders. I'm going to grab a few more esoteric scanner components and be back... in a couple of cycles."

And he left.

Swindle cupped Blurr's face. "Blurr."

"I can't," Blurr started. "I didn't. We don't," he concluded, firmly. "We don't have those here. Autobots. We don't have gestation tanks here. What's it doing there. How."

"We'll figure that out," Swindle said. "Nobody here knows what a gestation tank is, so it's possible it's some kind of new mutation?"

"Swindle. Swindle." Blurr grabbed Swindle's wrists, shuttered his optics, and crumpled. "Swindle I can't."

"You don't have to," he promised. "I might not be able to get you out of gestating the thing-- please understand, even as a freak mutation this is a miracle for the Decepticons, somebody will want that bitlet-- but you don't have to keep it if you don't want to. We'll figure out how to control it."

"I want it," and it was almost a sob. "I want it I want it I want it but-- I can't-- I can't. They can't come," he said, looking back up at Swindle with something broken in his gaze. "You can follow. If I go first you can follow. I can keep you I don't have to lose you forever just for long enough for you to catch up to me. But this--"

"Oh, dearest. Love. Blurr, you darling thing--" Swindle bundled his conjunx into his arms. "All right. I wasn't going to bring this up, because it doesn't make me look great, but... I can go back."

"Go back?" It was muffled, because Blurr had burrowed into the embrace like a glitchmouse into jellied energon, well-hidden.

"To... my reality of origin. To the Brainstorm who built my little Blurr-locator. If I ran into a problem, or wasn't finding you-- lucky thing my patience held out long enough-- or gave up, or suffered for the broken gestalt bond, or whatever. I can go back, if I need to-- I just don't know if I can bring anyone with me. I can't bring anything from one reality to another except the device, and it searches specifically for you so maybe I can take you, somehow, but I can't shove you in my subspace with it." It was bad for living processors.

"... You can go home but I can't," Blurr said, quietly.

"I can go home, but I didn't listen to the instructions closely enough to know for sure if you can or not, or how to do it," Swindle corrected, "and I have absolutely no idea if a third person, unconnected except for being part of you and part of me, can come along." Then Blurr's phrasing caught up with Swindle. "... You think of my reality as home?"

"I-- I got to live there," Blurr said. "Hope there. I wanted forever there. I didn't want there to be anything after there. I'm glad there is," Blurr said, hastily, "I'm glad you're here I'm glad you came if I had to live another life I'm glad I've got you with me again. But-- the life where you asked me to tell you again but sober and at one speed. That life's home for me."

"Not your first?" That was sort of how Swindle clocked it, home being where they came from, except for everything they were building here and now.

"Point of origin and a place where I was..." Blurr shuddered out a vent. "Lucky or naive. I didn't know what was coming."

Swindle brushed the lightest possible kiss against Blurr's crest, to get a better shiver out of him. "So. My plan here is, I go home-- briefly, I can come back. I go home, I ask Brainstorm for a few clarifications-- maybe a few modifications, knowing you feel like that's home-- and I come back before you get too far along. And then we decide what to do, with as much accurate information as we can get."

"Decide what to do. Decide to keep it or not or to go or stay or-- what?"

"I'm running numbers," Swindle reminded him, "I'm just-- translating those numbers into feelings and back, as it were. It was killing you to have loved, have hoped, have died, and have come online here, wasn't it? To have had me for support, not to put too fine a point on it, and then lost me."

"It wasn't killing me," Blurr corrected-- but it was soft. "It. It might have been destroying me. But killing me doesn't do that. I don't know how to-- it had been so long since I'd let anyone-- since I'd connected. I don't know how to grieve for that loss and find 'okay' at the end of it anymore. I don't know where the end of it is."

"And that, to my internal tally, is completely unacceptable. So I'm with you, dear spark, I'm yours, for good, for as long as you'll conceivably have me," Swindle promised. "Which is why I wasn't going to bring up not knowing where I could bring you-- we worked out that I went through realities in the same order you did, so I can follow, wherever you go. It didn't matter if I could go back or not, because what-- beyond a lot of money that isn't worth as much as having you is-- did I have to go back for?"

"I love you so fucking much," Blurr said, and buried his face against Swindle's chestplate.

"But if we bring a bitlet into this, a sparkling, a brand-new person who's as pretty as you and as savvy as me, and something happens to you, which means I follow... how much would you suffer for it if I couldn't bring the kid with me?"

"So much," Blurr mumbled. "So so so much. I-- human? Every time? Vasectomy so there's no chance of offspring. In realities with gestation tanks standard I donated mine. Very noble of me. You-- I love you. I love you so much I need you I love you and you're a grown mechanism who doesn't need me to survive. I-- I die-- I die pointlessly or I die heroically but I die if I died leaving a bitlet and came online alone without them with no hope of ever ever getting them back-- Swindle--"

"Unacceptable outcome," Swindle told him, rubbing at his back. "And that's leaving aside how much I'd be suffering. If the worst should happen to this reality and it loses you, I want you coming online in the next one knowing that, at the soonest possible point, I'll be coming to you, and that whatever we have to do to get our bitlet, we'll be doing it."

"... You don't think you can bring them with you."

"I pop into the native Swindle with memories intact, just a little removed because I only remember them, I didn't live them," Swindle said, "at a point when I'm as physically close to you as I've ever been in that reality. I'm not discounting the idea that, to get a bitlet back into that equation, we might have to make them again."

"... That. That could. That could be awkward if you have to both come in at the same point and I. Am. Could I get myself into a relationship with the next Swindle because I know someday he'll be you and we'll have a sparkling."

"And that, my love, is why I'll be leaving you with the native Swindle for a while-- he won't sell you out, but he will try to maximize what we as a unit can get for our cooperation with regards to gestation tanks-- to go ask Brainstorm for more detailed instructions, including who I can take where and how."

"Mm." It was a sort of agreement, Swindle thought, as it came with Blurr's arms slipping from around his own midsection to circle Swindle's. "... If-- could you find out if we could all go home?"

"Is that what you want?" Swindle asked. "Brainstorm hasn't beggared me, and won't-- I reinvested in your bar, and there are accounts a certain amount of the profits go into that can't be touched by anyone but me or, by some miracle, you. And the people I have managing the money are much less charismatic and interesting than the people I left managing the bar itself."

"There's a home to go to," Blurr sobbed, hugging Swindle tight. "What-- what else did-- what did you..."

"I wanted to be comfortable if we could come back, or if you wanted to," he said. "And if we couldn't, or you wanted to stay... here, effectively? I made sure everyone I liked and you cared about would be taken care of. I spent a lot of your money, love, but I tried to spend it on things you'd want." And he'd set up the rest to increase itself, because of course he had. "Your regulars, the Wreckers you spoke of fondly, that sort of thing."

"You took care of them." It was wondering.

"They mattered to you." They might still, really. "You lit up, when you learned how to hope again, and I know I wasn't solely responsible for that. I was the only person who knew, but not the only one who gave you... the kinds of connections that let you live, instead of just fucking around until something took you out. If I'd left them with nothing so I could camp a particularly giant mountain of shanix, I might never get to see you glowing quite as bright again. Entirely selfish, I assure you."

Blurr slithered up inside the embrace and kissed Swindle, long and thorough and remarkably slowly. "Go home," he said, murmured, against Swindle's lips. "Find out everything about how to keep us-- three of us at least-- together. ... Find out how everyone is?" he added, a little more tentatively. "And then-- then come back to me and. We'll figure out home-forever once we know where we can go and what we can build with."

"I'll be thorough," Swindle promised, "But I'll hustle."

Blurr... shifted, in Swindle's arms. It wasn't quite stiffening or jerking, and he didn't look upset-- he looked like he'd been hit over the head and discovered he kind of liked it. "Hustle," he repeated.

"... Move quickly?" Swindle said. "In this particular case, anyway. I don't actually mean to grift, but I'll leave the option open."

Blurr kissed him again. "Do you know when Decepticons get names here?"

"... Uh. What? Also no? Not a thing I've asked about, and I, too, was a defector, lo these many vorns ago."

"Autobots-- today-- get named when they 'earn it' at the Academy or in their profession they don't-- they don't come online with names and some of them go through their lives with alphanumerical serial numbers."

Swindle blinked. Blurr had changed the subject so completely that he was having a little trouble following. "That's news to me and a little bit horrifying in, somehow, both unexpected and entirely predictable ways. Why bring it up?"

"I'm bucking that so-called tradition and I was wondering what Decepticon traditions I'm bucking alongside it," Blurr said. "I'm naming the bitlet now."

"You're--" Oh. Oh! "Oh! Well! Then in that case, some sort of celebratory something is in order. What's their name?"

Blurr smiled, wide and sad and brave and beautiful, sunlight on a sea, blue and shimmering. "Hustle."

"... Because I said--"

"A little bit of you and a little bit of me. Move so fast it's a blur and swindle someone out of their money."

"... It's perfect," Swindle agreed. "I'm... not actually sure anything could be more perfect. And I don't think I've ever met anyone named Hustle." Which reduced the chances, maybe, that Blurr was gestating somebody one or both of them knew of in a previous life.

"I really hope we can't die in labor here," Blurr said, snuggling incongruously against Swindle. "I want to meet them before I have to wait for you."

... Well, that was a new worry. "We may need to bring Knock Out into the loop, just so he knows how hard to keep you alive."

"Maybe also Shockwave," Blurr agreed, resting his head on Swindle's shoulder. "He's invested in me for some reason and has more rank to pull and the tank will be a science issue as soon as he hears about it."

"Would you trust him that far?" Swindle asked, because he could just picture Shockwave getting all scientific about... all of it. In more invasive ways than Brainstorm had, because Brainstorm had only had so much to work with. Shockwave had physical access to Blurr. And Swindle. And Swindle wasn't entirely sure the native Swindle would value Blurr's freedom quite as much as Swindle-of-the-moment, with Shockwave involved.

"With a bitlet involved I would," Blurr said, firmly. "He loves sparklings. Did those gladhanding creche visits Ultra Magnus liked to insist on to inspire sparklings to apply for the Academy and all that as Longarm Prime and had to be reminded to put the one he'd picked up for a photo op back before he left. Every time."

"... That sounds like it has the potential for a little light kidnapping."

But Blurr shook his head. "He'd kill to keep a wanted sparkling with competent caretakers-- and we'll be very competent caretakers."

"Will we now?" Swindle asked, smiling a bit at how sure Blurr sounded.

"I've been a child enough times to have some idea of how to be a parent," he said, "and you're going to be very dedicated to the whole concept of parenting-- because you're about to realize what a business opportunity this is. However I got this tank the Decepticons are going to want to duplicate it and they do not have a bitlet care supplies industry."

Swindle let go of Blurr-- with just one arm-- to brace himself on the exam table as several processors errored out into cash register noises. "I love you so much," he came up with.

"If we can't figure out how the tank got there I'll donate it to science after Hustle," Blurr said. "Sometimes donations are investments right? Shockwave might not have a practical reason to look out for us but as parents and as a cross-faction couple and as people willing to invest in the Decepticons' future as a culture with young warbuilds in it? He will look out for us."

"You really are that sure of Shockwave." Considering the last one-- considering a wide assortment of them Swindle had memories of, and how long this particular Shockwave had been undercover right under Blurr's semi-existent nose...

"This one I am," Blurr said, shrugging, and leaning against Swindle. "I know him-- enough anyway-- you can't be someone else all the time I've tried that so Longarm has to be rooted in Shockwave and-- he seems really patient for a Shockwave. Patience seems like a hard trait to fake you know? Even if he was punching walls and primal screaming for a thousand years of being stuck in Autobot bureaucracy he was at least saving it for when there weren't any witnesses. And he's not as mad a scientist as can happen-- no shadowplay no tendency to build dragons or dinosaurs or dragon-dinosaurs or giant lasers shaped like his head. Still very loyal to Megatron but then you meet this Megatron and that makes sense." Someday, the results of Blurr's reaction to Megatron in person would be funny instead of terrifying, but that day was not today. Not quite yet. "Very protective of anyone he sees as his which somehow includes me. ... If something incapacitated both of us I'd trust this Shockwave to take care of Hustle until we were back."

"... Speaking of Hustle. After them, you want to donate the tank for sure? You won't want another?" Swindle watched Blurr worry his lower lip between his teeth.

"Ninety-nine-point-five percent certain," he allowed. "Because I seriously doubt there's anything Brainstorm can do to make sure there's no upper limit to how many people we can bring anywhere. And you are going to get back before Hustle makes their debut so we can talk about the possibility I might change my mind then."

Swindle pressed a kiss to Blurr's forehead. "Then you'd better drink that thing Knock Out gave you, so we can get him back in here and figure out how long I have."

"Do you know what it is?" Blurr asked, making a bit of a face at the cube.

"Good for you, probably."

Blurr made a face harder.