We Are A Family

Cryak

Water dripped down the stalagtites, making annoying little sounds.

Made only worse by the annoying beings who were trapped inside.

The roof had collapsed inward, not hitting the ground, but clogging the only exit up and out.

It had been a small party of bots and cons here, and only these 2 had been unfortunate enough to get stuck together.

Bata and Starscream growled at each other from opposite sides of the cavern.

Usually, Starscream would have simply killed her. But, as it turned out, the other decepticons had abandoned him when the cave fell in.

Only a handful of autobots remained, their groans of moving the heavy and large stones echoing even down here.

Starscream thought it smart to use Bata as a hostage to get out of here once the autobots cleared the way.

But for now, it was this: growling.

His piercing red eyes to her piercing yellow.

She didn't even come up to his ankle, but leveled her gaze with his.

"You two okay down there?" The voice of Drift called down.

"Yeah Dad." Bata said without breaking her stare.

Dad. It was interesting, these organic' roles and names in ones' maturing life period.

Bata had two 'Dads', the ex-con Drift and his medic conjunx Ratchet.

Starscream had once found their adoption of not only one, but later with Bata's twin Alex, two organics disgusting.

But after watching the small 'family unit', made up of the four and Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, in battles and protecting each other...

An envious charge flew through his spark.

His face must have shown it, despite all his schooling not to show emotion.

"What?" Bata snarled.

"Your fathers. They care about you."

"Yeah. That's what good parents do." Bata replied.

Starscream cocked an eyebrow. It was well known by both autobots and decepticons that Bata and Alex's biological parents had been...bad people.

Starcream though about taunting her with that, how she would know what a good parent is, but decided not to. What did he know about the subject, after all.

"Did...did you have one?" Bata looked at him curiously, despite their status as enemies.

"What?"

"My dads told me once about mentors on Cybertron, people who looked after and basically raised new bots. Like parents." Bata explained. "I always tried to ask about them more, but all the autobots' mentors are dead, so ya know, they don't like to talk about it. And Drift never had one..."

Starscream nodded. Under the Functionist ideology, 'formers like Drift had never been given a mentor. The council expected the 'gutter-trash' bots to die quickly.

"And you expect me to happily talk about my late mentor." Starscream snapped. "No emotion."

"No." Bata shook her head. "But you like knowledge and share it no matter the emotions it entails."

Starscream hesitated.

He didn't owe this child anything, why was he even considering defiling their culture to tell it to this organic spawn.

But she wasn't wrong. He remembered the days when he would share all that learned, as a scientist should.

Besides, it had been so long since...