Unintentionally

Steel Still Rusts

Weeks and months went by and the occasional tryst between Dreadwing and Carbine was becoming more and more frequent. Carbine found she was needing Dreadwing more and more over time and it frustrated her. She was afraid of falling in love when Dreadwing was only interested in her for her body.

She sat in her cloaked ship helping her youngest son with his mathematics homework which he hated most of all. Hotrod and Jetstorm were off causing chaos with Bumblebee and Smokescreen.

They could stay with Prime in his base with all the other Autobots but her ship was her home. She raised her kids here and she preferred to stay in it. Each of the boys had their own rooms and everyone was comfortable. But it was too big to hide near her brother's headquarters so she often moved it and hid it in forests with nice scenery so she wouldn't be easily found.

Even though Carbine was generally sore from frequent meetups with Dreadwing sne had begun getting unrelated aches and pains in her frame and nausea was becoming more common in random spurts. She chalked it up to a few bad energon cubes and continued to focus on her youngest and his failing efforts to grasp radius and diameter calculations. Carbine sighed.

"Okay bud. I know we're getting frustrated here. Why don't you go outside and play for a bit, yeah? I'll get some energon fixed up for the both of us and we can reconvene on this later once we've both calmed down." Carbine smiled

"Okay mama!" Chip hopped up from his seat eagerly and ran for the outside hatch

"And remember to stay close to the ship!" Carbine shouted after the youngling

Elsewhere, Dreadwing was sent out on an energon scouting mission. Megatron was getting more suspicious about where he disappeared to on multiple days a week. Dreadwing had to cut back on seeing Carbine but he found that he had become obsessed with her. Not to mention he was also finding it frustrating that there were developing feelings that no matter how hard he tried to stomp them out he couldn't. They were only using each other... there was no room for love if they were just going to end up killing each other on the battlefield.

The seeker mech continued to wander through the forest trying to track down an energon signal when a ball crashed through the brush nearby. Dreadwing jumped, pulling out his blaster without thinking.

A youngling chased the ball and grabbed it before looking up. The small mech's optics grew wide in shock and horror before he turned tail and ran. "MOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!"

Dreadwing cursed and put away his weapon and chased after the youngling, grabbing the boy by the shoulders and lifting him up off the ground.

"MOM! HELP! DECEPTICON! HE HAS ME MOM HELP!" The child screeched

The sound of crashing ensued as Carbine came barreling into view with a rifle drawn.

Dreadwing froze and so did Carbine. The two stared at each other while Chip flailed in Dreadwing's grasp.

"Carbine this isn't what it looks like." Dreadwing said defensively, absolutely certain that she'd blow him away right then and there.

"MOMMYYYYY!" Chip wailed.

"Dreadwing." Carbine sighed, lowering her weapon. "Put Chip down."

Dreadwing put the boy down and Chip darted over to Carbine and clung to her legs.

"And here I thought it was someone to be worried about." Carbine shook her head and patted Chip on the back.

"That remark hurts, Carbine." Dreadwing stated

"Yet we both know you won't hurt me or small children." She retorted.

"What?" Chip squawked.

"Calm down Chip. He's a friend." Carbine patted Chip on the head "back to the kitchen table with you."