Disclaimer: I don't own Transformers. Hasbro does. I just play in their 'verse.

A/N: FINALLY! It's over! Now I can move onto the plot!

“Hey, Prowl, what do you nee-” The mech on the right, the one with the vocal indicators cut off abruptly at the sight of Starscream lounging across the back of Prowl’s chair, “What the slag is he doing here!” Wheeljack pulled his gun from his subspace and aimed it at the seeker.

After that point, several things happened at once.

Perceptor stepped behind Wheeljack and armed his cannon.

Ratchet tried to calm his mates down though their bond while trying to send the over-code though the bond to Wheeljack.

Red Alert covertly pulled his gun out of his sub-space and aimed it at Wheeljack while saying calmly and soothingly, “Wheeljack, you don’t want to do this.”

Prowl instinctively leapt up and moved in front of Starscream, spreading his door-wings in an unconscious method of protection.

And Starscream fell to the floor laughing hysterically.

The last was what got though to the engineer, causing him to pause long enough in his blocking patterns for Ratchet to send the codes, putting Wheeljack into immediate stasis.

The first thing Wheeljack saw as he came out of stasis was Starscream’s face peering down at him. He would have moved or made a sound, but his optics were the first thing to return so he couldn’t. Compounding this was the disappointment in him he felt coming down both of his bonds. For some reason, the seeker didn’t react to his awakening, and Wheeljack realized that Ratchet was purposefully keeping his optics from lightening and started to return his other senses, including, unfortunately, his sense of touch. After another klick, Red Alert spoke up and said, “Starscream, get away from there, he’s going to wake soon.”

The seeker moved back saying, “I’ve never seen a mech in stasis up close before. Interesting. I assume it’s like recharge?” The last was directed at Ratchet. Wheeljack didn’t hear Ratchet’s explanation as he was trying to compute the mind-boggling fact that Starscream apparently had never seen an offline mech before. Hearing the tone of Ratchet’s voice change from explanation mode to interrogation mode, Wheeljack tuned in, curious.

“And for that matter, what did you mean by that?” Ratchet was demanding of Starscream, who looked up at him innocently. Starscream? Innocent? It boggled the mind, but that was what was happening.

“Well, I’m not exactly a frontliner! I’m a xenoligist. I study humans.” After he dropped that little bombshell, he seemed to be waiting for a reaction. He certainly got one.

“WHAT?”

Starscream, the slagger, just looked amused. “What? Did you think I was a fighter? With these?” He gestured at his null-rays, “No. My trine-mates do the all fighting. I talk to, interact with, and study the humans.” He shrugged at the looks he was getting, “It was what I was made for. I am, after all, a seeker.”

Ratchet had to ask. “A seeker? But seekers are military models! Or, at least, they are here.”

Starscream was taken aback at that, “No… seekers are long-range exploration models. We all have to take at least the most basic levels of xenoligy so we may determine if the planets we are surveying are inhabited of not. I, however, was never able to handle the long eternities of solo exploration, and focused on studying in hopes of becoming part of a first contact team.”

“Hm. Interesting. It makes me wonder how the other models and mechs differ in our time-lines.”

When Jazz palmed open Prowl’s door, he didn’t know what to expect. He had scanned the interrogation room well enough to fit even Red’s stringent demands, and he had com’ed Prowl to tell him so, but his request came back unopened. A request to Red, and in a panic thinking that something had happened to them, Ratchet, had both returned the same thing. Nothing.

In the end, he had stayed in that slagging room for the remainder of the shift, coming up with odder and more outrageous reasons for his lover’s absence, all the while sending a com request every thirty minutes. After it all, he had just given up and locked the door behind him as he made his way to the quarters he had been sharing with Prowl for a while now, hoping that the reason they weren’t responding wasn’t that they were all in the high-security level of the Med-bay, or worse, the brig. As he opened the door, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Once he saw the empty room, he wasn’t sure whether to be pleased at the fact that he wouldn’t have to confront Prowl over his absence, or worried and slightly betrayed by the fact that Prowl wasn’t there, ready to tell him what had gone wrong. He sent another request and cycled air when it pinged back unopened. Quietly, he moved over to the berth and curled up to recharge facing the door.

Prowl palmed open the door to his quarters and sighed when he saw the curled-up figure of Jazz on the recharge berth. Moving over, he stroked Jazz’s upper arm, and felt guilty over the fact that Jazz didn’t even twitch in his recharge. Had it been any other mech, in any other place, Jazz would be up and have the other disabled in a klick, and it hurt him that he had betrayed the trust the other had placed in him. Prowl recycled air, moved to the other side of the berth, and curled around his mate. There would be time enough to explain things in the morning.

After a few breems more, Ratchet decided that Wheeljack had learned his lesson. This was not the seeker they had known from the battlefield and the many times they had taken him prisoner. It took him half a breem to return all of Wheeljack’s functions to him, but Ratchet knew that his mate was still computing the information overload, and wouldn’t be causing any problems. Ratchet looked at his internal clock and winced, was it really that late? He quickly made his excuses to Red, pulled his mate from his conversation with the talkative seeker, and then led his mates to their quarters and a well-needed recharge.

Perceptor was just buzzing with the new information he had gained in his talk with the other scientist. “What did you do to solve the power transfer problem in the couplings of the HGI?” He asked eagerly, after all, the HGI was one of his pet peeves here on the Ark, and if there was any way to reduce the amount of leaked energy, well then…. The possibilities of what they could do with the extra energy were endless!

Starscream gave the other a look, “Simple! We hooked up a reducer cap to the connecter, then diverted the excess to a nearby energon machine.”

Perceptor stared at the other. “Brilliant. Simply brilliant! What did you do abou-” he was unable to finish his sentence as a rather large, red hand fastened itself across his mouth rendering him unable to speak with any coherency.

“Perceptor,” Ratchet’s calm, smooth voice said, “It’s late. We need to re-charge or else we won’t be able to awaken in time for our shifts tomorrow.” Ratchet removed his hand.

Perceptor looked at is internal clock and was taken aback for a klick, was it really that late? Regretfully, he looked at Starscream and said, “I do believe that we have become overtaken by our excitement. Perhaps we should re-convene tomorrow?”

Starscream grinned, “That would be great.” And with that, Perceptor went along with his mates to their quarters.

Wheeljack groaned as Prowl left the room and Ratchet started to allow his bodily functions to return to him. As he was still computing all he had learned, he made no move other then to follow Ratchet as he made his excuses, pulled Perceptor away from his new toy, and went to their quarters. Once they arrived though, he hung back from them both as they did their usual pre-re-charge routine. In fact, he was planning to just stay in the background for the next few days, to let the memory of his stupid blunder fade. He had a berth in his laboratory, and, although it had been rare that he had used it since his bonding, he had used it often enough when he had just been so caught up in an experiment that he didn’t come to himself for far to long, that it wouldn’t be commented on. He was about to slink off, when a pair of servos grabbed him, one on each arm, and pulled him to the berth, positioning him in between them, and though his bonds, all he could feel was love/forgiveness/calm/rest pulsing though him and lulling him to sleep, content in the strength of their bond, and their love.

Red Alert grinned at seeing Ratchet’s easy handling of his mates. Perceptor and Wheeljack may out-rank him, but it was clear who was the protector in that particular bond! Once they left, Red turned to the wall and pressed a hidden button there, causing another berth to fold down from the wall, identical to Red’s except that this one was behind Red’s berth, so that no one could get at Starscream without Red knowing about it. It didn’t need saying that it also meant that Starscream couldn’t get out without waking Red. Red told Starscream which would be his, and then went to his own berth, exhausted after this trying day. Despite it all though, he still wasn’t capable of falling into re-charge until he was sure the other had as well. Chosen or not, Red still had his pariglitch.

Starscream had almost forgotten what it was like, talking to other who understood about science. At the Academy, there were many who loved to talk to a seeker, for seekers were well known for their odd insight into problems that often saw things that others missed. Once he had left the Academy, his lab-mates weren’t talkative in the slightest. And these days… Well, the Constructibots were too insular; Oil Slick scared him, and Soundwave? Soundwave was having a good day if he spent longer then five breems out of his specially insulated rooms. No, it had been entirely too long since the Academy. Once Perceptor had left, he made his way to the berth Red had indicated was to be his, CPU whirling with possibilities.

Skyfire, after a day full of pacing across the ward, couldn’t stay awake any longer and fell into a recharge filled with troubled dreams.