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Chapter 10

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Barricade was sitting in the far right corner of the hangar, hands on his knees, facing the corner. His EMF was retracted and gloomy, flattened to try to hide his feelings from anyone who might have come into the hangar.

Shiftlock went inside. Prowl stood waiting at the doorway, keeping an optic on things just in case he was needed. He'd never admit to it, but he was curious to see how the situation would play out. He had calculated so many possibilities, but over the course of the war, he'd found that sometimes things just didn't turn out how probability suggested they would.

That in itself was a study in probability mechanics: The chance of chances. He'd have to bring up the theory with Perceptor sometime.

Shiftlock felt Barricade's EMF go rock hard and resistant at her approach. He knew it was her before she even sat down next to him, and he was already bitter and defensive. Not the best way to start off what was supposed to be a possible courtship offer.

She didn't exactly know what to say to him. She simply sat nearby, looking at the wall, her field brushing up against his with amplitudes of warm concern.

Barricade relaxed, if only for a little, resigning himself to be bothered by someone he wasn't sure he wanted to see again. His field expanded, weary-why are you here?, and he decided that the onus of starting conversation was on her. He admitted to himself that he was a little surprised she'd approached him, considering everything that had happened between them.

Shift took it slow and simple. "You doing alright? Getting enough energon, enough time to recharge?"

It was a start. "I'm fine," Barricade grunted noncommittally. Never one for patience, he hastily growled, "Why the scrap are you here? Come to see me while I'm weak and beaten? You like that?"

She could feel the old wound opening up and spilling infection at her. His nerves were raw, and like a wounded beast, he was ready to lash out at her. She mentally armored herself, bracing for the impact of his emotional pain. "No," she answered calmly. "I came to see you because I still care about what happens to you."

She felt his EMF flicker in shock. His red optics opened a little wider, turning to look at Shiftlock, trying to confirm what she'd just said, as if he thought his audioceptors had errored out. His engine skipped a revolution.

Memories flooded back as their fields skittered against each other. It took every ounce of self-control Shiftlock had to not simply respond to the unspoken urges screaming between them. Prowl's clinical assessment of the situation's outcome engendered a perverse desire to prove the tactician wrong out of spite, and it gave her much-needed self control. Coming without Jazz was probably a bad idea; she could have used her mech's emotional distance from the situation to keep her grounded. In hindsight, consoling an old flame was like walking into the jaws of an aligaticon.

"I've always cared what happened to you, Barricade," Shiftlock confessed quietly. "I'm not going to say what we had in the past was perfect, but we had something, at least, for a little while."

"Until Jazz ruined it," Barricade muttered.

"Until you ruined it," Shiftlock corrected, brows drawing together. That took some of the charm out of the moment. "I might not have ever gone back if it hadn't been for what you let Megatron push you into. You helped slaughter all my friends, all those who helped me and looked out for me and you expected me not to care, and I'll tell you why: Because you wanted Megatron more than you ever wanted me. I was just a stepping stone to your goals."

Barricade's field pulled back like he'd been slapped. His expression hardened.

"Don't give me that look," Shiftlock said firmly but evenly. "You know it's the truth even if you don't want to say it. You wanted to prove your loyalty and make yourself indispensable to Megatron, but it was already apparent that Soundwave was Megatron's right hand and obvious choice, and you know why? Fliers stick with fliers, Barricade. Grounders stick with grounders. Half the reason the war was so bitter is because both sides were coming from different functions, different alt-modes, different cultures. You know how the Seekers used to sneer at us - you, me, Knock Out - all because we had wheels instead of wings. You were chasing your own tail lights from the start."

The saleen's clawed hand curled into a fist. He smashed it against the floor, crunching the concrete beneath.

"That?" Shiftlock pointed out immediately, "That right there is the other reason you ruined it."

Barricade just glared at Shiftlock and looked away. His field was ragged with mixed emotion. His plates lifted.

"I'm not saying these things to be an aft, 'Cade. We've been in each other's sparks. We know each other," Shiftlock sighed. She nudged her field up against him again, attempting to sooth and console the angry carrier. "You're strong. Strong enough that it scares you, deep down. When you feel something, you feel it fifty times harder than anyone else, and it feels like your whole world is out of control. Megatron looked good because he could keep you in your place, but he wouldn't have been good for you."

The saleen let go emotionally and slumped where he sat, venting out engine heat. Shiftlock was saying what he'd always known but hadn't been able to accept, at least until now, when Megatron was out of his reach and he had no one left to console him.

Shiftlock sat forward, knees drawn up, arms folded and resting over them. "I didn't come here to bust your chops, 'Cade. I came here because Jazz is willing to consider you as our third."

"... what?" the saleen asked in disbelief.

"I can't say Jazz is just super, super eager to have you on board but he's willing to think about it happening. I guess it's mostly me making the offer," Shiftlock confessed with some embarrassment.

"Heh." Barricade smiled, just a little. "Not that I wouldn't want to try to start over again with you, but ... I can't accept that offer. Jazz and I don't mix, Shiftie. You said it yourself, that I need someone who can help me control my own strength. Jazz isn't strong enough to do that - and you know it."

Disappointment settled down on the both of them like a gentle rain. "Yeah," Shiftlock said softly. "I guess I do."

Barricade slid his hand over to Shiftlock. Noticing, she slipped one of her arms free and took the offered servo in her own.

"Guess this is where it ends for us, huh?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah. Sometimes we just don't get what we want," Barricade responded.

...

Prowl allowed himself a faint smile at how the situation had resolved itself. This had been the result he'd been aiming for, really; he'd chosen his words to Shiftlock carefully. He knew the Autobots within the ranks like the back of his hand, read every battle report, read every psychological briefing Rung had sent to him. Shiftlock was perverse enough to try her hardest to do the opposite of what anyone in authority told her to do - which mean that she would go so far as to deny herself what she wanted just to rub it in some smug prick's face.

A smug prick like himself, for example.

He knew that Barricade's carrier nature would take over and he'd be willing, at last, to hitch himself to a mech or a femme with enough strength and combat prowess to keep him in place, and that was precisely why he had arranged for Barricade to stay in mixed quarters with Ironhide and Chromia. It was no secret that the two Autobots had been bonded and just waiting to have sparklings since long before the war began, and their combined, formidable strength would be enough to whip Barricade into line and into loyalty in a heartbeat.

Megatron and Prime had only agreed to the living arrangements. Prowl had been the one to position the various Decepticons and Autobots together in close quarters, knowing that EMF proximity alone would start to cause new relationships to take shape.

Peace was only going to come if Autobots and Decepticons began to forge emotional bonds that they would dare not risk breaking with continued conflict. Prowl had not forgotten that trouble would come looking for all of them soon, either in the form of humanity collectively turning on them, the remnants of the Decepticon's loose canons still in space, or the Star Seekers. It was up to Prowl yet again to put his mental gifts to work, this time engaging in a different, subtle kind of warfare, moving both Autobot and Decepticon into each others' arms without them being aware of any kind of manipulation at all. For all his planning, all the ways he was asked to win the war, he had largely been ignored, because he did not have the charisma of Prime or Bumblebee or Springer - and he had had enough of it. The threats coming to earth were too big to simply let Prime and Megatron continue their overly grandiose interpersonal drama. The pulp fiction melodrama between the two leaders and and their subordinates had resulted in the destruction of the Omega Lock. That had been the final straw for Prowl. He couldn't allow the direction of the impending crisis he saw coming to rest in either of their hands any longer.

For the time being, Prowl contented himself with his success as a matchmaker.

Probability told him that everything would turn out as he planned.

Fun Fact #1: Prowl died in the original Transformers animated movie, but later showed up alive and well in the Japanese Transformers: Headmasters cartoon that followed after the G1 series. The Japanese producers of the Headmaster show still hadn't seen the American movie, and were not aware that Prowl had died! Oops.

Fun Fact #2: Barricade started out as a Micromaster - a character about the size of Rumble and Frenzy - and was leader of the Decepticon Race Track Patrol squad. The character was later picked up and adapted to the live-action movie, going from a race care to a police car, and portrayed as being as big as any other Transformer. Someone spent some time eating their Wheaties...

Author's Note: I have been asked 'why thirteen genders?', and I feel this is a pretty valid question. I'll try to answer as succinctly as possible.

Firstly, Ratchet in previous chapters assumes that human gender is based mainly on having different looking bodies (which is partially right). Transformers in the Aligned universe have around Thirteen different frame-types (carriers, femmes, combiners, shifters, beastformers, minicons, etc), each corresponding to one of the Thirteen original Primes. All those different frame-types descended from the original Thirteen, according to canon. Reproductively speaking, in my take on TFs is closer to between three to five actual genders, with the different frame-types procreating in different ways. Some of this is just a continuity nod to all the different ways Transformers have been hinted at or stated to reproduce in the different series over time; some of it is based on my original ideas (such as the mech-femme-carrier trines), and other ways are just a nod to the stuff established in the fandom.