Culture Shock.

Summary: With the AllSpark gone, the Autobots and Decepticons must learn to court and gain the affections of the Cybertronian femmes. Starscream looks into early history for the answers, seeking the method favoured by ancient Decepticons.

Rating: Probably T, but M for safety.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters nor would claim to: I'm just playing with them. They belong to Hasbro and Dreamworks/Paramount.

Culture Shock.

Prologue.

The AllSpark was gone, and although the shard Optimus had picked from Megatron's chest had produced life, the resulting forms were severely damaged, their coding jumbled and in some case badly degraded. It took much care from Ratchet – and a certain amount of judicious reprogramming – before the Autobots could even begin to start training the few they had saved to be functioning members of society, be that Autobot or Decepticon society.

Optimus and the Autobots were not overly-concerned about the continuance of their race, for the Autobot femme team had arrived, led by the femme who was Optimus' mate, Elita-One, and her second in command was Ironhide's mate, Chromia.

Moonracer, one of the others, was disappointed to find that her Powerglide had not arrived, Firestar sad that Inferno was not present. Similarly, Arcee was upset that Hot Rod was not among the mechs at the Base, and that left only Flareup, Chromia's young ward, free, and she was waiting to see who else might arrive before taking a mate. In Cybertronian terms, a wait of a few hundred years would be seen as acceptable, and all the 'bots were willing to wait, especially at a time of war, and especially as they first had to rear the defective AllSpark-generated sparklings.

None of the Autobots stopped to think that as the Decepticons had no femmes of their own (and were not, as far as they knew, expecting any) that the Decepticons might not have the patience to wait for any others to arrive, particularly not when they were led by an impatient mech like Starscream.

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"We could steal one, the Autobots have plenty to spare, they wouldn't miss her," Barricade said, in a discussion the Decepticons were having. Starscream shot him a venomous glare, and Barricade realised that what he'd insinuated was something still very taboo to even most Decepticons, so taboo that even the slower tank-mech Wreckage edged away, distancing himself from the black and white frontliner.

"You suggest we imprison a femme and force her to bear sparklings for us?" Starscream asked in a dangerously quiet voice. "Barricade, we may be Decepticons, but that does not mean some of us do not have scruples, and while I am leader, you will not ignore mine."

"So you have a better idea? I'm sure we are all eager to hear, Starscream," the frontliner said.

"I'm working on it. Femmes need to be coaxed, lured, encouraged. Some of our earlier records suggest that femme-births were at one time more common. Courting a femme is a skill we have lost, and I will check the records of the times to see how encouraging a femme to choose you as a mate was carried out. There are a lot of records to check and decipher, but I will report back to you with a better idea in three human days." He fixed them all with a look. "While we're on the subject of timely happenings, I want the new building you are supposed to be erecting to be completed by that time."

The meeting broke up, and Starscream went back to his studies. He had actually found the records he was looking for. Unknown to the others, he was already working on putting things in motion to try and secure himself and his wing brothers a femme to share. He just needed a little more time to implement some of his plans. He hoped he could persuade the femme – once he got her - to go with all of the Decepticons, over a long period of time of course, but realised it was a lot to ask of one femme.

Meaning the femme in question would have to be exceptional indeed. Which meant it was lucky for him, he mused, that just such a femme had already arrived on Earth.