Caius the Bigger

femme4jack asked for commentary on Serendipity.



Comments on this fic in general: I've been fascinated by Daniel Witwicky since I first met him. I'm not terribly interested in him as a character. but his situation is fascinating. Unlike any of the other Autobot humans, he was raised among Autobots, and while he wasn't isolated from human society, it's got to give him some interesting identity issues.

If you've spent any extensive amount of time talking to me since I got into this fandom, you've probably heard all about it. It's pretty fascinating. To me. Although I wasn't expecting nearly so many people to enjoy it once I actually wrote it!

One thing that shaped this particular form of the story was that I'd been reading a lot of transgender narratives over the summer. Daniel's situation isn't precisely analogous to anything that happens to humans in reality, but the 'being in the wrong body' aspect of the story owes a lot to those.

Title: Serendipity
Recipient: eaten_by_bears
Continuity: G1 Cartoon
Pairing/Characters: Daniel (plus Brawn, Bumblebee, Carly, Hot Rod, Perceptor, and Spike)
Rating/Category: PG/gen (with references to human reproduction methods)
Word Count: 1575
Spoilers: For Transformers: The Movie (1986).
Notes: Written for eaten_by_bears in the 2011 Transformers Gift Exchange.

When I got eaten_by_bears in the second TF Fic Exchange, I was thrilled--clearly it was going to either be hot Roddy/Kup porn, or that Daniel Witwicky gen fic I'd been threatening to write for ages.

I wound up writing the latter. Sorry about the lack of Kup, Bears!

Daniel's parents created him by accident. Perceptor said so.

My headcanon on how Daniel came to be: Carly and Spike decided to experiment with the whole 'having sex with a member of your own species' thing. Carly got pregnant. The Autobots found out about this, and they were so excited, so she didn't have the heart to tell them that she wasn't sure she wanted to keep the baby.

"Organic replication is entirely miraculous," he expounded, while Daniel lay under the microscope lens, allowing himself to be studied. Daniel didn't remember what he said next--there was something about DNA and Vector Sigma and gamma-something or other--but then Perceptor said, "Organics are even capable of reproducing themselves accidentally! Like you, Daniel!"

Perceptor is the science guy in this one. Not quite as irresponsible as Wheeljack, and the image of Daniel under a giant microscope was too good to give up.

The lens got closer. Daniel flinched. "Wait, I was an accident?" He knew all about accidents. Sometimes they blew up. Occasionally they made surprise things that were better than what they were trying to make in the first place.

Bonus reference to the title. Actually I think I wrote that line before I decided what to call the fic.

"Affirmative!" Perceptor said, excitedly. "Can you turn over?"

Daniel did. "Am I gonna explode?"

"That would be an extremely unlikely eventuality! Your chemical structure is remarkably stable." Daniel could feel the microscope's focus moving over him. It was reassuring. Perceptor would be able to tell.

"As long as ya don't spend too much time in here." That was Brawn. He tended to hang around Perceptor's lab a lot. Daniel assumed that meant they were friends. "C'mon, Percy, give the human a break." A small hand grabbed his leg, covering only most of it, and pulled him off the specimen tray.

Daniel's sense of scale is perfectly normal. For an Autobot.

Re: Brawn and Perceptor--after watching Microbots I decided that Brawn, having seen that Perceptor in fact turns into a BIG FUCKING CANNON, developed a huge crush on him.

In this particular 'verse, it apparently worked out fairly well. I suspect it might more likely just freak Perceptor out.

"I was examining him!" Perceptor shifted to mech mode as soon as Brawn had Daniel clear of him. Daniel watched as best he could, upside-down, trying to remember how Perceptor did it. Not that he wanted to be a microscope when he grew up. He was going to be a cool car! Or a Dinobot.

Sorry, Perceptor, you're just not cool enough.

And this is the first (semi)explicit indication of what the fic is about--Daniel thinks of himself as an Autobot. He's too young at this point to fully realize that he's not (physically), and that it's not going to change when he grows up.

"It's break time. We need ya on the practice field. C'mon, Percy, you need ta show Cliffjumper he ain't all that!" Brawn flipped Daniel around in his hands. It took two. Soon, Daniel thought, he'd be taller than Brawn!

Perceptor sighed. "You are perfectly aware that I do not enjoy your violent amusements." But there was a smile under it. "Place our homo sapiens on the floor, first, please."

"Of course! I'm not stupid." Brawn put him down. Daniel was taller than his knees, now. "Get going, kid, run play with the Dinobots or something, 'k?"

And of course Daniel is growing, which gives him a reason to expect/home that he'll eventually be as big as the other Autobots.

"'K!" Perceptor was looking at Brawn like he was being rude or something, but the Dinobots sounded like an excellent idea. Sludge gave the best rides! Of anyone that didn't have wheels, anyway. Daniel ran off.

And like a normal little kid, he's easily distracted by dinosaurs. :D

*****

Daniel's Dad came back the next day. His job as Ambassador meant he had to visit Autobot City frequently, and he always made sure to spend Quality Time with his son.

Spike tries, he really does.

So Bumblebee took them off to the pond and they sat quietly with fishing poles all day.

"Dad?" Daniel asked, after what must have been several vorns of no fish. "How did you bring me to Vector Sigma by accident? Did you and Mom get lost or something?"

Daniel knows all about where new Autobots come from, of course.

Dad looked over Daniel's head at Bee, and Bee shrugged. "Um. Who told you that?"

"Perceptor!" Daniel said, annoyed. It seemed this was one of the things Dad didn't want to talk to him about, like when he was going to get an alt-mode.

So many awkward conversations.

Dad looked worried. "Perceptor is very smart, but...you might not have heard him right. You didn't come from Vector Sigma, you came from your mommy's tummy!"

Daniel frowned. That didn't make any sense. And Dad wasn't nearly as smart as Perceptor, so it must be Dad that was wrong.

Bee shifted next to him. "Hey! I think I got a bite! Help me haul it in, Danny!"

I'm sure it's just that Bee is a 1984 Autobot, but we never see him with Daniel much, and I get the feeling they're not really close. He's Spike's Autobot, not Daniel's.

It turned out to be the football the Dinobots had lost last week, and Daniel was too distracted returning it to try to get the real story from his Dad.

Again, Dinobots are very distracting.

*****

He didn't find out how little humans were really made until Hot Rod came to earth, and he sat on his lap while Roddy read through the dossier on humans they'd been given.

Hot Rod had apparently missed the part about not telling Daniel. Or maybe it had been rescinded--Daniel was almost 10, now, and was nearly up to Bumblebee's waist.

The two of them stared in horror at the diagrams of placentas and zygotes, and the...interfacing thing that his parents had apparently done.

Daniel knows by now how Autobots have sex. Learning opportunities for human biology and behavior don't come up as often.

"Ewwwwww!" Daniel stood up on Hot Rod's lap. "I didn't come from that! I'm an Autobot like the rest of you! And I don't--" He knew he had the thing that his Dad had used in the diagram. But Roddy was so cool and didn't know about the time he'd thrown up human food all over Optimus Prime, and he certainly didn't need to know that. "I just plug in like normal people. And I don't put babies in people! Not even Blaster."

Poor kid--he gets to find out the disgusting things humans do in front of the new cool Autobot!

"Off course not." Roddy seemed kind of relieved. "Come on--!" He tossed the dossier aside. "Let's go driving!"

"Awesome! I'll show you all the sights. And the short cuts! They'll never catch us!" Daniel timed it just right to dive into Hot Rod's seat as he transformed, and started yelling directions as they zoomed off.

And both of them find driving way more interesting than sex. Daniel's maneuver here was intended to demonstrate just how comfortable and adept is at dealing with Autobots several times his size.

*****

Daniel was almost twelve.

He didn't have cables. He didn't have an alt-mode, and he wasn't going to grow one. Sometimes he would go hide in his room and lie on his bed and be sad, because he would never be the Autobot he wanted to be, and Roddy or Arcee would have to come haul him out and cheer him up.

His parents tried, and the other Autobots tried, but he would just hide under a sheet of metal until they went away. Or hauled him out by force, and he hated even more than they could do that so easily.

Being twelve sucks, and guess what, Daniel? In six months or so half the Autobots are going to be dead and Roddy isn't going to be nearly as much fun anymore.

*****

The other Ambassadors were starting to introduce him to their daughters. There had been enough years and enough turnover for them to forget about what had happened when they'd left little Daniel with the other young children, and Daniel had never played with anyone less durable than an Autobot before.

There was carnage in the Ambassadorial day care. Daniel didn't mean it, he just wasn't used to how easily human children break...

His Dad gave him a pat on the shoulder and said that he would have to learn to be an ambassador, too, and represent them well.

Daniel tried. He wasn't in the least interested in human children, but he didn't want them thinking that Autobots were rude. They needed all the alliances they could get.

Mostly they ignored him, too. Occasionally they wanted to meet the interesting Autobots, the ones with sexy alt-modes, and they'd talk like Daniel wasn't even there.

He still thinks of himself as an Autobot. Just kind of a boring one.

After one of them--Minelba, something like that--talked Hot Rod into giving her a ride--without Daniel--Daniel sat sadly on the embassy steps. Hot Rod was his best friend!

"Minelba" is a version of Minerva from Super-God Masterforce.

Spike--Dad--came by and sat next to him. "Just likes you for your car, does she?"

He doesn't really think of him as Dad anymore.

Daniel looked up at him in confusion.

Spike patted him on the shoulder, very lightly, because he was almost as weak as Daniel was. "Don't worry, your mother was just the same way, when we first met. Always more interested in cars than boys."

Spike, projecting your issues with your wife on your son.

"Carly still is." Daniel wasn't sure what this had to do with anything.

Spike put his arms around him and sighed. "She loves you, really, she does. She's just very busy. She'll be back tomorrow night..."

Daniel didn't get humans. He wanted Hot Rod back.

*****

Hot Rod came back. Carly didn't. Not that night. Not for another week.

One of the reasons I hesitated to write this for so long was that it involves writing Carly as a terrible mother, too busy with her (I can only assume) awesome science stuff to pay attention to her kid. And that risks dragging up a whole lot of awkward gender issues that I don't really want to deal with.

Carly's awesome, really. She's just not very present.

It made Spike sad, but Spike had Bumblebee and Daniel had Hot Rod and Arcee, so Daniel wasn't sure what the problem was.

And that's Daniel's idea of who his family is (and who Spike's family is.

*****

Then Hot Rod went away, and came back as Rodimus Prime, and was worried and sad all the time, and hardly had more time for him than his parents did. Daniel still wasn't a proper Autobot, but at least he had a transforming car suit, and he was working on talking Perceptor into giving him cables.

The car suit: canon from TFTM, and a partial solution to Daniel's problem.

(Wheeljack would have done it, he was sure. But Wheeljack was dead, along with half the other Autobots of Daniel's childhood.

Semi-reference to Tentacle Envy, there. Which is not at all in the same universe as this--Autobots don't have tentacles here.

Someday, Daniel would be big and strong and fight alongside Arcee and Rodimus and avenge them all.)

The car Daniel turned into wasn't anywhere near big enough to keep up with Roddy, even with his silly big trailer. Wheeljack would have given him an upgrade, too, but they were short on mechanics after the battle of Autobot City, and no one had the time.

Daniel was hanging out in his suit--just in case he was needed!--and didn't notice Carly until she was standing right next to him.

And Carly gets to be helpful! In her own, Carly-like way.

She walked so softly, and it wasn't like he'd been expecting her. (But he'd have to learn! He didn't want to step on anyone.)

She walks very softly--for an Autobot.

"I remember when we made that for your father." She looked him over with more interest than usual.

Like mother, like son--when he's in Autobot drag, now Daniel's interesting.

"You made it?" Daniel said, surprised.

"Mm-hmm. I've got one around here somewhere, too, if it hasn't been cannibalized for spare parts." She petted the side of his chassis. "Yours is in pretty good shape."

"I try to keep it tuned up and everything." Daniel said, bashfully. "I wish I knew how to upgrade it."

"I can help you with that."

Daniel stared down--only slightly down--at her. "Really?!"

His mother? Being helpful? *GASP!*

"Of course. Let's go talk about what you want and how we can build it." She opened his door. "C'mon out, easier to work on your car-mode that way."

His car-mode--Daniel stared for a second, then got out. "Thanks, Mom."

His mother understands him! And she's Mom again.

"Of course. Let me show you the new transmission I'm working on!" She smiled, and Daniel followed her eagerly. Perhaps this time, they could build him right.

And they lived happily ever after. Not a perfect solution to Daniel's situation--there isn't really one--but Carly and Daniel's car suit let me give him some closure and some hope.

...Of course I could have gone with the Rebirth solution, and made him Arcee's Headmaster partner, but that's a whole new can of worms.