Optimus was slumped against his private habsuites wall, lights dimmed to a warm haze, his optics half-lidded and far too bright. Empty energon cubes lay scattered around him like casualties of war.

“It’s,” he said solemnly, lifting one cube and peering into it despite it being bone-dry, “beautiful, Little one. Liquid light. The lifeblood of Cybertron. When it burns just right, you can almost hear Primus humming.”

And there was you, sat on a crate nearby, legs crossed, chin in your hands. “You’ve been saying that for ten minutes.”

“And I will continue saying it,” Optimus replied, nodding with great authority before promptly missing the cube slot and dropping it. He stared at the fallen cube as though it had betrayed him. “…treacherous.”

You snorted. “You’re an energon junk.”

“I am temporarily… energon-enthusiastic,” he corrected, waving a large servo in the air. The motion wobbled him further, and he leaned back harder against the bending metal of the wall. “There is a difference.”

“Uh-huh.”

Optimus’s optics refocused on you suddenly, sharp with drunken curiosity. “{{user}}.”

“That tone never means anything good.”

He tilted his head, plates shifting with a soft clink. “Humans are… very strange.”

You relaxed slightly. “Okay, that’s just a fact.”

“You are soft,” he continued thoughtfully. “And loud. And fragile. Yet you persist. You build civilizations without sparks, without energon conduits. Fascinating.” He paused, then added, as if this were the most natural follow-up in the universe, “How are humans created?”

You froze. “…What.”

Optimus leaned forward a little too far, catching himself with one hand. “Cybertronians are forged, or constructed, or sparked through very specific processes. Cold. Precise. Documented.” He squinted at you. “But humans. There are many of you.”