Funded By Grants

[heliopauseentertainments]

Requested by @tangentially-displaced​

Continuity: IDW1
Rating: Teen
Relationship: Mesothulas/Prowl
Characters: Mesothulas
Warnings: Suggestive themes, mad science

Summary: In which Mesothulas runs out of money for replacement parts for his machinery.

Crossposting: AO3 | Tumblr | Pillowfort

Fic below cut

The machine Mesothulas had been using to synthesize a spark, based on the technology underlying spark generation from the Matrix with a few… extras, stopped responding this morning. Instead of kicking into gear and whirring to life with the crackle of electricity and hot hum of an unwise number of calculations at once, the machine sat there silently. The screen of the operating console didn’t even flash an error message. It was just dark and dead, no matter how he scowled at it..

In frustration, Mesothulas slapped the side of the room-sized device.

“What’s the matter with you?”

As though the machine would answer him.

If nothing, it was at least a little cathartic to yell at the inanimate hunk of technology. No one said creation would be easy. He hadn’t been promised smooth sailing. He hadn’t even been promised unlimited funding from Autobot war coffers.

That was probably the problem, he thought, getting on his hands and knees to open a service panel on the device. A power converter had mostly likely blown out from too much strain. That was what Mesothulas got for not only using the Matrix technology, but also trying to get the machine to integrate his own coding and Prowl’s—that bit was supposed to be a surprise, of course—into the resulting spark on top of that.

After a few moments, Mesothulas found the issue. The power converter, burnt out beyond all recognition, would need to be replaced. Maybe he should have checked it the previous evening when the device had made a questionable popping noise. The foul-smelling blue smoke that had leaked out of the vents should also have been a clue.

If only he had the money, he could replace it without a problem, but, unfortunately, the last bit of funding he’d had had gone to that now dead component. After the last one blew. Prowl just hadn’t been giving him enough to get a more powerful converter, which meant more money was wasted on sub-par components being constantly replaced.

Their child deserved better than this, than to be created with whatever parts could be scrounged and bought at discount wholesalers. With a sigh, Mesothulas closed up the service panel and sat back on his heels to frown at the idle machine.

The one consolation was that they hadn’t quite gotten to the spark ignition phase, otherwise there would have been a time crunch to get the machine working again. He wasn’t sure he could handle having to watch a spark cool beyond viability and then starting over. The only thing beyond the high-strength glass of the viewing chamber next to the console was the empty photonic crystal that had been synthesized last week.

He glanced up at it, what little of it he could see from this angle on the floor.

Sharp blue-tinged angles on otherwise clear, flawless crystal, not yet home to life.

But soon.

He would make sure. He would prove it could be done. Prowl would see.

Prowl’s support was vital to the completion of this project, and many others, but this one most of all. He’d been interested in Mesothulas’s work, but he hadn’t seemed to be terribly… invested in their child. It was almost like he didn’t understand how important this was, how Ostaros, currently a hollow husk of an endoskeleton in the next room, would improve their lives. Not only would it be a groundbreaking innovation for their species, but it would be for them.

Ostaros was waiting for them… and for Prowl’s money.

If only he could somehow convince Prowl that making the newspark was the fun part, not just a money pit.

That was it.

That was the angle he needed. Promises of bonus recreational activities usually summoned Prowl to their little secret laboratory-cum-love-nest.

A grin stretched across his face behind his mask as he flipped open the communicator on his wrist. He gleefully typed in a risqué message on the encrypted, off-the-record frequency they shared. Once Prowl had returned to Mesothulas’s web of delights and succumbed to the throes of intimacy, Mesothulas would ask for the money to fix and upgrade the machine.

And, best of all, Prowl would be in no “position” to refuse.