Bend, Don't Break

by Magnusoftheward

Summary:

Wading out of the wreckage practically unharmed was not a good look. Not to mention, that hollow feeling never left Sunstreaker: something to do with the fact that he suddenly had nothing left and nowhere to go.

Notes:

Sleep was not for me tonight. Then again, sometimes the best ideas come at 3AM while listening to movie soundtracks.

Chapter 1

 

 

Somehow, he never got arrested. They found him in the rubble, gave him fuel and loaded him onto a transport to a medical zone. No one actually posed the question: how come this one is perfectly fine? And there were no Enforcers waiting for him outside the emergency med-tent when he was released, waiting to question him about the extremely unlikely odds of him coming out of a bombing practically unscathed.

Well, not quite unscathed. The medic that had fixed his shoulder and scanned him insisted he was in shock. Sunstreaker had simply leveled him with a flat stare, wondering if the hollowness inside him was visible now. The medic had looked away fast enough. But then again, few mechs had been able to hold his gaze for long, even before all this.

He did get a few less-than-friendly looks however, when he stepped inside the dispensary for the asylum seekers set up on the outskirts of the Translucentia Heights. Flashing his ID to the two guards posted at the entrance got him a raised pair of orbital ridges and a scowl; he’d assumed it was because his last stated residence had been listed as Praxus. A city which was now locked down, according to the news broadcasts that were being shown everywhere. All foreigners were being ousted, since the Praxians wanted nothing to do with the conflict.

Coupled with that and their family estate in smoldering ruins, Sunstreaker had literally nowhere to go. He’d assumed that the other bots affected by the Vosian attack would understand. Instead, he got glared at as he joined the line for the energon dispenser.

There was a lot of optics flicking to his chest — a lot of chest-plate ogling going on in general. Sunstreaker surreptitiously covered up his family crest with one servo while he waited.

It was the same look, always: a glance at his chest, at the emblem, followed by a darkening of features. There were a lot more bots, common folk, wearing brand new symbols on their chests now, courtesy of the conscription centers on every corner. Sunstreaker picked a pair of recruiters out of the crowd, running their little operation in the corner of the room while he stepped up to the dispenser.

“Um, sorry, uh, sir.” A small femme standing across the counter, peach colored with a red face emblazoned onto her chest-plate, spoke up when he reached for a cube. Sunstreaker met her blue gaze in the awkward silence that followed. She seemed reluctant to say her piece but as her optics darted to one of the recruiters, she seemed to gather up the resolve. “There are bots here who need the rations more. Would you mind stepping out of line?”

Sunstreaker shuttered his optics in a slow blink, letting his servo thump against the counter beside the dispenser. “What?”

“As I said,” the femme forced her lip-plates up into a curt smile. She gestured behind him, to a mech holding a youngling in his servos, glaring up at Sunstreaker’s chest. “The dispenser is running low and we are prioritizing the bitlets.”

Sunstreaker’s gaze dragged from the mech behind him to the group of larger mechs that had each taken their share before him. Terrain-ready vehicle alt-modes, the lot of them, sitting huddled around a table not far away. Listening in while nursing their full cubes. Sunstreaker turned back to the peach-colored femme.

“What’s your designation?”

Her optics flicked back to the recruiters again, before she straightened up with a sloppy salute. “Autobot Chip, at your service!”

Sunstreaker let his gaze linger on her posture before reaching for the dispenser again.

“Hey!”

He snatched up the cube, smacked a lid on it and whirled on the mech behind him. The youngling in his arms stared up at him with bright yellow optics, mouth hanging open a little. Sunstreaker shoved the full cube into its servos and grabbed the mech by the collar faring.

“Oi, get your—” he spluttered as Sunstreaker marched him to the end of the line.

“You heard her,” Sunstreaker snarled, glaring at all the adult bots they passed who didn’t so much as budge from their spots in line. “Younglings first.”

“Unhand him.” A broad mech with a freshly stamped red mark right under his windshield stepped up, getting into Sunstreaker’s way. Not a moment later, he was backed up by two others, freshly recruited and brimming with unearned authority. The struggling mech in Sunstreaker’s grip went still, realizing he was in a position he really didn’t want to be in. Sunstreaker let him go, staring after him as he scampered back into the line, his youngling clinging to him and the cube in its small hand.

“Listen, buddy, I think it’s better if you just go.” A firm hand fell on Sunstreaker’s servo, causing his optics to swivel over to its owner. The broad mech, a freshly minted Autobot. Friendly features but stern. Sunstreaker puffed a hot vent of air into his face-plates.

“Touch me again and you’ll regret it.”

He spoke the words quietly, just between the two of them, just stating a fact. Unease flickered over the mech’s face, his digits leaving an unpleasant imprint of sensation on Sunstreaker’s injured servo. The medic may have fixed the joint but his sensors were out of whack, registering the touch long after it was gone.

The broad mech jerked his chin toward the exit and motioned his two companions to step aside. Sunstreaker didn’t spare them another glance as he walked away.

He tried two more emergency locations for refugees before giving up. It was always the same, with the added caveat that someone with his credentials could forget about getting free fuel without enlisting. The only positive part about it was that no one tried to stop him from leaving what was left of Iacon. Or maybe they’d just been too busy to notice him slipping through the cracks in their defenses.

The further he went, the more red insignias he saw.

Harried bots flocking to Iacon from the surrounding territories — they were calling it the “Autobot Commonwealth” now — while he went in the opposite direction. Some of them tried to stop him, even question him about being a Decepticon spy; it got to the point that Sunstreaker spent his last remaining shanix in a bar so he could use their adjoining wash-rack to unclasp a part of his chest-plating and carefully remove his family crest.

It was a small plate against his palm, leaving behind a patch of silver on his chest that declared no affiliation. Sunstreaker sagged against the wash-rack wall for a moment and just stared at it: once a symbol of something to be proud of, nothing but a piece of scrap now. He’d hoped to at least feel something as he tossed it away but was left disappointed on that account.

The barkeep shot him a sharp look when he exited, waving him over to the counter. “Alright, so what will it be?”

“Nothing,” Sunstreaker replied, watching the bot’s face-plates twitch in surprise.

“You’re not ordering nothing? Our engex not good for you or something?”

“No,” Sunstreaker said, considered adding something more along the lines of not having any credits to pay with, then decided against it. It didn’t matter anyway. He left the place, ignoring the barkeeper’s muttered curse and the voice of a reporter droning on about casualties from the transponder perched on the bar. It didn’t take long however, for him to realize he’d made a mistake.

The energy levels on his HUD were beginning to slip down to frightening digits. Sunstreaker had never really been worried about that before; there had always been a cube or a decanter nearby, all he’d had to do was walk over. Order more, let Windwhip deal with the rest. He’d always been able to afford a berth, wherever he went.

Now, the sight of thirty turning into twenty-nine terrified him.

It took all of five more digits slipping away for him to realize that this was a very real countdown. If he hit five percent charge, his systems would begin shutting down to conserve what little fuel he had left. He would slip into stasis. And without some miracle medic stopping by to transfuse fuel into his lines, he’d simply… deactivate. Fade away to nothing. Fade to gray.

Down to twenty-one saw him lurking outside of a shabby inn-and-bar not far from the edge of the Rust Sea, optics tracking the few patrons that came and went. It didn’t take nearly as much effort as he’d expected to pick on a Neutral mech smaller than him. He didn’t waste time asking nicely either.

When the mech pulled a blaster out of subspace in self-defense, Sunstreaker wrenched it out of his grasp and poked it into his lower back before marching him inside the building and right up to the bar.

“You will buy us drinks, then we will go upstairs.”

“Up-upstairs?” the mech squeaked, optics flicking frantically from side to side. Sunstreaker jabbed the blaster firmly between two plates of his armor protecting his spinal strut, crowding against his back to hide it from view.

“Pay for the room, up front, half a cycle.”

“Half a—”

“Just. Do it,” Sunstreaker growled. He slipped the blaster into subspace before following the jittery Neutral into the ragged bowels of the inn. As soon as the door to their room cycled shut behind him, Sunstreaker had the mech by the neck. There was a special trick his martial arts instructor had taught him once, one he’d sworn never to misuse—

Frag that. He wasn’t recharging with a conscious stranger in the room.

The mech produced a sort of sickly wheeze as Sunstreaker crushed his vocalizer and squeezed. It tripped the manual override latches on the mech’s frame to open its emergency medical ports. Sunstreaker was quick to plug in via hard-line, tripping the stasis induction switch. It worked like a charm and the mech slumped in his hold. Sunstreaker dumped him into the solitary chair in the room and began rooting through his subspace pockets and any frame compartments he could find.

Counting out the chit cards with shanix on them, Sunstreaker sipped both of their drinks and inspected the blaster. He tucked it all into his own subspace and climbed atop the berth to plug in for the half-cycle, setting up an alarm.

Recharge was fitful, however, as his systems continuously kept jolting online at some perceived sense of danger. He left the place before he reached full charge — before the Neutral mech came out of stasis — and set the two empty cubes atop the counter downstairs with a slight nod to the proprietor who was cleaning the counter.

“Have fun, did you?” the mech smirked, a half-sparked expression. Sunstreaker made some sort of noncommittal grunt, fixing the edge of the cube, optics flicking up from the reflective surface of the counter. The owner vented a sigh, snatching up the cubes. “Well, take what little comfort you can, I guess.”

Sunstreaker glanced down at his scratched up finish and released a frustrated vent. The Neutral mech upstairs had, unfortunately, been mostly black and gray. Sunstreaker refused to let his optics linger on his own distorted reflection in the scuffed counter, shoving away with a scowl.

He was scratched to the Pit and back, not that there was much to be done about it but the stolen shanix in his subspace were quite enough to harass a store clerk in one of these shabby border settlements to sell him some paint. He donned more black and dark gray to better blend into this rust-speckled wasteland. No other option, really. Not like he could request a custom mix of paint. Not like there was time to fuss about keeping up an image.

The slag nearly-matte paint did have one particular advantage, though: next time he went looking for an easy mark to keep his fuel levels up, the bot didn’t even see him until Sunstreaker had a vibro-blade to a major fuel line in his neck. And that — that made things very easy. And quiet, most importantly, even when they tried to fight back.

After that, he sort of just… lost track of how many he took advantage of. Maybe at some point, he’d spared a thought of taking one or two of them to a nearby clinic or dumping them on someone’s doorway — out of pity, maybe? He wasn’t sure. But thoughts like that became a luxury he couldn’t afford; not if he was to avoid attracting unwanted attention.

No more keen Autobot optics on every corner in these parts but there were others. Others like him, bots who’d gotten quite good at looking for weakness and waited around in the shadows to exploit it.

The looks he got changed, though they were hardly any more pleasant or less suspicious. Most of them were simply wary when they spotted him looming in their door frames. This last one was no exception; the precariously hung flickering sign above the entrance proclaimed it to be Drowner’s Cavern — which Sunstreaker found mildly amusing. He was sure there was an innuendo in there somewhere, one that could have only been more obvious if the place had actually been called ‘Drowner’s Hole’.

A mech whom he presumed to be Drowner himself fixed a pair of beady purple optics on him the moment Sunstreaker nudged the door open when it didn’t get out of his way fast enough. Sunstreaker didn’t bother to smile, optics unapologetically scanning the space, looking for threats.

It wasn’t the most auspicious of settings, though he’d been in worse by now. It had size in spades, the far-side windows glazed with a grainy covering of rust from the outside, the space ill-lit by lights drooping from the ceiling. The floor wasn’t all metal either, some kind of unholy slag heap forced into a flat surface that snagged on Sunstreaker’s pedes as he strode inside.

A smattering of mismatched pieces of scrap metal that served as stools and chairs hosted an equally mismatched number of patrons, most of them sitting alone. Only one of them held Sunstreaker’s gaze as he raked it over the room; the big green one by the windows, red optics flashing over the edge of his cube. Sunstreaker idly wondered if he should be more concerned about the mech’s actual presence or the fact that his processors had instantly categorized him as ‘competition’ instead of ‘trouble’. Certainly, he was both.

“Well, you gonna just stand there, or actually do something worth my time?” Drowner, presumably, grunted. Sunstreaker met his purple gaze before lazily striding over.

“How much for six voors?”

Drowner’s optical ridges shot up and someone behind Sunstreaker snorted a laugh. “My, my, haven’t been asked for a roll in the berth like that in quite a while.”

“Your presence won’t be necessary, the berth will suffice,” Sunstreaker retorted, leveling the mech with a dark stare. Drowner shrugged, reaching below the counter before producing a sort of skeleton key.

“Your loss, handsome stranger. You want anything off the shelf?”

Sunstreaker glanced at the assortment of badly cleaned plastic casings filled with a variety of colored concoctions he presumed to be some form of high-grade. His optics spotted the tap of a dispenser in the corner and he propped one servo against the counter. “Mid-grade.”

Mid-grade, Drowner mouthed, bewildered optics not once leaving Sunstreaker’s frame as he poured out a cube. Sunstreaker chucked it back, trying to ignore the slithering sensation of staleness as it rolled down his intake into his near-empty fuel tanks. He slapped a pair of shanix on the counter, raising an optic ridge at the owner.

“That will get you two,” said Drowner, still staring at Sunstreaker like he’d sprouted another helm. Then he added: “…cubes of mid-grade.”

“One more, then,” Sunstreaker poked the empty cube and downed the refill in much of a similar fashion. No pleasure in it, not anymore. Not even relief, as his energy levels steadily began to climb on his HUD. “Key?”

Drowner squinted at him. Instead of handing over the key, the mech led the way down a ramp into what looked to be pod-like storage rooms. Sunstreaker had to duck his helm to avoid snagging the ceiling and those horrible dangling lights as he followed. Drowner stopped in front of one of the pod doors, unlocked it and made a sweeping gesture as if to say ‘your eminence’, gesturing Sunstreaker in.

“This is a drone storage room,” Sunstreaker said dryly, not that it needed pointing out. Drowner’s lip-plate curled up to reveal a flash of denta.

“Got a berth in it, don’t it?”

“Did you start the clock yet?” Sunstreaker grumbled, snatching up the key he was offered. Drowner grinned at that.

“The moment you step inside,” he confirmed, holding out his servo to block the doorway when Sunstreaker made to enter. “Ah-ah, fifteen now, as collateral.”

Sunstreaker paid him before slipping inside the room, finally able to straighten up.

“Though if you change your mind about that roll in the berth, I’ll see what I can do about forgetting the other half of your payment.” Drowner’s voice floated up behind him, prompting him to swivel back toward the door. The mech grinned. Sunstreaker shut the door in his face.

Surprisingly enough, the storage room had a cleanser nozzle installed, presumably for rinsing off the drones. They stood, lifeless and dusty along the wall opposite the crammed berth, unwashed for vorns, Sunstreaker assumed. Which was why he was so surprised when the cleanser nozzle still worked. He upended a bucket he found in the corner and filled it, fishing out an old polishing cloth from subspace. It had permanent stains on it now, nearly obscuring the monogram in the corner.

Sunstreaker stared at the glyphs of his name, digits absentmindedly tracing over the forearm plating of his right servo. Then he dunked the polishing cloth into the cleanser and did his best to scrub off whatever dust and grime he could manage.

Whipping his helm up, he tried to towel off most of the droplets, squeezing out the rag as his optics snagged on the dirty circular mirror hung on the wall.

He’d been avoiding looking into it since the moment he’d stepped pede inside the room. For good reason, too.

The reflection gazing back at him was familiar; it had all his features, even the color of his lenses was pale blue, yet Sunstreaker didn’t quite recognize the mech. There was a scuff on his cheek —huh, when had that happened?— and something simply off about the optics.

Sunstreaker leaned in closer, bringing his hand up to brace against the wall. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing. Just wondering what you think you’re doing,” the reflection retorted, in his own voice. Sunstreaker cycled his optics, watching for discrepancies in mimicry, a change in color, helm design, the optics... nothing happened.

“What the frag are you doing?” his reflection whispered, staring back at him in earnest.

“Staying away from the war, what does it look like—”

“So running, then,” the mech in the mirror commented, a hard light in his pale blue optics. “Stealing, bullying the little guys, leaving behind messes…”

“I am not messy,” Sunstreaker snarled, his whole point moot as his reflection’s scuffed cheek mocked him right back without a single word. He glared at it and the mech in the mirror narrowed his optics at the same time. Then, in a quieter voice, he tried asking. “…Sideswipe?”

His mirror image grinned but said nothing. The slats of his helm fins remained a faded golden-yellow, just as his optics remained their usual chilling shade of blue. Sunstreaker hesitantly reached out, digits tracing the dirty surface. His reflection did the same, it even wore an intensely curious expression. But the surface of the mirror remained solid to the touch, speckled with blooms of corrosives: the sort of dirt that could never be washed off.

“Much like your actions,” the Sunstreaker in the mirror muttered, lip-plates curling up into a haughty smirk. “Your spark should be hammering in your chest right now— why isn’t it? They’re coming for you, you know…”

“I covered my tracks,” Sunstreaker retorted, staring down the reflection. It scoffed.

“So you think. If leaving bots in dark alleys to slowly deactivate counts as covering anything. So much mess in your wake, Sunshine — do you have any idea how much work it was to fix things?”

The mirror shattered, a web of cracks radiating from its center as Sunstreaker shook out his wrist. “Frag you, Sideswipe.”

“You wish,” the broken fragments spat right back. Sunstreaker gave the mirror a black glare, which was returned in a hundred little pieces. “Face it, you need help. Just look at you.”

Sunstreaker whirled away from the cracked reflection and threw himself atop the short berth crammed up against the wall. He huffed a vent to get rid of the dust cluttering up the charging port and plugged in. Thankfully, the mirror didn’t try to ruin his recharge by continuing to speak.

Then again, maybe his reflection was right — as Sunstreaker let his cortex slowly wind down, he wondered what was step two in diagnosing a cracked processor chip. He was way past number one.

Notes:

Guilt is a funny thing...

There will be more chapters to this one.
(Possibly Probably three in total but as of yet undecided.)

Chapter 2

Notes:

Rated Explicit now, thanks to this chapter and the next (but mostly this one).

 

 

There was something to be said for panicking: Sideswipe didn’t like the feeling. For the most part, it was a faded memory, back from the cycles when he still hadn’t understood all the rules.

Panic usually came on the heels of hunger — a mindless sort of thing, uncaring and indiscriminate. It had crept inside him once, during a foolish attempt to resist the sparks calling to him, all in an effort to spare them the inevitable.

It was the sort of hunger that saw him waking up in a pleasure house, somewhere in Kaon, to find them lying all around him. Quite dead, their chests ripped open, intakes torn out. The mesh pillows under their dull grayed frames shiny and sodden with energon. Sideswipe could still remember that taste in his mouth: strange, heady and unmistakable. Like a crackle of electricity on his glossa.

Sluggish and horribly content, he’d crawled out of that massive berth, trying to get his fuzzy processors to work. Unable to recall what exactly he’d done, with a growing sense of unease, he’d just stared at them while his optics struggled to focus. And the energon had spread; he remembered that part, not being able to confine it, no matter how he tried. Moving without meaning to, building a retaining wall out of the pillows — which hadn’t worked — they’d been soaked with vital fluids, squelching with it, staining his servos.

Touching them hadn’t brought back a single memory — like someone else was piloting his frame, Sideswipe had blundered about, trying to find a way to deal with the whole horrible mess when she’d walked in on him. A wisp of a femme. Her scream at the sight of his energon-spattered frame had cut off the useless apologies burbling from his vocalizer. Sideswipe had experienced panic then, a sharp cloying sensation that prevented him from moving or speaking — until he realized the femme was looking right through him. Like he didn’t exist, like he wasn’t to blame.

Now, Sideswipe was experiencing a similar sensation, like the early stirrings of panic, a vague sense of uneasy concern. Except this time, it wasn’t born of the aftermath of going hungry. For better or worse, there was a war on — easy pickings all around. Even all the way out at the fringes, in the aft-end of Yuss, where there fighting had since moved on. He wasn’t concerned about going hungry, at least.

No, what really set him on edge was the fact that he couldn’t get the look on Sunstreaker’s face out of his processors; the image of that steely resolve haunted him, left him worried. The utter certainty within the golden mech’s optics as he’d raised his servo to snuff out his own spark.

You take everything from me, I’ll take the thing you want most away from you.

Threatening Sideswipe — and in the worst way possible — who did he think he was? Leveraging his own pain, the likes of which Sunstreaker couldn’t possibly even fathom, with such brazen conviction.

“I mean, come on!” Sideswipe exploded, plopping down atop a still smoldering artillery convoy. “Stabbing himself in the spark — who does that?!”

His answer was a wet wheeze, followed by a clatter of struggling vents. Sideswipe sighed, hopping down from the convoy to look the poor mech in the face-plates. He was half-transformed, stuck that way, a gaping hole in his chassis that dripped vital bodily fluids down onto the ground, T-cog blasted to the Pit. Sideswipe pursed his lip-plates, bending over to look into a pair of crimson optics.

“You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“Chhrck—”

“There, there,” Sideswipe patted his cheek guard. “I know you wouldn’t. It’s a horrible way to go, stake through the spark, you know…”

The mech’s vocalizer clicked, optics going dim, helm sagging weakly. Sideswipe braced his servos on his thighs, watching the convoy’s plating start to fade while running his glossa over his teeth. “Well, I guess you sort of would know, huh…”

Sideswipe straightened up and glanced around the abandoned battlefield. The plateau laid out before him, littered with debris, the ground disturbed by plasma, pockmarked with craters formed by violent explosives. A few frames, several dismembered limbs and a slag-ton of scrap plating. Off in the distance, red whirlwind clouds gathered above the Rust Sea, crackling with ionized particles and heat. Sideswipe’s gaze was drawn by them; he watched them spread like a virus in the atmosphere, a brewing storm.

Aft-end of Cybertron, indeed.

“At least the scenery is nice, eh?”

The convoy didn’t answer and by the time Sideswipe glanced over, he was already gray.

He’d wanted to live, this one. Sideswipe had seen it in his optics, clear as crystal. It was the normal thing to do: they all wanted to live, just a little bit more. Cling on for a little while longer. Not his beautiful idiot, though. Unicron forbid Sunstreaker do anything predictable.

“Fraggit,” Sideswipe groaned, worrying his lower lip-plate as his gaze was once again drawn to the building storm, and the narrow channel of the Rust Sea below it. He could still make it across if he hurried. Not that he’d be welcomed with open arms on the other side — no, the mental image of Sunstreaker flinging himself into Sideswipe’s embrace was a fantasy that had died a sad whimpering death on the cycle when he’d rescued the noble-mech from being crushed by the collapsing Towers building.

Sideswipe was skirting along a fine line by prolonging his deal with Sunstreaker. He knew he should have stuck to the original plan: the one which ended with Sunstreaker at the height of his career, all his wishes fulfilled, a toast raised in his honor in his last moments. Let the golden mech deactivate with all the other nobles, claim his spark at that crucial nexus and move on. It had been the perfect plan…

“Frag it all to the Well and back,” muttered Sideswipe as he started stomping his way across the dead battlefield, toward the spark that didn’t so much call to him but rather dragged him along in its wake.

~||~

Sunstreaker startled, sensors pinging him sharply with alerts at some sort of audible disturbance. He rolled off the berth, unplugging himself from the charging port and springing to his pedes. His audios primed, processors trying to pick apart the nature of the sound that had woken him, he checked his chronometer. Almost two voors still left on his alarm, steadily counting down the breems of paid-for recharge.

He was out of the storage room and heading back up the ramp to Drowner’s bar the next instant. As soon as he made it out of the passageway into the big open space, a sharp smell caught on his olfactory sensors. Spilled high-grade, like someone had upended one of those colorful faintly glowing containers on the floor. Other than that, the place was empty and dark.

Drowner stood behind the bar counter, a fixed grin on his rounded face-plates, a strange light to his purple optics. He looked extremely nervous, even for a sleazy mech with abysmal morals who was getting on Sunstreaker’s circuits. In fact, he looked in fear of his life.

“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” Drowner grunted through clenched denta, without moving the servo placed atop the counter. Sunstreaker narrowed his optics at him, taking a step into the space and straightening up.

“No,” Drowner gritted out, optics swiveling wildly sideways, then back to Sunstreaker and sideways again. “It’s a trap.”

That was when Sunstreaker noticed his palm was nailed to the counter with a slim blade. He followed Drowner’s glance, past the glowing containers of high-grade to the dark oily stain across the slag floor and into the shadows of the cavernous room. He saw a silhouette there, the glint of powered-off optics. The glimmer of something razor sharp. A mech poised and ready, frame painted a green so dark that it nearly blended into the gloom. His optics flickered to life along with the whine of a blaster being powered on.

Sunstreaker’s spark sank, seeing the telltale glow of several weapons coming online in the dark. The tread of heavy pedes and jingling metal echoed as the green mech stepped forward and Drowner’s expression grew even more drawn.

“Take it outside, why don’t you,” he tried, shooting a glance in Sunstreaker’s direction. “Don’t want no part of this, I told you already.”

“Oh, but he hasn’t paid you what he’s due,” the big green one rumbled, a bit of a laugh in his gravelly voice. His crimson red optics flashed before he extended a blade toward Sunstreaker. “Go on, pay the mech.”

“How much would that cost, exactly?” asked Sunstreaker, hoping to buy some time as his digits reached into subspace for a weapon.

“Just get out,” Drowner hissed. Sunstreaker felt along the handle of a vibro-blade, working his wrist gently, hoping it looked like nothing more than an expressive gesture as his processors raced, optics darting around the space.

“No offense, but I’d rather settle our score. Five, right? Thirty for six, fifteen and five for an interrupted recharge at four?”

“Pretending you’re a smart guy, are we?” the green mech sneered, taking a menacing step closer. Sunstreaker dragged his gaze away from the blade sticking out of Drowner’s servo to the ugly face-plates talking at him.

“It’s basic computation,” Sunstreaker dead-panned. “But I will explain, since your processors seem to be running a bit slow. Because I’ve paid fifteen shanix up front, the five is equivalent to—”

“Get him,” snarled the green mech with red optics.

The one with the blaster raised his servo, barrel heating with light as a group of thugs burst from the shadows, brandishing a selection of ugly-looking weapons.

Sunstreaker gripped the vibro-blade in his hand. Outside. Outside was a good idea. He made a dash for the exit.

He sprang forward, just as the weapon fired a blast, missing Sunstreaker by a fraction and accidentally turning the spilled oily high-grade into an incendiary. The explosion sent Sunstreaker crashing to his knees, knocking the small blade from his grip and he rolled, reset his optics to adjust for the sudden change of lighting, knocked into a scrap piece of stool and sprang up to his pedes. He heard crashes, clashes of metal, followed by loud swearing in the wake of the ringing noise of the blast.

Someone rammed him sideways into the bar and he sprawled against the counter, vents spluttering as he sucked in noxious gas byproduct from the explosion. Snarling face-plates attached to a real ugly piece of work filled his vision as the thug came at him overhand with a blade. Sunstreaker jerked forward, butted him in the face, knocked him staggering with his helm in his servos, whirled around to snatch up the slim blade still lodged in Drowner’s servo and buried it right between the thug’s optics. All the way to the hilt, until the end of it stabbed against the floor when Sunstreaker’s weight took them both to the ground.

“Slag,” Sunstreaker muttered to himself, unable to wrench it back out, digits getting zapped with sparks as the mech’s processors glitched hard. He began to spasm and Sunstreaker toppled off him, vents clattering as someone cannoned into his side with a wrecking ball of a servo that sent him reeling.

Apparently they’d had the bright idea of no more shooting next to highly flammable fuel. Sunstreaker spat a wheezy curse, barely dodging a brown mech of surpassing ugliness, swinging his way this way and that with a mace-like ball on a chain in place of his servo. Smashing the furniture and lumbering after Sunstreaker, blocking the way to the exit.

Sunstreaker hissed every curse he could think of, weaving and dodging, running steadily out of space as he was herded towards a corner, the rest of them following suit.

Ugly raised his dangling mace for a strike, flat face-plate twisted with a vicious grin.

“Wait!” Sunstreaker yelled, pointing at the bar, over the mech’s shoulder.

Maybe it was the brief explosion was still fresh in their processors, or maybe they really were just a dumb bunch, but amazingly, it worked.

Ugly jerked his helm back to look, pausing just long enough for Sunstreaker to regain his thoughts. And ram his pointed knee pad into the big mech’s large ventral cooling fan with all his strength. There was a sharp grinding of gears, a whine, an explosive spray of sparks and Sunstreaker used his momentum to repeat the motion, grabbing the mech’s helm and kneeing him through the face.

If he’d been a flat-faced bastard before, now his face was just one big dent, caved in and optics cracked. He spat static from his vocalizer, tottered sideways, mace swinging and Sunstreaker used his frame to shield himself from a sword attack from the side. All three of them, the attacker, Ugly in the middle and Sunstreaker overbalanced and went sprawling into a table.

Landing somewhat on top was a pretty good turn of events and Sunstreaker shoved away from them, bringing his servos up, pedes scraping the floor into a wider fighting stance, ready to—

There was a smear of green as he was grabbed and then Sunstreaker was flying across the space, wobbling from the brutal punch to his helm. He smacked into something warm and solid with a screech of metal plating just before a fist connected with his nasal ridge.

“Empty his subspace.” The gravelly voice of the green mech commanded. Then there were hands on him, gripping his plating and holding him in place as the biting edge of a sword was pressed up under his chin. Sunstreaker wanted to snarl but it came out as more of a thin whine when armored knuckles slammed into his midriff, folding him in half.

“That’s it?” An incredulous voice screeched behind him and someone grabbed his helm fin, yanking it back.

Sunstreaker’s vision finally resolved itself from its mad crackling spin, the two looming figures of his dark green attacker merging into one. He felt energon dripping down his neck cables in rivulets, the sword scraping a nasty line over his chest-plates. Crimson red optics flashed, a cruel little up-tick to the mech’s lip-plates.

“Put that away,” he instructed, grabbing Sunstreaker by the chin. “Let’s have some fun.”

The pain was blinding, whiting out his vision, warnings flashing across his HUD in a panic. Something inside him snapped, his right audio receptor went dead as his helm fin broke. Sunstreaker tried to bring a hand up, to deflect the next strike but it was a wall he slammed into. And then something slammed into him. A big heavy something that might have been a fist or a mace or pile-driver.

Red warnings flooded his vision, his plating buckled and gave way, his fuel tank lurched at the sickening sound of a strut breaking. The cables in his left servo went limp with several snaps and Sunstreaker choked on a scream as they grabbed him; there was a grinding of stressed gears in his joints as he was wrenched off his pedes and flung around.

Vents stalled, his back impacted a barrier with a shattering crack and Sunstreaker crashed through the window. He met the ground with a clatter; it folded his left pede, spun him over, then smashed him in the side, driving the last of the clean air out of his sputtering vents.

Every part of his frame screamed at him, an array of alerts that glitched in his visual feed as the rust whipped around him on the winds, infiltrating his struggling grinding vents. He tasted energon, a flood of it in his oral cavity and spat, then groaned as some rust particles made their way into his mouth and spat again.

Moving was a monumental effort but Sunstreaker managed to wriggle onto his side, getting his good servo underneath him, dragging one pede after.

“Where’re you off to?” the big green mech asked and ducked out of the broken window. There was a brief pause in which all Sunstreaker could hear was the howling winds and his own straining vents. Then the wall of Drowner’s Cavern was blasted open from the inside, sending a flurry of shrapnel falling around Sunstreaker as they came barreling through. Big Green strutted over, two more flanked him, nasty grins all around, one of them loosely swinging a sword.

“Pulling tricks in these parts?” Big Green clicked his glossa as they came to surround Sunstreaker while he scrambled back. “You’re stronger than you look, give you that, city bot. Crawler was a good mech, though, that stunt with his processors will cost ya.”

Sunstreaker dug his digits into the mess of rust-colored dust and shrapnel strewn across the ground and flung it up against Big Green’s vent intakes as the mech approached. He twisted his torso away, snarling as some of the shrapnel plinked against his optics.

“Lively slagger — hold him down!”

They grabbed him, first by the pedes and when that didn’t work because Sunstreaker lashed out like a scraplet had gotten under his plating, the one with the sword settled for pinning him through his damaged shoulder joint.

“Maybe we’ll break ya down for parts, eh? Worth more than a pile of shanix, these cycles, anyway!”

They took turns kicking him — his helm, his spine, his midriff, his helm again — them snarling and spitting at him while Sunstreaker hardly managed to curl himself into a whimpering ball. It was in moments like this, when his frame went strangely numb as his pain sensors were overwhelmed that Sunstreaker wondered what he was even doing.

Stealing, bullying the little guys, leaving behind messes…

Sunstreaker’s own voice in his helm sounded disgusted with him. He deserved this, didn’t he. The only thing he was still entitled to, some sort of justice from the universe that finally caught up to him.

He was about to slump and give up, were it not for the whistle that suddenly slithered inside his helm.

Sharp, haunting and sinister, he heard it as though both his audios still worked. And through a sliver between the frames of his attackers, Sunstreaker’s flickering optic was drawn to the rusty haze of the storm.

There was a crack of charge in the atmosphere, illuminating the dark red silhouette that approached, whistling its chilling tune.

Sideswipe lazily strolled over to lean on a piece of wall that was still standing — just so, perfectly in Sunstreaker’s line of sight while the oblivious thugs continued to bash the ever-living daylights out of him.

A smug smirk curled up one side of Sideswipe’s mouth.

“Need help, Sunshine?”

“…”

Strange thing about willpower: Sunstreaker had every intention of simply giving up before he’d seen that stupid smirk on Sideswipe’s face. Seeing it, hearing that teasing lilt in Sideswipe’s voice — Sunstreaker grit his denta together and braced against the next kick.

The one with the sword yanked the blade free and transformed it back into his hand so he could get more leverage, stomping down on the sparking joint and sending white static dancing into Sunstreaker’s vision. Not that it blocked the sight of Sideswipe’s sharp denta, bared in a little grin.

“Come on, Sunny, just admit it.”

Another kick, sprawling him out onto his back before they half wrenched him up, only to knock him back down again. Sunstreaker’s split lip-plate gushed with energon, causing the dust from the ground to stick to the wound and he craned his helm to glare up at Sideswipe, still leaning there, servos crossed over his chassis.

“Say the word, Sunny.”

Was he imagining it, or was there a sliver of a note of concern in Sideswipe’s goading voice. Stubbornly and more than a little stupidly, he mouthed the words his vocalizer could no longer produce.

Frag you, Sideswipe.

Sunstreaker just about caught sight of the pit-spawn’s grin falling away before Big Green’s nasty optics filled his vision, something vile lurking within. “What was that, trying to say something?”

Sunstreaker managed to spit a fat wad of oral fluid mixed with grit and energon from his split lip-plate right between those red optics. The retribution was instant as Big Green forced three of his broad digits inside Sunstreaker’s mouth, grabbing him by his jaw and slamming the back of his helm hard against the ground.

“Hold his legs!”

A hand found its way between his thighs, cupping his interface panel and Sunstreaker bit down in a sudden panic as the other two pounced on him, wrenching his pedes obscenely wide. Big Green gave his helm another slam and Sunstreaker’s jaw fell open on a wretched gasp as he felt clumsy digits prying at the edges of his panel.

Reeling, his optics blindly searched for Sideswipe, the word barely scraping its way out of his ragged intake.

“…help.”

A sharp whistle cut through the airwaves, causing Big Green’s leering optics to snap up, helm whipping to the side. Sideswipe was still leaning against the wall but the teasing in his grin was replaced by malice.

“Really, mechs? Three on one? That hardly seems fair,” said the demon, shoving off the wall, his grin growing wide. “Mind if I join in?”

In the brief instant it took for looks to be exchanged, Sunstreaker damn near felt his spark gutter out through the pit forming in his fuel tank. That did not sound like an offer to help—

Sideswipe moved.

It was so fast that all Sunstreaker could see was a red blur against a dark red stormy sky before there was a ringing of armor and the heavy weight straddling his groin disappeared. There was scraping, a screech of metal rending and a croaking gasp — a sudden bright flare of light.

One of the bots holding down Sunstreaker’s legs screamed, the other sprung to his pedes, brandishing his sword. It was met with black claws, spitting sparks just as the sky lit up with a flash of lightning charge.

The blinding white static in Sunstreaker’s vision was accompanied by the sound of whining cannons powering up, wild shots blasting overhead. He heard a gurgling wail, the scream of metal as it was ripped apart and Sideswipe’s roaring laughter. He rolled to one side, groaning at the stabbing pain as his internals ground in protest. By the time he reset his optics, a sudden quiet fell, interrupted only by the wind whipping past.

No more blubbering, sobbing sounds. No more shrieking in pain. Just like that, it was over.

“Sunny.”

Sideswipe stood above him, spattered in energon, coolant and pneumatic fluid from helm to pede.

“Yeah?” Sunstreaker managed to croak out.

Sideswipe crouched, grinning, licked a spatter of energon off his jagged sharp teeth. “You see? Was that so hard?”

Notes:

There's a big difference between an MMA match and a chaotic bar fight -- how to write it took some major figuring out.

Chapter 3

 

 

Sideswipe was holding a ripped-off servo, what used to be a thermal sword extended from it, the tip of the dead metal scraping the ground. Sunstreaker’s optics scanned the demon’s free hand, offered in the space between their frames to help him up. His gaze slipped past the crimson plating to where a dark shape lay on the ground, a couple paces away. Big Green remained limp, frame now covered with a layer of clingy rust particles, a gaping hole where his chest used to be. Beneath the frame, a spreading pool of energon emitted a faint glow, still dripping from cut lines.

“They’re dead?” Sunstreaker whispered, energon speckling his lip-plates, the taste clinging to his glossa.

“Well, yeah,” said Sideswipe, scraping the sword against the ground as he shifted. “They hurt you.”

There was something in Sideswipe’s voice that sent a shiver racing through Sunstreaker’s struts. “Primus, help me,” he muttered.

“Damn, well, you’re going to have to settle for the next best thing,” Sideswipe grinned and promptly began scooping him up.

Everything flared up white hot, screaming at him and Sunstreaker choked on a gasp that had his vents filling with more rust. His vision filled with red alerts and red plating and Sideswipe’s worried amber optics. “They really did a number on you, huh?”

“Fragger,” Sunstreaker spat, grunting as his left hip let out a painful grinding noise when he put weight on the joint. “You let them. Could’ve warned me, at least…”

Sideswipe’s frame went stiff by his side, his helm whipped around and Sunstreaker could practically feel his burning stare.

“You—” The demon audibly reset his vocalizer and Sunstreaker just barely managed to lift his helm up to glare. A flurry of emotion passed over Sideswipe’s face-plates, settling on something almost incredulous. “I told you they were coming for you! What did you think I meant by that?”

That you were toying with me, Sunstreaker thought sullenly, grimacing as they made their way through the wrecked wall into the relative shelter of Drowner’s Cavern. Eddies of rust winds swirled along the floor after them, sprinkling dust along the two other frames laying still on the ground. Sideswipe let out a long, drawn-out whistle.

“Two out of five — not bad, Sunshine.”

Not that he wanted to think about it.

“Shut up,” muttered Sunstreaker, forcing Sideswipe to lower him enough to snatch up his vibro-blade off the floor. Wiping the energon from under his throbbing nasal ridge and off his lip-plates, he shoved away from the demon and approached the bar counter, blade at the ready. He stabbed it into the metal, peering over the flat surface. Drowner was cowering behind it and cringed even further down as he saw Sunstreaker’s helm.

“Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!”

“I won’t,” Sunstreaker rumbled, putting the blade away into his subspace and showing the mech his open palm. “No one will.”

“Well…” Sideswipe drawled, ever so helpfully, draping himself all over the counter with a grin. “Those guys definitely won’t. Pretty sure you can get up now.”

Drowner slowly stood, nursing his injured servo. He peered over the counter and his jaw dropped. “Primus—”

“Looks worse than it is,” Sideswipe assured him with a charming grin. It was somewhat undercut by the fact that a part of the far wall, blasted open as it was, chose that moment to groan and collapse into the street outside, sending up a cloud of rust-colored dust. Sideswipe twisted around to give it an assessing once-over before tapping his chin in consideration. “Or maybe it’s just as bad as it looks. At any rate, five frames should cover it.”

“W-what?” Drowner stuttered, a little crackle in his vocalizer as his purple optics swiveled from Sunstreaker to Sideswipe’s relaxed posture.

“The spare parts,” the demon said to the bar owner, jerking one energon-drenched digit over his shoulder. “Enough to cover the damages. I hear they’re worth more than a pile of shanix, these cycles.”

He said it with a smile but the light in his optics was a harsh thing. Sunstreaker turned away from him without another word, stepped over a toppled stool and nearly fell onto his face as his hip squealed.

Sideswipe was there immediately, taking his weight like it was nothing, helm ducking under his right servo while a red one circled Sunstreaker’s waist for support.

“Get off me,” Sunstreaker hissed, hating the pleasant comforting warmth of Sideswipe’s frame, the stench and feel of fluids as their plating touched.

“You can hardly walk,” Sideswipe pointed out, not so much as budging when Sunstreaker tried to shove him away. “We need to get you to a medic, Sunny. Good thing I know just the—”

“Can’t you just fragging fix me and get lost?!” snarled Sunstreaker, half in pain, half in fury. The press of Sideswipe’s torso against his own was making his plating crawl.

“I’m no medic, Sunshine,” chuckled Sideswipe as if it was a ridiculous notion. “Why’d you think—”

“Aren’t you fragging magic?” Sunstreaker demanded, hissing when he took a step and a shot of pain went up through his broken strut.

“Magic? No, no,” Sideswipe scoffed, then paused, then frowned. “Not magic.”

Sunstreaker reset his optics at the red mech. “Then what sort of useless fragging pit-spawn—”

“I don’t know!” Sideswipe barked, baring his denta a little. “I just am.”

He added something else, in a different language and in a dark mutter; something that made Sunstreaker growl in response. Because while he’d only read about it and the pronunciation was somewhat foreign to his audio receptor, he recognized the rhythmic cant of Old Cybertronian. And he was fairly certain he understood the gist of the insult.

You ungrateful glitch.

~||~

The clinic Sideswipe insisted existed in the vicinity was a full town over. Driving through the storm, over unknown, uneven terrain had been a terrible idea. Sunstreaker felt that in every strained strut, barely able to transform out of his alt mode in time to retch as his fuel tank heaved itself up with the motions. Something inside his torso ground out a whining protest, his self-repair unable to cope with the damage in time — the semi-processed mid-grade burned up the inside of his intake and spattered against the dusty ground.

He didn’t even have it in him to protest when Sideswipe’s servos snaked around his frame and hoisted him up again, ushering him into the nondescript doorway of a dark building. A completely dark building.

The place smelled of abandonment. And besides the howling winds outside, it was completely quiet. Sunstreaker didn’t much like the look of it, with Sideswipe’s optics being the brightest light source around, reflecting off of semi-transparent walls that sometimes let out a whir or clicking sound as they shifted. Defunct medical equipment littered the long corridor they entered, broken vials crunched under Sunstreaker’s pedes. Sideswipe continued to drag along his souvenir, leaving an etched trail in the floor with the end of the sword, a soft scraping noise with each step.

“There’s no one here, Sideswipe,” whispered Sunstreaker, feeling the exhaustion and low energy warnings weigh him down the more he tried to walk. He leaned on the crimson mech a bit more with the next step, optics swiveling side to side as they passed some more abandoned rooms. Observational windows fogged up with milky dust, dark spatters and smears of oil across the walls the deeper they went. It was deeply unsettling to realize that something small and light scuttled along the wall, emitting no signature at all. “Let’s just—”

“He’s close,” said Sideswipe, voice pitched low. “Granted, the place looks a bit different than I remember, but…”

They came to stand before a door and Sideswipe leaned down to grin at a digital keypad. Unlike everything else around the place, it was dusted clean and came on with a subtle red light, painting Sideswipe’s expression in its glow. Black digits hovered over the keypad, flexing before Sideswipe tested out a key combination.

Sunstreaker was somewhat surprised that the doors before them spiraled aside on the first try, opening into a rather spacious room.

A laboratory of horrors, really. Like someone had taken a legitimate clinic’s medical bay and turned it into a glowing chartreuse nightmare. Self-illuminated vats of cryo-tanks lined the walls, housing all sorts of experimental subjects in various stages of decay; surgical tools and spare parts hung from the wiring dangling from the ceiling, orientation lights laid in red strips along the flooring panels.

The close end of the room housed a large surgical table, heaped with a mass of various frame parts. Sunstreaker’s optics were drawn to it, following the grooves lining the edges with a sickening realization — they were wet. Faintly glowing energon was still dripping in tiny droplets off the narrow spouts at either end, splashing onto the floor.

“Perfect,” Sideswipe purred, following Sunstreaker’s gaze. “Must have popped out for a bit. Let’s give him a little surprise, shall we?”

Sunstreaker groaned as Sideswipe helped him hobble across the room to an opposing doorway. “Whatever scheme you’re up to, I want no part in it.”

“Come on, Sunny,” Sideswipe grunted, propping him up in the doorway with a crooked grin. “You’re about to benefit. Here, take this.” And he offered up the rigid dismembered servo with its sword still attached. Sunstreaker leveled it and Sideswipe with a flat stare.

“Absolutely not. Why the frag did you even bring the thing?”

Sideswipe grinned, giving the limb a twirl, bringing it up to rattle the limp digits. “Figured it might come in handy.”

Sunstreaker had to resist the urge to roll his optics while Sideswipe’s grin just grew in magnitude.

“Take it, lean on it — trust me. It’s just so that he doesn’t get the idea to run into his processors. You don’t have to do anything, just stand right here and try to look intimidating.”

Not like Sunstreaker could do much else with how broken his frame was and how much even the slightest movements hurt. He glared at Sideswipe in response.

In turn, the demon’s grin gained a giddy edge as he patted Sunstreaker’s shoulder and pressed the cold, shredded end of the disconnected limb into Sunstreaker’s hand. “That’s the spirit! Keep that up.”

Sideswipe bounded across the room to the door they’d entered through and carefully positioned himself just beside it, so that anyone who’d enter wouldn’t see him until they were fully inside the lab. The demon shuttered one optic in a wink and mimed for silence; Sunstreaker throttled down his ragged vents, forcing his systems to wind down and his spark to stop trembling. His dimmed optics kept being drawn down the line of vats almost against his will, processors struggling to comprehend exactly what was in them — the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to know. This whole place was wrong somehow, and the longer he looked around, the more uneasy he felt.

Thankfully, they didn’t have to wait long.

The door across from Sunstreaker swished open to admit a ground-based bot, plating a mix of dark gray and cadmium, servos full of supplies. Scarlet red optics didn’t so much as stray Sunstreaker’s way as the mech muttered to himself, passing by Sideswipe without a note of recognition. He ambled over to the large surgical table and began shuffling things around, fussing with equipment cables, completely oblivious to their presence.

Sideswipe leaned back against the wall, amber optics sparkling as they followed the clueless mech for a solid breem before the demon announced himself. “Yoo~hoo!”

Sunstreaker’s orbital ridge shot up at the same time as the mech’s helm did — he banged it on the underside of the surgical table, sent parts crashing to the floor, tripped over himself and scrambled to his pedes.

“No!”

“Hello, Flatline,” Sideswipe purred, pushing off the wall.

“Nononononono—” The mech hurled something at Sideswipe, presumably to stall him, twisted around to dart toward the other exit and came up short. Sunstreaker stood his ground, blocking the doorway, narrowing his optics in warning.

“Primus, there’s more,” Flatline muttered, quickly backing away a step, optics raking over Sunstreaker’s frame. Seeing as Sunstreaker was covered in a layer of brownish-red rust, he could see where the mech was coming from, wide scarlet optics swiveling between them.

Sideswipe prowled closer, wearing an amused smile and Sunstreaker could see Flatline’s optics darting toward his own frame — scanning over the broken helm fin, taking in the dented plating, visibly weighing his chances of going for the weaker link. Clever. And clearly terrified of Sideswipe, which meant that he would definitely rather take a risk with Sunstreaker.

Now, Flatline wasn’t exactly a small mech — Sunstreaker didn’t particularly feel like getting another knock to the helm if he decided to try and fight his way out. In fact, Sunstreaker doubted he could even manage to stay on his pedes if the bot decided to slam into him.

So, against his better judgment, he decided to play along.

With a resounding thud of the sword tip against the floor, Sunstreaker unclasped his dented forearm plating to expose his proto-form brand, holding Flatline’s gaze.

“Be not afraid,” he rumbled, bringing his servo up to his helm in an ancient sword-master’s salute, the mark on full display. “We all serve the Dark Master. All hail the Unmaker, Devourer of Worlds.”

Flatline’s optics spiraled wide, jaw sagging. A meek little noise escaped his vocalizer and Sunstreaker’s optics darted over to Sideswipe.

Alright, your move.

Much to his dismay, however, Sideswipe wore an exceedingly stupid expression on his face. He just stood there, frozen, staring at Sunstreaker over the top of Flatline’s helm; useless, in every respect, especially when it came down to preventing further bodily harm upon Sunstreaker's poor, battered frame. Maybe a little desperately, Sunstreaker significantly flicked his optics back to Flatline, praying to Primus that Sideswipe got the hint.

“Yeah, no need to worry, we’re all friends here,” Sideswipe recovered with a low chuckle, herding Flatline back against the surgical table and effectively cutting off his escape routes. “Been re-decorating, have you? What happened to your old boss?”

“Gone off to join the war,” Flatline muttered, wide optics still clinging to Sunstreaker before his back-plates hit the edge of the table. His optics finally switched to stare at Sideswipe, a little whine entering his voice. “Why now? You know, I still haven’t finished my—”

“Relax,” Sideswipe groaned, rolling his optics, a bemused quirk to his lip-plates as he shot Sunstreaker a quick glance. “Not your time, yet, puppet.”

Then came the dreaded words: “I came for a favor.”

Flatline wrinkled his face-plates up at his inspection of the detached sword-servo Sunstreaker handed him. After Sideswipe had assured him no harm would come to him, the medic seemed fairly eager to help out. His sharp scarlet optics tracked over Sunstreaker’s damaged left shoulder joint, the tickle of a scan racing over the area.

“It’s a passable match, but…” Flatline’s optics brightened slightly, indicating for Sunstreaker to sit on the surgical table. The medic gave the surface a sweep, shoving off all the clutter and giving the surface a quick wipe. “I have something better.”

He snapped his digits at Sideswipe, absentmindedly waving toward something on the far side of the lab. “Fetch tank C-023, would you? Now, what did you say your designation was?” His optics flicked expectantly over Sunstreaker’s face-plates.

“I didn’t,” Sunstreaker retorted. Flatline made another small noise, gave a quick nod, then began rifling through the cables hanging from the ceiling, snatching up an array of surgical equipment.

“Hey, Flatline,” Sideswipe’s voice echoed down the length of the lab, accompanied by the squeak of an over-weighted set of wheels. “Isn’t this the mech you traded your spark—”

“Yes,” Flatline dropped everything he was holding onto a prep tray beside Sunstreaker, whirling around to face Sideswipe with a sudden tension in his frame. “Yes, he’s quite dead.”

Sideswipe’s helm appeared from behind the tank he was pushing, a furrow between his orbital ridges. “Damn. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Flatline said softly, ducking his helm. “It’s my fault, you see — I killed him. Allegedly.” He added with a mirthless chuckle, looking briefly to Sunstreaker before thinking better of it.

“He ingested something I told him not to and, well… I tried to save him but his spark gave out in the end and…” The medic sucked in a long vent, waving Sideswipe over and giving the tank a quick rap with his digits. “Anyway, thanks to my clinginess, your friend gets a near-perfect set of replacement parts matching his frame-type.”

Flatline turned expectant optics toward Sunstreaker and the former noble-mech felt his fuel tank lurch.

Replacement parts from a marinated corpse. Being operated on in a hack-saw laboratory of some abandoned clinic in the middle of nowhere, full of the remnants of Flatline's deceased patients. With no one but a crimson pit-spawn to watch over him.

Sunstreaker was surprised to come out of the medically-induced stasis at all.

Agony assaulted him as soon as he attempted to move — Flatline had warned him that there were no pain blockers available but the magnitude of it still shocked him. His own strangled cry echoed in the space, summoning Sideswipe’s worried expression into Sunstreaker’s field of vision.

“Hey,” the crimson mech said softly, helping Sunstreaker sit up. “I’ve got you.”

Despite how gentle his grip was, though, every single part of Sunstreaker’s frame screamed in violent protest, lighting up his sensor net with a kaleidoscope of pain.

“How much more, Sideswipe?” he nearly sobbed out, gritting his denta at the throbbing in his helm — and his everything else. His internal diagnostics informed him that a series of new components had successfully been integrated. They felt alien, like there was a slimy residue right under his plating, forcibly made into a part of him now. “…how much is left?”

“Hm?” Sideswipe intoned absentmindedly, carefully inspecting Sunstreaker’s fixed helm fin. Sunstreaker snatched up the servo that was touching him, curling his digits around Sideswipe’s wrist and forcing him to meet his gaze.

“How much longer do I have to do this for— the spark thread, Sideswipe!”

Even as he gripped tighter around Sideswipe’s servo, Sunstreaker could tell that it was laughably easy for the demon to escape his grip. Still, he dug his numb digits in, staring into Sideswipe’s amber optics. “How much longer do I have to live?”

Sideswipe regarded him in silence for one long moment, a cautious sort of expression forming on his face-plates. “…why?”

So that I know how much of this torture I have to brace for, Sunstreaker thought bitterly, feeling angry, hurt and extremely tired of it all. “Just tell me.”

Sideswipe’s other hand came up to cup his jaw, amber optics searching Sunstreaker’s blue ones. “…no.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?” Sunstreaker snapped, angrily batting the hand away, spark twisting in on itself. “I want to know— you told me before—”

“I don’t feel like it,” Sideswipe twisted out of his grip, crossing his servos over his chest-plates with a petulant sort of sniff. “What does it matter anyway? If I tell you and you don’t like it, then what? Going to ask me to make you immortal?”

“Immortal?” Sunstreaker barked, an ugly laugh bubbling out of his vocalizer. “And spend an eternity with you?!”

“Nothing is eternal, Sunny,” Sideswipe cut in, something about his tone turning somber. It was like the atmosphere around them filled with something heavy when the crimson mech leaned in, carefully placing a knuckle under Sunstreaker’s chin, gently tilting his face-plates up. “All light will once disappear, the universe will die — and when it does, I’ll go with it.”

Sunstreaker’s spark pulsed rapidly; at their proximity, at the sad little smile forming on Sideswipe’s lips, at his words.

“I don’t know,” the demon murmured softly, nearly brushing their nasal ridges together. “But I’d rather not be alone in the end. Much rather have your beautiful spark light the way.”

Sunstreaker’s dermal plating tingled pleasantly from the warm sweep of a digit along his cheek. Sideswipe’s optics dimmed, a little crinkle formed at the edges as his smile turned genuine, perhaps even a little shy as he worried his lip.

Sunstreaker found himself at a brief loss for words. The demon had a way of biting on his lower lip-plate that made Sunstreaker’s thoughts stray — to his art-pad, to the sketches of Sideswipe on it, to the sudden impulse to draw. A fine, plushy lip. Sunstreaker wouldn’t have minded a little chew on it himself.

Shaking himself, angry at his own stupid processors — at the wild way his spark was spinning in its chamber — Sunstreaker sneered, right up against Sideswipe’s lips: “I’d rather fragging rust!”

Sideswipe reeled back and away from Sunstreaker as though he’d been slapped. In the eerie light of the laboratory, something strange crossed his features, something almost hurt. Then he bared all those jagged teeth of his in a feral grin.

“You’re well on your way, then, Sunshine,” Sideswipe quipped, indicating Sunstreaker’s rust-dusted plating before disappearing, quick as a shot, making Sunstreaker’s vision split into nonsense static.

Chapter 4

Summary:

Sunstreaker has some character growth, for better or for worse.

 

 

“Hey, I’m just saying—”

Sunstreaker growled, flexed his new shoulder joint and tossed a useless piece of junk he picked up in the direction of Sideswipe’s voice. Despite having pretty good aim on the whole — maybe that came from his habit of chucking items at walls when he got frustrated — it hit nothing but air instead of its intended target. Bounced off a cracked and crumbling wall, plinked against the ground and rolled a pace.

It was a useless deterrent and an even worse threat. Sideswipe certainly didn’t take it seriously.

Releasing a frustrated vent, Sunstreaker refused to let his optics linger on his reflection as he passed a rusting piece of a formerly smooth, rounded structure. Despite his best attempts at avoiding damage after being subject to Flatline’s tender mercies, his paint was scratched to the primer in places. His self-repair was struggling to keep up. He was tired and his joints felt gritty but there were no more luxurious wash-racks or oil pools, no public fountains — there was nothing left. Just this endless purgatory.

A flash of crimson followed him around, light steps hopping over the rubble behind him, a clatter of metal as Sideswipe presumably kicked something.

“We should take a break,” Sideswipe tried again, except this time, Sunstreaker whirled around, briefly took aim and hurled his vibro-blade right at Sideswipe’s intake. It would have made contact, too, under different circumstances — but this was Sideswipe.

There was a burst of fuzzy distortion, a crackle of static that made Sunstreaker’s vision distort; reality cracking apart around him, a throbbing pain behind his optics. He reset them with a dark rumble of his engine and turned away, continuing on his path to nowhere.

About a breem later, Sideswipe plodded up to his side, offering him back the knife with a crooked grin. “I give that a nine point five out of ten, Sunshine. You’re getting really good.”

Sunstreaker snatched it without a word and stashed it in his subspace, reluctantly grateful. He couldn’t risk wasting a single scavenged item. They all came in useful in the wastes of Ankmor. Or anywhere on Cybertron, now that Sunstreaker thought about it.

Everywhere they went, there was war. Rubble and ruin as far as the optic could see. Resources were scarce and fuel even more so. The last town they’d passed through had been utterly abandoned; then again, Sunstreaker had been the one to decide to wade out into this bombed-out wasteland between the major cities, though not without reason.

Cities were targets. Settlements around useful equipment were targets. Even shoddy little drinking holes like Drowner’s Cavern were getting commandeered by one side or the other — and Neutral colonies were few and far between — he’d seen what looked like a Neutral ship get shot out of the atmosphere about a decacycle ago. Watched the flare of exploding engines in the distance, the crackling whine of its fiery descent just a whisper on the wind. Nothing since. Only the long abandoned, deserted parts were left untouched, offering little to nothing to anyone who might come looking. Shelter was not guaranteed in these ruins but it was far safer than trying to head closer to something like a processing plant — despite how much he needed the fuel.

Energy levels: 15.2% remaining.

Sunstreaker didn’t know why he kept on going, continuously brushing away the low energy warnings on his HUD. Maybe just to piss Sideswipe off.

Inwardly, he counted down the clicks to the next lecture — ever impressive, Sideswipe’s ability to rebound — there was a pattern to it: Sideswipe would say something, Sunstreaker wouldn’t answer, so the red menace would shut up for a bit, while Sunstreaker counted the clicks…

Two-hundred fifty-four, two-hundred fifty-five and—

“Come on, we need to conserve fuel.”

“We do not,” Sunstreaker grit out, coming to a sudden stop, watching Sideswipe stroll right past him before his jaunty pace faltered. The demon craned his helm back, looking at Sunstreaker upside-down before reversing with a ridiculous little jog. “How does that work, actually?”

Sideswipe lifted both his shoulders in a shrug. “I have fuel in my lines, just like you.”

“Yeah, you can ingest it, but you don’t need it,” Sunstreaker pointed out, propping his fists on his hips. “What the slag is up with that?”

Sideswipe quirked a wry grin, rubbing the back of his helm. He muttered something, optics flicking up to meet Sunstreaker’s unimpressed stare.

“What was that?”

“It gets used up,” Sideswipe said a little defensively, then shrugged again, raising his optics with a bit of challenge. “Like to fly my jet-pack. Not for primary functions, though.”

“You need sparks for that,” Sunstreaker surmised, frowning slightly. “How long… does a spark last?”

“Depends on the spark,” Sideswipe said, optics drifting down to Sunstreaker’s chest-plates. “Some are worth more than others.”

Sunstreaker forced out a shaky vent, feeling his own spark flutter at the adoring look on Sideswipe’s face. Well, part adoring, part awed and part hungry. He stood there silent for a long moment and Sunstreaker felt the gears in his jaw clicking as he ground his denta together.

“How much is mine worth?” he asked finally, startling Sideswipe from his little reverie. Big amber optics looked up at him.

This was wading into dangerous territory, he could sense it. Sideswipe’s silence confirmed it but Sunstreaker couldn’t help pushing a little further, a thought niggling at his cortex.

“How many sparks would it take to exchange for mine?”

“Trade?” Sideswipe breathed, staring at Sunstreaker as though seeing him for the first time. “I wouldn’t trade you for anything.”

And just like that, the tiny ember of hope Sunstreaker had been nurturing inside him was viciously stomped on. Still, he held Sideswipe’s gaze and asked: “Not even if I brought them to you?”

Sideswipe seemed puzzled before his face-plates split with a broad grin. “Like a lure? You’d dangle yourself like some sweet energon treat? Bring me poor wayward sparks — frag, that’s tempting.”

Sideswipe sucked on his lower lip-plate, sharp tooth leaving a small dent in it as he bit down, optics still avidly fixed on Sunstreaker’s frame. Then, because this was Sideswipe and he could probably sense the tremulous flutter of Sunstreaker’s stupidly hopeful spark, he laughed and shook his helm. “Nah. But you know what you could do? Get some—”

“‘Get some fuel’,” Sunstreaker mocked, complete with Sideswipe’s stupidly overt hand gestures. Like a fragging chronometer — had it been three hundred clicks already? He glared at Sideswipe as he passed him by. “Right. The very next time we pass a high-end venue, I’ll ask for their finest grade. You’re paying.”

Behind him, Sideswipe heaved a long-suffering sigh through his vents. “…I was going to say recharge.”

“No, you weren’t,” Sunstreaker grumbled, dismissing another fuel warning. The digits were ticking down, getting ever closer to critical levels and other than being a constant verbal reminder, Sideswipe wasn’t doing anything to help Sunstreaker refuel. Just annoyingly reminding him of what was to come if he didn’t. “Liar.”

“I’ve never lied to you!” Sideswipe raised his voice, causing Sunstreaker to look back at him. The demon’s optics were rather dim, lip-plates pressed into a serious line. “And I never will.”

“Yeah, no, that’s a load of slag,” Sunstreaker grunted, crossing his servos, taking a little break. “You obstruct, you reroute, you distract and manipulate — you twist the truth until it’s unrecognizable — that’s a form of lying, Sideswipe.”

“That’s a matter of perspective,” Sideswipe waved his servo in the air, as though swatting an annoying messenger drone. “For example, not not lying doesn’t equal not telling the truth.”

Sunstreaker’s left optic twitched. He tried and failed to wrap his processors around such convoluted logic and took that as his cue to resume walking, decidedly in a direction away from Sideswipe. “You make my cortex hurt, you’re so full of slag.”

“I make you think,” Sideswipe proclaimed, prancing along with newfound enthusiasm as he came up by Sunstreaker’s side. He gestured at the expanse of ruined terrain before them, nearly taking Sunstreaker’s helm off with the gesture. “Imagine being stuck out here with some dumb-aft dolt who couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation if it smacked him in the face-plates!”

Sunstreaker raised an optical ridge and ducked under Sideswipe’s servo with a pointed look. “Oh, am I not?”

The demon sputtered, optics going wide as his pace faltered. There was a ringing smack of metal as he affectedly slapped a hand over his red chest-plates. Red like rust now, with gray patches of primer showing where the paint seemed to be stripped off. Like he was mirroring Sunstreaker, even in this. All a sham, of course, Sideswipe’s reflection remained a blazing brilliant crimson every time Sunstreaker caught a glimpse of it.

He considered this new camouflage — red that looked like rust, the color of contagion, of plague, something to warn off unwanted company on a primal level. Sunstreaker wondered why Sideswipe bothered with the charade.

“You wound me,” the demon protested. “I can be quite eloquent if I want to be, I’ll have you know…”

He continued to chatter away while Sunstreaker’s attention was drawn inward.

Energy levels: 14.5% remaining.

Finding a place to recharge was the easy part. Something with a roof or the approximation of one. No berths around, either.

Part of him wished he could sleep in a nice one, just one last time before he slipped into stasis. A freak stroke of luck, a happy accident — to stumble upon a padded mesh berth in these ruins. He almost asked Sideswipe if he could go look. Almost.

Sunstreaker settled himself on the floor of an abandoned, hollowed-out building with his backplates against the wall. It mostly had a roof, at least in the part that he’d chosen but he could still see the darkened sky outside peeking through the ceiling in places. Through a series of perfectly regularly sized holes, most likely made by large-caliber bullets.

When his optics onlined, about a voor later, it was to the sight of Sideswipe sitting nearby. Amber optics didn’t so much as reset, dimmed and remained firmly fixed on one of the exits.

“What is it?” Sunstreaker asked quietly, certain that he’d sensed something that must have woken him.

“Nothing,” mumbled Sideswipe. “Try to rest some more, you need the recharge.”

It didn’t escape Sunstreaker, however, that Sideswipe sat in a particular way. Outwardly relaxed but with a tension coiling inside his frame, optics stuck staring at the exit, like he was prepared to jump up at any moment.

“What about you?” rumbled Sunstreaker, cautiously peering at a subtle twitch in Sideswipe’s plating. “I haven’t seen you—” Eat a spark. “—ingest anything, since…” Drowner’s, probably. Not that Sunstreaker had seen anything but he assumed that’s what all the screams had been about.

“Don’t worry about it.” The demon gave a little shake of his helm, as though that was the reason Sunstreaker had asked. Then Sideswipe added, almost as an after-thought. “I’m not hungry.”

Dangerous territory again but considering that Sunstreaker’s energy levels had hardly risen half a percent, he asked anyway. “Are you just… saving my spark for later — like it’s dessert or something — like some kind of jellied energon confection?”

Sideswipe chuckled, a twinkle in his optics as he finally turned his helm to look at Sunstreaker. “I imagine you’d be more spicy than sweet — like a rust stick.”

“…sparks have flavor?”

Now there was a thought. Sunstreaker’s own mouth filled with oral fluid at the very notion of being able to taste anything flavorful at all. This talk of rust sticks and confections was quickly becoming a form of torture.

Sideswipe laughed. Eased back against the wall, helm turned sideways to face Sunstreaker, a playful glint to his optics. “In ways you can’t imagine and I can’t even begin to describe.”

Sunstreaker let his optical shutters close, let his helm thunk back against the wall.

Primus, I’d kill for a rust stick, he couldn’t help but think. It was all he could think about for a nice long while, afterward.

Energy levels: 13.7% remaining.

He didn’t even like rust sticks all that much. But sure as the fact that Cybertron still spun at glacial speed around its own axis, Sunstreaker was growing steadily convinced that he’d be willing to kill a bot for a bit of flavor. Stab them right through the cortex, if that was what it took.

Too bad there was no one around, just the two of them, with their shoddy paint-jobs that blended into the shoddy surroundings as they continued on through the wasteland the next cycle.

Energy levels: 12% remaining.

“…Sideswipe?”

The demon appeared, audio horns twitching a little, face-plates a study in curiosity.

Sunstreaker almost asked him: maybe they could try it the other way around. Maybe Sideswipe’s brilliant ever-perfect crimson plating could be the lure while Sunstreaker stole any rations he could find on the frames or in the subspace of anyone that might come looking. And Sideswipe could get his pick of sparks — do whatever he wanted with them, Sunstreaker didn’t care.

The part of him that was terrified of falling into stasis screamed for him to just say the words. He almost asked.

Almost.

At the last click, he changed his mind. Jerked his chin in a different direction than the one he’d intended on taking, picking out a new route.

“This way.”

“You still haven’t told me where we’re going — it’s like a special quirk of yours,” chuckled Sideswipe, following after him easily enough as Sunstreaker took a steeper climb down a level than originally planned. “It’s horrible, just so you know. The suspense is killing me.”

And this lack of fuel is killing me, Sunstreaker thought bitterly, grip tightening on a piece of construction beam as his energy levels slipped down by another notch. Approaching single digits. The beam he held onto emitted a sharp series of pops as it dented beneath his digits. His voice came out a quiet, deadly whisper. “You deserve to die.”

Maybe he’d meant it for Sideswipe, maybe he was talking to himself.

Sunstreaker certainly thought he deserved it. For the two mechs he’d killed, for all the others he’d used and tossed away without a care. What was the point of trying to fight the inevitable; giving in should have been the easy part. Except, now he was scared and it was all Sideswipe’s fault — he wished he could have deactivated without knowing but Sideswipe had taken even that from him. Now, the demon hovered around, a constant reminder.

The less time there is, the shorter the spark thread gets. It draws me to you.

And Sunstreaker was angry at himself for being such a coward, obsessively watching his HUD report that he was headed to the Pit sooner rather than later.

Worse still, a part of him felt like crying — something he hadn’t done, not for his creators, not for his friends, not for anything that he’d lost. And there was a lot of loss. But in the end, it was self-pity that gripped the inside of his intake. Such a disgusting, slimy feeling. How pathetic.

Energy levels: 9.7% remaining.

He would not cry.

Sideswipe jumped down in front of him, landing in a low crouch, dusting off his servos. Black digits tapped against Sunstreaker’s shin. “Hey, uh, Sunny?”

Sunstreaker shoved past him with a screech of plating, without a care in the world for paint transfers. It made Sideswipe curse, caused him to nearly lose his balance and scramble to his pedes after him.

A hand grabbed his servo and Sunstreaker reacted like he was on a hair-trigger, deciding in that very moment that he was going to use the last remaining four percent of his fuel reserve before the imminent shutdown to give Sideswipe a thrashing he wouldn’t forget for millennia.

He snatched the demon by the neck cables, drew a startled little squeak from his vocalizer and used the opening to growl into his face-plates. “What.”

“Someone’s coming,” Sideswipe whispered, tapping a digit against one of his audial horns before pointing into the dark gray gloom and toward the fuzzy silhouettes of nearby buildings.

Sunstreaker’s anger rushed out of him along with a ragged vent.

At first, it was like his cortex couldn’t process the implications, all the while a tight knot of difficult-to-pinpoint emotions formed within his spark, locking him up. He could hear his own steps as Sideswipe quietly crept by his side, leading him into the dark interior of one of the structures. A few moments later, he found himself pressed into the thick shadows of a ruined housing pod of some sort, blaster in one hand, knife in the other.

All systems running utterly silent, Sunstreaker stared into the darkness, audios tuning in to the noise of unfamiliar engines approaching just outside.

The sound of transformation preceded a gruff voice mid-complaint.

“—too far. I’ll show that glitch next time I see him.”

“Cool your engines.” Another voice, this one calmer and higher pitched, muttered as the other bot transformed. Sideswipe crouched beneath the sill of a yawing window hole, amber optics following the mismatched figures that walked past their hiding spot. One heavy tread, one much lighter. Sunstreaker caught the demon’s gaze, spark feeling awfully tight as Sideswipe nudged his pede with a lopsided smile.

“Fuel delivery,” Sideswipe’s smooth mellow voice sang its tune, filling the entirety of Sunstreaker’s helm — and before he could protest or say a word, the demon was on the move, crawling silently through the window.

Through no real conscious decision of his own, Sunstreaker’s frame moved to follow, weapon raised and at the ready.

Energy levels: 9% remaining.

He stood back and simply let it happen.

There was something incredibly satisfying about watching Sideswipe’s more slender frame take down a bot twice his size without warning or hesitation. Knocking down the first victim took only one pulse of Sunstreaker’s spark. The bot’s poor companion was of a much slighter build and no match for Sideswipe’s impossibly fast movements. The short mech let out a wordless gurgle of horror as Sideswipe drove him to the ground in a graceless tangle of limbs.

Sunstreaker’s pedes carried him over, his servos held the plasma blaster steadily trained on the unmoving form of the big one. Sensors reached out in search of more but all he could sense were two spark signatures — and then, with a flare of light, there was just one.

It was surprisingly quiet this time around. Sunstreaker’s optics tracked down the sights of his blaster, following the length of one out-flung pede that gradually stopped twitching. Sideswipe’s rust-colored frame dwarfed the smaller bot, hovering above the torso, red back-plates hunched over. Sunstreaker came around in a wide arc, optics focused solely on the demon.

Sideswipe was still staring at the empty chest cavity; forcefully opened plating revealed a cracked crystal where a spark should have been. Sideswipe’s clawed digits were still in there, the tips of those talons clinking against the dark crystal, fingering the empty space. He seemed distracted. Dazed. Weak.

The blaster in Sunstreaker’s hand leveled out to point at a horned black helm. His digit smoothed over the trigger. It was a clean shot. Sideswipe didn’t so much as budge, vents whirring softly in the ensuing quiet.

The big bot behind Sideswipe twitched suddenly and Sunstreaker’s servo snapped up, along with his optics — he fired three shots in warning.

That got Sideswipe’s attention.

The demon’s helm shot up, right into Sunstreaker’s line of fire. His amber optics refocused on the whining smoking barrel of the blaster, before he gave Sunstreaker a brilliant grin and deftly shoved out of the way.

“Oh, buddy~!” Sideswipe crowed, a song-like quality to his voice as he skipped over to the mass of purple and black plating struggling to regain his pedes. “Your friend’s subspace pockets are just as empty as his spark chamber — please tell me you’re more useful.”

There was a groan as Sideswipe kicked the bot over, a flash of a different shade of purple on the broad chassis.

“Two Decepticon soldiers,” Sideswipe whistled, pointing briefly at the corpse Sunstreaker stepped over before crouching down and starting to root through the big bot’s subspace pockets. “Do they not give you lot rations?”

One red optic flickered on, glaring at Sideswipe before cycling wide when the bot took notice of the blaster in Sunstreaker’s hand, keeping him steadily at gunpoint. For a moment, they stared at each other and Sunstreaker searched his expression for a sign that he would fight. Whatever the bot saw in Sunstreaker’s optics, however, had the red lenses powering off.

The Decepticon gave a raspy laugh, sagging limply onto his back-plates. There were scorch-marks on the purple plating, a wound inflicted by claws along the bot’s side and a pool of viscous yellow fluid seeped out. Not energon, but it looked important.

“You’re not gonna find any on me, little scavenger.”

Sideswipe glanced up, meeting Sunstreaker’s gaze. His helm gave a little shake, a terrible sort of confirmation. Still, the demon didn’t move from his perch, wrenching the big bot’s servos out of the way and pinning them down; he continued to look up at Sunstreaker, at the knife in his servo. They were awfully close now. Somehow, Sunstreaker had walked over without realizing.

Energy levels: 8.7% remaining.

Sunstreaker laughed. Let the blaster clatter to the ground and brought his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nasal ridge. Then he laughed some more, weighing the vibro-blade against the palm of his hand. Sideswipe’s burning amber optics looked right at him, watching carefully.

Sunstreaker’s laughter petered off into a low hum. He wondered if Sideswipe had foreseen this outcome. Had he always known Sunstreaker’s spark would beat low and steady when it came to this? His own voice sounded distant to his audials when he spoke up.

“I’m not picky.” Not anymore.

The sneer on the Decepticon’s face fell, twisting into something of a grimace. Sunstreaker took a step closer, crushing one of the bot’s thighs under his pede.

“Used to be I wouldn’t drink anything but the finest, smoothest grade.”

He crunched down, digging a knee into the purple-black Decepticon’s midriff while Sideswipe’s clawed grip tightened with a squeal, forcing the bot’s flailing servos still.

“Used to be,” Sunstreaker chuckled mirthlessly, flipping the blade between his nicked and scratched digits. He mentally traced the growing lines of fear and dread on the Decepticon’s face-plates, curling his lips back to bare his denta. “In another world, maybe. This one, though… this place doesn’t allow you to give a flying frag.”

There was an illusion of choice about the matter, one which he didn’t stop to dwell on.

Without wasting another click, Sunstreaker hooked the blade in the open wound, slicing upward. Circuitry sparked and wires ripped, the Decepticon screamed — the sound cut short when Sideswipe crushed his intake with a quick elbow. He held the twitching frame down, watched Sunstreaker plunge a fist into the bot’s internals.

It took a bit of blind fumbling but Sunstreaker had some knowledge of what he was looking for: a hollow around the component, a manual spigot to be fastened. He yanked out the fuel tank, cut it free and sliced a line through the silicate polymer forming the base of the container, sealing his lips to it before the magnitude of his revulsion could overpower his decision.

Sunstreaker shuttered his optics tight as the bitter taste of semi-processed grade gushed down his intake. It was no rust stick but better than nothing, he kept telling himself. Even as the last of the tank’s contents turned to gritty sludge, indicative of tainted fuel.

Better than nothing.

Big bot, big fuel tank. Sunstreaker drank until there was nothing but that thick disgusting sludge left. He tossed the empty tank away, licked his denta and spat out the grit. Oral fluid welled up in the back of his intake but he forced it down, along with the repulsion — that, he forced into a deep dark pit inside his spark where it would stay.

Better than slipping into stasis and fading away.

A fate he refused — and instead shoved onto the poor Decepticon gurgling in pain underneath him.

Wiping at the droplets that had trickled down his chin, Sunstreaker’s gaze flicked up to find Sideswipe staring at him, a funny little look on his face.

“What,” he snapped, narrowing his optics. “I swear, if you say I’ve got something on my face—”

A sharp crack, a jolt of the frame Sunstreaker was kneeling astride. Pale blue optics spiraled wide; he shot a quick glance down to where Sideswipe’s claws had crept around the Decepticon’s jaw and broken the cortical struts connecting the helm to the body.

The mark of a good hunter, Sunstreaker — quick and painless.

“Frag,” he uttered, gaze lifting to Sideswipe’s face-plates. Their gazes locked, bright amber met icy blue, while straddling a corpse.

For the first time since meeting the pit-spawn, Sunstreaker felt like they were seeing optic to optic.

And then Sideswipe cupped his jaw and breathed out in a rush: “You have a little something on your face.”

 

Notes:

"Bend, don't break" is a lesson Sideswipe learned long ago.

Sunstreaker had to learn it the hard way. He's never had to suffer before, his social status had always been a safety net. With a new order to the world, however, desperate needs call for desperate measures.

(The irony of Sunstreaker turning into a bit of a "vampire" to keep up with his guardian demon is stupid-amusing to me. I'm sure it won't backfire on them, or anything.)

Chapter 5

Summary:

Sunstreaker goes hunting. Things take an unexpected turn.

Notes:

I have a thing with numbers, where I just really prefer the odd ones. So, I'm adding an unplanned fifth chapter here, which could be a standalone, but it follows chronologically, hence it's getting slapped in here to round out this arc.

A bit of setup for the next storyline in this one.

 

 

Sunstreaker stared at the grinning demon. At this angle, with Sideswipe leaning forward slightly, his gaze was drawn to the fuel lines either side of his neck, exposed just above the collar faring. Just like his own.

I have fuel in my lines, just like you.

And as Sunstreaker’s fuel tank settled and his systems took stock of the semi-processed fuel he’d drank, it was becoming very clear that the energy gained was much less than the ingested volume indicated. He would need more to get to full charge.

The vibro-blade still held between his digits, he flicked out with the knife, nicking at one of the lines in Sideswipe’s neck.

“Ow!” the demon protested, optics spiraling wide in surprise, bringing a hand up to touch at the cut. Sunstreaker didn’t give him a chance to do anything more than that — he pounced, toppling them off the corpse and onto the ground. “What the frag, Sunny?!”

“You said you have fuel in your lines,” Sunstreaker grunted, trying to snatch Sideswipe’s servos out of the way and pin them above his helm. Much like the demon had done to the Decepticon lying prone nearby.

Sideswipe’s expression was one of surprised outrage. “Yeah, so?”

“You don’t—” Sunstreaker rolled them again when the pit-spawn nearly wriggled out from his hold, giving the red frame a good slam into the ground, trapping his hips. “—need it.”

Amber optics gaped up at him. “Well, I—”

“Give it. Give me,” Sunstreaker growled, grabbing Sideswipe’s wrists in one servo and bringing the knife up to his neck with the other. Part of him was genuinely surprised the demon hadn’t dematerialized to get away yet; instead Sideswipe just sort of stared up at him with his jaw hanging open.

“…okay.”

Sunstreaker froze. He had been expecting a fight. Not this. Not Sideswipe surrendering, relaxing his frame beneath him, going so far as to lift his chin a little to better expose the line Sunstreaker was after. His spark decided to pulse a little faster, especially at the sight of Sideswipe giving his lip-plates a little nervous lick, amber optics darkening.

“You wanna check if the big guy’s med-case has a transfusion kit, or are you just gonna… bite?”

Sunstreaker’s spark executed a mad little acrobatic maneuver at the heavy look Sideswipe gave him just then. It reminded him of his workshop in Praxus, his large berth and other things he really didn’t want to think about.

“Don’t tempt me.” He’d meant it to sound harsh and threatening but it just came out breathless. Sideswipe gave that throaty laugh of his in turn, letting his helm fall back, one optic winking up at him.

“Go on,” he purred, frame arching up against Sunstreaker ever so slightly, warm plating rubbing up against Sunstreaker's own. “Take it.”

Fragging pit-spawn.

“You know you want it—”

“Shut up,” Sunstreaker growled, finally managing to get his voice under control, refocusing his optics and casting a sharp glance around their surroundings. His gaze landed on the smaller gray frame that lay further away. The one whose spark chamber Sideswipe had breached but hardly injured otherwise. “On second thought…”

“Don’t tell me you’d rather have a go at the corpse!” Sideswipe gasped, squirming in a horrible way and Sunstreaker’s attention snapped back to him with a glare.

“Me? No. But you will.”

Sideswipe let out a little indignant squawk as Sunstreaker yanked them both up to their pedes. “Seriously, Sunshine! I mean, your wish is my command and all, but I’d really rather not—”

“I will go look for that transfusion kit. You—” Sunstreaker poked him in the chest-plates, optics narrowing into slits. “—will carry the fuel for me, since you don’t burn through it and I don’t have any container for it. Taking it from you is a last resort.” 

Sideswipe was sporting another one of those stupid bewildered looks, so Sunstreaker patted the side of his face with a little patronizing smirk. “Come along, now, fuel bag. Wishes and commands, and all that.”

“You are so…” Sideswipe’s optics flashed, his vocalizer reset with a quiet click. “…rude.”  

“Yeah, well, hurry it along, would you,” Sunstreaker said with a roll of his optics, already riffling through the dead Decepticon’s subspace and pulling out the small medical case to search through. He glanced up at the sky but there was nothing but glum darkness in sight. “We don’t have long before the others come looking.”

“What others?” Sideswipe grumbled, shuffling over. “Can’t sense a spark for megamiles.”

Sunstreaker shot the red mech a sharp look. “Two Decepticons. Who the frag sends two soldiers out into Ankmor, alone? And why? They were looking for something, probably a scouting party. With no rations or supplies; they will be expected to return, soon. And when they don’t, their friends will come looking.”  

He found a rudimentary transfusion kit and shoved it at Sideswipe, turning the gray frames over to look for hidden weapons that might be portable. Thinking out loud, he searched his memory banks for old war histories he’d read as a youngling. “A company unit, most likely. How big are those usually, like, ten bots? With two down, that leaves eight.”

He found a pair of missile launchers on the big bot’s servos but no ammunition, before glancing over to where Sideswipe crouched beside the other Decepticon. A heavy hitter and a scout, then. It made sense to send them out in pairs. The search party would also most likely consist of at least two bots, which left six.

“Keep a lookout for another two sparks,” Sunstreaker instructed, picking up his discarded blaster. “If you can sense them — how wide is your range?”

“Depends on the spark,” Sideswipe muttered, sounding distinctly sullen right about then. He glanced up at Sunstreaker from his crouch, pouting as he inserted a needle into one of his fuel lines and flicked the switch on the small pump that came with the kit. It squeaked, but it worked.  

“Tell me the direction they’re coming from if you notice anything,” Sunstreaker muttered, coming over to search the smaller frame. Sideswipe squinted at him, lip-plates twitching.

“So we can run the other way?” 

“No,” Sunstreaker snapped, surprised by the hardness in his tone. “It stands to reason they made camp not too far from here. We’re going to find it.”

“And then what, general?” challenged Sideswipe, a little scoff in his tone. But when Sunstreaker glanced up, he saw a teasing smirk on the demon’s lips, sharp amber optics watching him with some amusement.

“Rations, weapons, ammo,” Sunstreaker listed off, thinking to the near empty charge pack in his blaster. Blue optics flicked up to Sideswipe’s face. “You can take three mechs, right?”

The demon threw his helm back and laughed. Sunstreaker felt his own lips twitch upward.

~||~

“Ugly, ain’t it?” said Tracer, big grin across his face-plates.

“Is it?” muttered Octane. He’d been thinking about the spot of ground their high and mighty unit leader had chosen, and how it could be used or what they might do if the enemy spotted them. Not that the Autobots dared come so close to Kaon territory from this side of the wastes.

The plateau they’d chosen had a bit of a view, beyond a staggered set of plates that might have been a road cutting in between a smattering of abandoned structures that sprouted around it.

Hard to believe this place had been a central square of a small settlement, bustling with life. It was a ghost town, now.

Ugly or not, Octane had spent most of his existence in the mining pits in Kaon, where views were scarce and this place had good air-flow, so he couldn’t even bring himself to complain. He peered up, dark shreds of cloud shifting through the atmosphere, a bit of a purple haze about the distance.

“Ugly,” said Tracer again, the rotary assembly on his back giving a merry jingle as he shifted.

“Everything looks uglier in slag weather,” Octane retorted. “If there was sunshine, you’d be calling it the most beautiful view in the world.”

“Maybe.” Tracer shrugged, rattling the blades on his back with the motion. “But there ain’t no sunshine.”

That was a fact, but there was no denying that it was in their favor. Easier to hide in the dark shadows cast by the clouds than sparkle in the brightness of sunlight. Not that Octane had ever sparkled in his life. Sure enough, joining the cause had earned him a new coat of paint to cover up the plain scratched up silver — never even had primer on until joining up. His plating was still nicked and scratched to the Pit underneath the paint, though. Unlike that fragger, Sweeps, who carried himself over in his shiny-plated glory, acting like he was the leader of a legion instead of an officer in charge of a group of six misfits.

Well, there’d been seven of them, before Overhaul decided to talk slag to the wrong bot and disappeared the very next cycle. Considering who their division’s commander was, Octane wasn’t surprised.

Now, given that the whole division was short on mechpower by this point in the war, most units were understrength; so when their scouts never checked back in, Octane began to worry. They were far from the active fights, so there really shouldn’t have been any trouble. He’d argued with Sweeps that they should all go look for them but the officer had insisted they hold their ground. And now Octane was wondering how they’d use it if whatever trouble got their scouting party would find them there.

The trouble with trouble was, it was hard to predict.

He’d joined up to help put the world to rights by lending his brawn, but as it turned out, he needed to use his processors more often than expected. Someone has to, he thought to himself, glaring at Sweeps sidelong. Sending the only two bots who couldn’t fly— if anything they should have told Tracer to go, told him to fly low and it would’ve been faster. He didn't much like the ground Sweeps had chosen and was of the opinion that the sooner they left it behind, the better.

“Hey, Oc’,” Tracer’s voice was low, his shoulder plating nudged Octane’s own. The rotorform jerked his chin toward some of the buildings where their second scouting party — or rather, retrieval duo — had disappeared behind. “Ransack and Lancer are back. And they ain’t alone.”

Strange thing to say considering they were expected to come back with their two lost comrades. Octane felt a shiver rattle down his spinal column.

“No?” He didn’t particularly feel like looking over. “Who’ve they got with them?”

Tracer shrugged, then shoved up to his pedes, the blades on his back tinkling their merry tune with the motion. “Looks like some Neutral.”

“What?” Octane twisted around, frowning just as Sweep’s voice cut through the air, obnoxiously loudly.

“The frag is this?! Where are the others?”

The two grounders shared a quick glance, walking up to the plateau, shouldering a mech between them. He was a good deal taller than them, too, wore no marks and even from far away, Octane could see dried energon splatters decorating his frame.

“Slag,” said Tracer.

“Yeah,” muttered Octane. “Slag.” And he stood up.

The Neutral walked slow, like he was only really propelled by Lancer’s servo pulling on the cuffs they’d put him in. He didn’t look at any of them; his optics didn’t seem to be capable of cycling into focus, shining a haunting near-white color. Shell-shocked was the word, if Octane remembered correctly; like the mech had seen something he really shouldn’t have and couldn’t process anything anymore. Octane had seen soldiers looking like that, except that had been after a lot of loud explosions. The ruins, though, had been almost eerily quiet all the while they’d been there.

Octane got that shivery feeling again, optics glancing around the ground they’d chosen, following the dark shadows that moved about, following the clouds.

“Still not answering comms. But we found this one,” Ransack gave the mech a sharp poke, warily watching for some sort of reaction or show of acknowledgment. Nothing happened. “Looks like a scavenger.”

“Found him wandering the ruins,” Lancer supplemented, yanking on the cuffs a little. The mech wobbled forward a bit but continued to stare off into space, unseeing. “Nothing much in his subspace except a knife and an empty blaster.”

“That much I slagging well guessed. Why the frag did you bring him here?” Sweeps snapped, storming over and running a scalding glance over the dazed Neutral. “We don’t take prisoners. Kill him and get back to the job!”

“You sure the boss won’t want him?” Lancer asked, a bit more quietly. There was a pause. Octane had to give it to her, the femme was a clever one, thinking higher up the fuel chain. Thinking about trading a mostly functional mech for some small comfort they might earn and split between them if they brought him in for the commander to make use of.

Sweeps took note of the significant looks being passed around him and hesitated. Then, as if it had dawned on him that his own unit might as well just cuff him up and sit him with the Neutral if he disagreed on the point, Sweeps puffed up his chest-plates and put on a mighty act of considering the suggestion. “Fine. Might as well. But if he runs off, it’s not my problem.”

“This one’s not running,” Ransack scoffed, poking the mech again, hard enough that it was almost a shove. Earned him nothing but a small stumble, an automatic resettling of stance, that blank stare pointed somewhere just past Sweep’s shoulder. Ransack’s lip-plate curved up into a sneer. “Not talking, either. Pretty sure his cortex is fried.”

The grounder’s optics lifted over to where Octane stood, darting between him and Tracer’s sloppy stance. “Hey, Octane, what do you say to some quiet company? I’ll trade you.”

Lancer shot the mech a dirty look while Tracer grinned, already hopping over, ever eager to get some action.

“No,” Sweeps snapped out, glaring all the while. For a brief instant, his red optics flicked over to Octane, as though having read his processors. “You had your chance — wasting my damn time — Tracer, get in the air, keep low. Find those two idiots and get them back on track. As for you…”

Their mighty officer in charge turned a look full of contempt at the pair of grounders and their prisoner. “You get to keep watch over this here article until we get back to base.”

Instead of getting a rise out of Ransack, as Octane was sure their leader had intended, the racer shrugged. “All the same to me.” And he shoved the captured Neutral toward Octane’s position. Made Lancer nearly topple over and take a dive with the force of it, too.

The femme’s engine growled out a wordless warning which only made Ransack’s sneer grow. They walked the scavenger over and shoved him much into the same spot Tracer had occupied just moments ago, while the copter leapt into the air, the blades on his back whirring into action.

Lancer folded her servos over her smooth flat chest-plate, watching him buzz off and settling in to do some more of what Octane had been doing all this time — waiting.

It felt like voors went past as the gloomy haze settled lower over the plateau, somewhat obscuring the view. The quiet stretched on, Lancer standing silent watch beside him while keeping one optic on their prisoner. Ransack, for all his bluster and usual bubbly swell personality, also kept mostly to himself, outside of the occasional grumbling mutter about the injustice of being stuck out there. Even Sweeps kept his usually prolific thoughts on leadership and the way things ought to be to himself, pacing round the edges of the buildings around them, sticking his helm through the openings to peer in.

Now, while Octane appreciated the rare moments of quiet in his existence, something about the silence that fell around them was unsettling. Couldn't hear Tracer no more. Not even the sound of wind, and yet the clouds moved above, roiling dark and merging together.

It was the low whisper that did it, he supposed. Sent a shiver wracking right down his spinal struts, made unease squeeze tight around his intake.

“It’s coming.”

Octane shot a look at Lancer, watched the femme slowly turn back to the Neutral mech sitting meekly nearby, wrists shackled and pale optics unfocused. There was energon splashed all the way up to his lip-plates, drawing Octane’s gaze when they moved again.

“It wants my spark.” Said in a whispery croak.

A chill spread through Octane’s lines and Ransack's helm shot up from its slouch. Octane didn’t know why he did it, but he whispered back: “What? What’s coming?”

For the first time since arriving, their prisoner’s optics moved. Cycled into focus. Pale and almost white, they met Octane’s gaze with burning intensity. “It’s too late.”

There was a soft sound of surprise behind him and Octane whipped his helm around to stare. Sweeps had ducked his helm into a shattered window. One of his claws was gripping the edge of it, a trickle of energon beginning the seep down his servo from an injured line somewhere around his wrist.

Then there was a crunch, the sound of wires snapping. Sweeps staggered away from the building, fluids gushing from the point where his neck should have been. His helm was gone. One of his servos made as if to swat at it, then his entire frame sagged and crumpled to the ground.

Something moved in the shadows.

“The frag?!” Ransack shouted, engaged his fang-blades and sort of jerked forward as though to fight when something came flying out the window. Lancer was there with her pistols, tried to shoot it, missed and sort of just lowered her guns once it became clear what the object was.

Sweep’s helm. Torn neck cables twisting around it as it rolled nearly all the way over to where Ransack stood his ground.

A low chuckle echoed around the plateau, bouncing between the buildings. It seemed to come from everywhere around them, from the darkness within the husks of buildings scattered around the plateau.

Optics came alive in the dark, fiery shards of amber staring right at them. A silhouette resolved itself in one of the doorways, emerging from the shadows with a sharp screech of metal and flying sparks.

Two blades, as long as servos, spitting sparks where the edges dug furrows into the ground with each step. They weren’t swords, though — Octane would recognize those rotaries anywhere. Guess Tracer wasn't coming back.

He twisted, reaching for his gun and shield, thinking that this was mighty bad ground to try and hold if they were surrounded and outnumbered. And that was his first mistake — trying to think at all. As soon as he thought of taking defensive action and shifted to activate his shield, a pair of servos grabbed around him from behind.

The biting edge of a pair of cuffs crushed his intake, a pede dug into his back, right into the hinges between his wings. Made his back arch, his wings flare and choked him to boot. Made him realize one of two things was going to give first: the cuffs or his neck.

“Lancer…” he tried to croak out, but his vocalizer was as crushed as it could get without breaking.

Lancer couldn’t get a shot in without hitting Octane. Then again, Octane was a big triple-changer and could deal with an unarmed prisoner himself. Lancer was much too focused on the thing that prowled out of the shadows.

It looked like a mech but moved much too fast to be one. Caught Ransack by surprise, brought the rotor blades down on him with the force of a falling mountain. It didn’t even matter that they weren’t sharpened to a razor’s edge.

Metal screamed, wires and cables snapped apart. Energon gushed out and Ransack roared, the sound filling Lancer’s audials. She twisted herself sideways, took proper aim and began to shoot. Not that any of it seemed to matter.

There was a strut-jarring crunch, a bark of laughter and the thing that looked like a mech grabbed what was left of Ransack by the helm, holding it up for her. Like this was target practice. Then it wrenched one of its red servos upward.

Ransack’s entire spine burst out of his frame. Connecting lines sprayed fluid, whipped up into the air and the mech-impostor grinned at her with way too many jagged teeth before tossing one of Tracer’s rotors at her. Knocked the pistol right out of her left servo and she quickly snapped it up to hold her shaking right hand steady, emptying her entire charge mag.

Click.

Lancer’s optics went wide. She could still hear Octane choking, scrambling about somewhere but it was like she couldn’t look away. Her digits kept trying to squeeze the trigger.

Click-click-click.

Ransack’s spine rattled, dragged and snapped against the ground as the mech-shaped creature advanced on her. It snapped at her with the whip-like part of her battle buddy and it was at that point she regretted ever choosing a side. If only she’d fled the planet, she would never have had to know what Ransack’s frame fluids tasted like as some of them got flicked into her gaping mouth.

She staggered back, saw Octane break free, heard him bellow. His blaster came up quick but the scavenger was quicker, servo snaking out and ramming a fist into Octane’s mouth, snapping his helm back and sending him toppling. The triple-changer turned to flee.

Tracer’s rotor flashed before Lancer’s optics, nearly cleaving her helm straight off. She let out a whimper, rolled backward and whipped her gaze up — but the thing that was after her wasn’t looking. Instead, it chucked its improvised weapon at the scavenger just as Octane leapt into the air.

The mech snatched it up, briefly took aim and threw the rotor like a lance. Caught Octane’s form mid-air, mid-transformation, and brought him crashing down. The creature towering above her watched it all, momentarily distracted.

Lancer’s optics darted down. Her digits found the edge of the other rotary blade, just a pace away. She snatched it up with a snarl and brought it up, barely managed to get the angle right — and lunged.

There was a screech of metal as it pierced red armor. Amber optics snapped to her face, cycling wide in shocked surprise. Lancer felt a triumphant smile stretch her face. Right through the chamber. She could see the tip of the blade poking out the other side, could feel energon dripping down her digits from the force with which she gripped it. She hung on tighter and drove it in further.

The creature let out a sharp gasp, clawed black digits going up to scratch at the metal as it staggered back, staring at the mortal injury in disbelief.

Much to Lancer’s astonishment, it didn’t topple over sideways. Instead, it’s bright optics fixed on her. It’s lips twitched. First a lopsided smirk, then a full-on grin.

Much to Lancer’s growing horror, it began to pull the blade out. And laugh.

It cackled at her as the open gash in its plating revealed nothing but a dead sort of dark, not even a tiny glimmer of spark-light within. Nothing. Just a horrible black lot of nothing.

Lancer tasted processed fuel coming up her intake, energon from her glossa as she bit it; there were claws in her chest, ripping through her plating. Everything was going blurry. “Primus, but it… hurts.”

“Imagine how I feel,” the creature murmured in a rich mellow voice, claws digging into her spark chamber.

~||~

Sideswipe frowned down at his chest-plates, smoothing his digits over where the femme had impaled him. He could still feel it; like an itch that was impossible to scratch, like it hadn’t healed properly. Which was strange.

Glancing up, he saw Sunstreaker lift something into the air and smile to himself. Practically unharmed, if a little banged up from having a triple-changer sit on him, the former noble-mech upended what looked to be a cube of high-grade.

Sideswipe gave a quiet snort to himself, watching Sunstreaker shudder from helm to pede and make a face like he’d just been punched.

Doesn’t so much as wince when drinking from a bot’s ripped out fuel tank, but a rancid batch of high-grade? Sideswipe couldn’t help the grin on his lips at the thought. He vented out a long gust of air, trying to cool his heated frame as he forced himself to look away.

It still felt like he was burning from within. Had been since the moment he’d glimpsed the golden mech get in trouble during the fight.

Of course, Sunstreaker had gone for the biggest slagger of the bunch. Armed with a pair of cuffs, of all things. And Sideswipe had been utterly distracted by the flare of his spark, pulsing so close, calling to him like it was shouting his name, beckoning him closer. He’d been so tempted to cross the distance… he was still very much tempted to cross the distance.

Blowing out a puff of warm air past his lip-plates, Sideswipe’s optics slid unerringly back to a frame no less beautiful for the amount of energon it was spattered in.

Unfortunately for him, Sunstreaker seemed much more interested in Decepticon corpses.

He was just about in the middle of draining one of them of fuel, transferring it into the empty high-grade container when Sideswipe caught his gaze in the reflective side of the cube. And felt that stirring sensation of panic rise within.

Because those were not Sunstreaker’s pale blue optics looking back at him — they were the wrong color.

 

 

Notes:

Hint (as to where this is headed): Sideswipe is not very good at identifying different types of fuel.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 5 of Pit-Spawned