Adjustment of character, 11
Full-sized bit with cute and curious younglings. At least I think they're cute.
Ijurn was typical of most organic planets, even as part of the Empire. Roadstead and Amber were quite firmly in the Decepticon city, with only their large buildings and wide roads around them, and yet there were still plants. Trees and grass and vines of all sorts grew wherever they could, and like most lifeforms, they were very opportunistic.
They were also very different colors than what was on earth. The sky was more of a green than a blue, though the sun was still yellow. The plants were a little closer to blue, with brilliant flowers of every hue. Amber was looking around, entranced, and Roadstead was willing to go slowly. This was her first time on a foreign planet, and he remembered his own first time. That had been New Kaon...
There were crystals everywhere, red and gold and white and yellow and purple and blue and colors he hadn't realized existed before now. The houses and buildings almost disappeared against the growths, until he realized the silver was mostly construction, bright and cared for and covered in art. He looked up in shock, and then flinched backwards when a dark green and yellow form approached him. A dark green and yellow Seeker... And he realized something was 'wrong'.
"Hey, look! Seekers!" a voice called, breaking Roadstead out of his memories. He looked around, then saw the small frames running towards them. Sparklings... well, younglings, it looked like, they were too big to be sparklings.
Roadstead stopped, and allowed the younglings to come as close as they wanted. They stopped quite close, and looked up with big red optics until one spoke. It was the same one who had called out earlier, and he seemed to be the ringleader. Probably a tank-form, if the turret on his back was to be trusted...
"You are Seekers, right? Are you busy, we wanna talk, can we talk?" he asked.
"Yes, we are," Roadstead answered, grinning. He had forgotten how energetic younglings were...
The other four younglings cheered, reaching for the Seekers in an effort to pull them somewhere. Roadstead allowed it, while Amber tried to hide behind him. He had no particular desire to stand in the road while answering youngling questions, however, and so reached back and helped the little in their goal of moving the femme.
They didn't go far, just to the park that the younglings had likely been playing in before they had seen the Seekers. Once there, the younglings simple sat on the ground. After glancing around, Roadstead did likewise, deciding the benches were too far away. They all had backs, anyway, which wasn't comfortable for fliers.
"So, what do you want to know?" Roadstead asked after almost a breem. The younglings were just looking at him, and to be perfectly honest, it was slightly creepy, especially considering their earlier enthusiasm.
"Dun wanna be rude," the leader answered, squirming.
"Don't worry," Roadstead comforted. "If you're rude, I'll tell you. I won't get angry." He'd had practice enough in that since Amber was translated!
The tank-youngling nodded, and then grinned in a manner which was strikingly reminiscent of a sharkticon. "We don't got many Seekers here, least not in our neighborhood. So is it true what they say about wings?"
"That would depend on just what they say about wings," Roadstead answered, ignoring Amber's confused flutter. "I can think of about five things that I've heard about our wings. So you'll have to be more specific."
Three of the younglings, arms wrapped around each other, drew back with a low sound of awe at Roadstead's easy answer. If he had to guess, they had also heard that Seekers were touchy and didn't like talking about themselves. It was true in some cases, but he knew that these younglings didn't mean any harm. It was best that they have facts.
"That they're sensitive and that you'll go insane if you don't fly and that you'll overload if anyone ever touches them so you never ever let anyone," the spokes-mech said. Amber huffed at the mention of overloads, and Roadstead grinned wider.
"That's something like three questions, little. Okay then, from the top... Yes, our wings are sensitive. We use them to get information about the air, currents and temperature and pressure and all these little things that are useful when we fly. Touching them does not make us overload... immediately." Roadstead turned to Amber, stroking one broad blue and purple wing. "See?"
Amber pulled away and glared at him. "What are you doing? I'm not a demonstration! I-" The femme cut herself off, glancing at the littles, and Roadstead knew he would have to explain about them later.
"No, you're not a demonstration, Amber. But you weren't making any effort to go for mine," Roadstead agreed. His words seemed to placate the femme, and he turned back to the wide-opticked younglings. "As you saw. They're not that sensitive, but they are an intimate area. You can touch with permission, but not otherwise." And it was rather easy to get that permission, but the younglings didn't quite need to know that yet!
"What about the flying?" the tank insisted. "I like to shoot things, but I wouldn't go insane if I didn't shoot."
Roadstead shook his head, wings twitching in negation. "No, you would. It would just take a while. It's... pretty quick in Seekers. A vorn is usually enough to do it... and yes, we can go quite violently insane. It almost never happens in the Empire, though, because Megatron and Starscream don't let it."
"Oooh... I thought that was just made up for the show!" a new youngling said, a green one who might be a cycle.
"Show? Noo... it's true. Are all your questions from this show?" Roadstead asked.
"Yes!" the cycle answered again, nodding. "It's called Wings and War, it's on almost every orn! Only things are weird, there's no empire and- oh yeah, are Seekers really, um, trines and things, because I don't think so, but Hardknock says that Starscream has one and-"
"Whoa, whoa. Let me answer!" Roadstead interrupted. He queried the info net about the show, and couldn't hold back a laugh at what he found. "Okay. About the show. Don't you know what AU means?" The younglings shook their heads. "It's an OC fan-verse, littles. From the looks of it, based in the G1 fan-verse... And trines, wow...
"Okay, well. We do and we don't have trines. And this will get a little messy... Some of us have trines. Most want to find trines. But that's like saying that most people want to find mates. You do know what that is, right?"
The tank, Hardknock, huffed. "Of course we do! Most of our creators are mated. Um, not to each other... We're not siblings or anything."
Roadstead held his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay! Good. So. Seekers mate in trines. Amber, stop staring at me. Seekers mate in trines, but until we mate, we fly alone. That's why Starscream has a trine. Our Winglord has to have a trine, actually, to- Well. Sorry, littles, but that's Seeker-stuff." He could explain it, there was no rule against it, but it wouldn't make very much sense to them. Even Amber probably wouldn't understand it.
"Aww. But we wanna know!" the cycle whined.
The brown Seeker shook his head, reaching out to bop the youngling on the nose. "No. You're lucky I'm answering anything, don't press, mechling."
He pouted, but the green sparkling did listen and stopped whining. It was one of the other three, still wrapped around each other, who asked the next question. "How do you tell each other apart? Even with colors, there's not that many colors and combinations, so how do you do it? Or are you pinging everyone all the time?"
That was a little rude, but it was also understandable. As a human, Roadstead had started running into that problem, coloring Seekers for fun and realizing how silly some of the combinations were becoming. "That's something I found out when I translated here. Our frames are not identical, though it helps to know what you're looking for."
"Oooh," the trio said, and for the first time Roadstead realized how similar they were. Their colors were completely different, and he was used to seeing minute differences, and so he hadn't realized sooner. They looked to be some form of immobile alt, clean-limbed and slender, and they almost certainly shared a creator. Possibly two creators, creating in threes, and a different third for each of them... No wonder they wanted to know how Seekers handled it.
Smiling gently at them, Roadstead explained himself more fully. "There's at least three different types of Seeker-frames. There's the frame meant for agility, Skywarp's in one of those. They're lightly armored, and their armor-gaps are wider to give them more motion. Then there's Starscream's frame-type, built for speed. Their armor is also thin, and the joints are smaller, so they're sleek, cutting through the air so fast you can't see them. Then you have ones like Thundercracker and myself. We're meant to endure. My armor's a little heavier, and my joints are pretty narrow. I can fly for orns, if I have to, and never touch the ground. Most grounders can't even see the differences.
"Then there's the ones that are similar, but more noticeable. Like Amber here, she's got some shuttle in her, so she's bigger, and better armored than I am. Scouts, too, they're quite a bit smaller, and have all sorts of crazy mods..." Roadstead shrugged. "Does that answer the questions, littles?"
The younglings looked at each other, then nodded. Hardknock answered for them, reclaiming his status as leader. "Yeah. Thank-ya."
Roadstead stood, stretching a little and messaging Amber. -We're going to give them a treat and fly away. Be ready.- "I'm glad to have helped. And you were all very polite. It's time for us to go fuel, though, so I have to go." He waved, stepped far enough away that he and Amber wouldn't hit the younglings with the backwash from their thrusters, and then took off, accompanied by cheering. Roadstead loved the attention, and did a quick loop before finally leading Amber away.
They only flew far enough to be out of sight, and then Roadstead landed again, grinning. "Now that was fun. So, I'm sure you have questions, Amber."
She didn't land as gracefully as he had, stumbling a couple paces ahead and then turning back to look at him. "Yeah. And I'm going to regret it, I know, but... How does, I mean..." She flushed, looking away from the brown Seeker, who just waited. Amber tried again. "Where... where do kids come from, then? I know you... but you never use protection with Metro- or Astrotrain..."
"No... I told you. The worst that will happen with interfacing is a sparkling, and that's hardly a bad thing at all. It takes more than just spike and valve, though... Sparks have to be involved as well, and even then, it's very rare. I told you, our sparking-rate is low. Most of the time, interfacing doesn't even include sparks..." Roadstead shrugged.
"So why don't you and Metrodash have any?" Amber asked.
Roadstead stared a moment, then huffed. "Because I'm not actually merging him! I haven't actually merged anyone but Sunrain and Shockwave! He licks, he plays, he teases... but our sparks have never actually touched." It was quite a deliberate choice on his part. He wanted no risk at all of carrying a grounder's sparkling. Shockwave didn't use spike or valve, so all Roadstead had to do was keep his own pet from merging him, and that wasn't very hard.
"Oh. ...Do you ever want sparklings?"
"Want..." Roadstead had to pause and consider. "Maybe. I'd rather wait until after I find my trine. It's not a driving force for me... I have things I want to do still. I want to get higher in the army. I want to do more."
"Oh..." Amber didn't seem to have an answer and looked away, scuffing at the ground a little. "...You said something about fuel?"
He recognized a subject change when he saw one, but Roadstead let it go. He didn't want to get into it, that simple. "Yes, I did. There's a shop near here which has good reviews. Let's go, then." Roadstead reached a hand out, and waited for Amber to take it before leading her away.
Ijurn was typical of most organic planets, even as part of the Empire. Roadstead and Amber were quite firmly in the Decepticon city, with only their large buildings and wide roads around them, and yet there were still plants. Trees and grass and vines of all sorts grew wherever they could, and like most lifeforms, they were very opportunistic.
They were also very different colors than what was on earth. The sky was more of a green than a blue, though the sun was still yellow. The plants were a little closer to blue, with brilliant flowers of every hue. Amber was looking around, entranced, and Roadstead was willing to go slowly. This was her first time on a foreign planet, and he remembered his own first time. That had been New Kaon...
There were crystals everywhere, red and gold and white and yellow and purple and blue and colors he hadn't realized existed before now. The houses and buildings almost disappeared against the growths, until he realized the silver was mostly construction, bright and cared for and covered in art. He looked up in shock, and then flinched backwards when a dark green and yellow form approached him. A dark green and yellow Seeker... And he realized something was 'wrong'.
"Hey, look! Seekers!" a voice called, breaking Roadstead out of his memories. He looked around, then saw the small frames running towards them. Sparklings... well, younglings, it looked like, they were too big to be sparklings.
Roadstead stopped, and allowed the younglings to come as close as they wanted. They stopped quite close, and looked up with big red optics until one spoke. It was the same one who had called out earlier, and he seemed to be the ringleader. Probably a tank-form, if the turret on his back was to be trusted...
"You are Seekers, right? Are you busy, we wanna talk, can we talk?" he asked.
"Yes, we are," Roadstead answered, grinning. He had forgotten how energetic younglings were...
The other four younglings cheered, reaching for the Seekers in an effort to pull them somewhere. Roadstead allowed it, while Amber tried to hide behind him. He had no particular desire to stand in the road while answering youngling questions, however, and so reached back and helped the little in their goal of moving the femme.
They didn't go far, just to the park that the younglings had likely been playing in before they had seen the Seekers. Once there, the younglings simple sat on the ground. After glancing around, Roadstead did likewise, deciding the benches were too far away. They all had backs, anyway, which wasn't comfortable for fliers.
"So, what do you want to know?" Roadstead asked after almost a breem. The younglings were just looking at him, and to be perfectly honest, it was slightly creepy, especially considering their earlier enthusiasm.
"Dun wanna be rude," the leader answered, squirming.
"Don't worry," Roadstead comforted. "If you're rude, I'll tell you. I won't get angry." He'd had practice enough in that since Amber was translated!
The tank-youngling nodded, and then grinned in a manner which was strikingly reminiscent of a sharkticon. "We don't got many Seekers here, least not in our neighborhood. So is it true what they say about wings?"
"That would depend on just what they say about wings," Roadstead answered, ignoring Amber's confused flutter. "I can think of about five things that I've heard about our wings. So you'll have to be more specific."
Three of the younglings, arms wrapped around each other, drew back with a low sound of awe at Roadstead's easy answer. If he had to guess, they had also heard that Seekers were touchy and didn't like talking about themselves. It was true in some cases, but he knew that these younglings didn't mean any harm. It was best that they have facts.
"That they're sensitive and that you'll go insane if you don't fly and that you'll overload if anyone ever touches them so you never ever let anyone," the spokes-mech said. Amber huffed at the mention of overloads, and Roadstead grinned wider.
"That's something like three questions, little. Okay then, from the top... Yes, our wings are sensitive. We use them to get information about the air, currents and temperature and pressure and all these little things that are useful when we fly. Touching them does not make us overload... immediately." Roadstead turned to Amber, stroking one broad blue and purple wing. "See?"
Amber pulled away and glared at him. "What are you doing? I'm not a demonstration! I-" The femme cut herself off, glancing at the littles, and Roadstead knew he would have to explain about them later.
"No, you're not a demonstration, Amber. But you weren't making any effort to go for mine," Roadstead agreed. His words seemed to placate the femme, and he turned back to the wide-opticked younglings. "As you saw. They're not that sensitive, but they are an intimate area. You can touch with permission, but not otherwise." And it was rather easy to get that permission, but the younglings didn't quite need to know that yet!
"What about the flying?" the tank insisted. "I like to shoot things, but I wouldn't go insane if I didn't shoot."
Roadstead shook his head, wings twitching in negation. "No, you would. It would just take a while. It's... pretty quick in Seekers. A vorn is usually enough to do it... and yes, we can go quite violently insane. It almost never happens in the Empire, though, because Megatron and Starscream don't let it."
"Oooh... I thought that was just made up for the show!" a new youngling said, a green one who might be a cycle.
"Show? Noo... it's true. Are all your questions from this show?" Roadstead asked.
"Yes!" the cycle answered again, nodding. "It's called Wings and War, it's on almost every orn! Only things are weird, there's no empire and- oh yeah, are Seekers really, um, trines and things, because I don't think so, but Hardknock says that Starscream has one and-"
"Whoa, whoa. Let me answer!" Roadstead interrupted. He queried the info net about the show, and couldn't hold back a laugh at what he found. "Okay. About the show. Don't you know what AU means?" The younglings shook their heads. "It's an OC fan-verse, littles. From the looks of it, based in the G1 fan-verse... And trines, wow...
"Okay, well. We do and we don't have trines. And this will get a little messy... Some of us have trines. Most want to find trines. But that's like saying that most people want to find mates. You do know what that is, right?"
The tank, Hardknock, huffed. "Of course we do! Most of our creators are mated. Um, not to each other... We're not siblings or anything."
Roadstead held his hands up in surrender. "Okay, okay! Good. So. Seekers mate in trines. Amber, stop staring at me. Seekers mate in trines, but until we mate, we fly alone. That's why Starscream has a trine. Our Winglord has to have a trine, actually, to- Well. Sorry, littles, but that's Seeker-stuff." He could explain it, there was no rule against it, but it wouldn't make very much sense to them. Even Amber probably wouldn't understand it.
"Aww. But we wanna know!" the cycle whined.
The brown Seeker shook his head, reaching out to bop the youngling on the nose. "No. You're lucky I'm answering anything, don't press, mechling."
He pouted, but the green sparkling did listen and stopped whining. It was one of the other three, still wrapped around each other, who asked the next question. "How do you tell each other apart? Even with colors, there's not that many colors and combinations, so how do you do it? Or are you pinging everyone all the time?"
That was a little rude, but it was also understandable. As a human, Roadstead had started running into that problem, coloring Seekers for fun and realizing how silly some of the combinations were becoming. "That's something I found out when I translated here. Our frames are not identical, though it helps to know what you're looking for."
"Oooh," the trio said, and for the first time Roadstead realized how similar they were. Their colors were completely different, and he was used to seeing minute differences, and so he hadn't realized sooner. They looked to be some form of immobile alt, clean-limbed and slender, and they almost certainly shared a creator. Possibly two creators, creating in threes, and a different third for each of them... No wonder they wanted to know how Seekers handled it.
Smiling gently at them, Roadstead explained himself more fully. "There's at least three different types of Seeker-frames. There's the frame meant for agility, Skywarp's in one of those. They're lightly armored, and their armor-gaps are wider to give them more motion. Then there's Starscream's frame-type, built for speed. Their armor is also thin, and the joints are smaller, so they're sleek, cutting through the air so fast you can't see them. Then you have ones like Thundercracker and myself. We're meant to endure. My armor's a little heavier, and my joints are pretty narrow. I can fly for orns, if I have to, and never touch the ground. Most grounders can't even see the differences.
"Then there's the ones that are similar, but more noticeable. Like Amber here, she's got some shuttle in her, so she's bigger, and better armored than I am. Scouts, too, they're quite a bit smaller, and have all sorts of crazy mods..." Roadstead shrugged. "Does that answer the questions, littles?"
The younglings looked at each other, then nodded. Hardknock answered for them, reclaiming his status as leader. "Yeah. Thank-ya."
Roadstead stood, stretching a little and messaging Amber. -We're going to give them a treat and fly away. Be ready.- "I'm glad to have helped. And you were all very polite. It's time for us to go fuel, though, so I have to go." He waved, stepped far enough away that he and Amber wouldn't hit the younglings with the backwash from their thrusters, and then took off, accompanied by cheering. Roadstead loved the attention, and did a quick loop before finally leading Amber away.
They only flew far enough to be out of sight, and then Roadstead landed again, grinning. "Now that was fun. So, I'm sure you have questions, Amber."
She didn't land as gracefully as he had, stumbling a couple paces ahead and then turning back to look at him. "Yeah. And I'm going to regret it, I know, but... How does, I mean..." She flushed, looking away from the brown Seeker, who just waited. Amber tried again. "Where... where do kids come from, then? I know you... but you never use protection with Metro- or Astrotrain..."
"No... I told you. The worst that will happen with interfacing is a sparkling, and that's hardly a bad thing at all. It takes more than just spike and valve, though... Sparks have to be involved as well, and even then, it's very rare. I told you, our sparking-rate is low. Most of the time, interfacing doesn't even include sparks..." Roadstead shrugged.
"So why don't you and Metrodash have any?" Amber asked.
Roadstead stared a moment, then huffed. "Because I'm not actually merging him! I haven't actually merged anyone but Sunrain and Shockwave! He licks, he plays, he teases... but our sparks have never actually touched." It was quite a deliberate choice on his part. He wanted no risk at all of carrying a grounder's sparkling. Shockwave didn't use spike or valve, so all Roadstead had to do was keep his own pet from merging him, and that wasn't very hard.
"Oh. ...Do you ever want sparklings?"
"Want..." Roadstead had to pause and consider. "Maybe. I'd rather wait until after I find my trine. It's not a driving force for me... I have things I want to do still. I want to get higher in the army. I want to do more."
"Oh..." Amber didn't seem to have an answer and looked away, scuffing at the ground a little. "...You said something about fuel?"
He recognized a subject change when he saw one, but Roadstead let it go. He didn't want to get into it, that simple. "Yes, I did. There's a shop near here which has good reviews. Let's go, then." Roadstead reached a hand out, and waited for Amber to take it before leading her away.