Fic
Title: Borealis 68/86: Star Light, Star Bright - Part II
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): Prowl/Jazz, Skyfire/Silverbolt, ensemble
Warnings: fluff, PnP
Summary: Wherein Jazz shares Optimus' first memory with Prowl, Skyfire gets out of the med-bay finally, Vector Prime has a little chat with the Structies, and Borealis learns what the big deal about minicons is. ;D
Notes: Ehehehe, this chapter will either have to be at least another two parts in addition to this, or I'll have to make those parts new chapters and increase the denominator up there. ^^;;; NaNoWriMo has addded a lot of new material, whilst leaving a lot of later chapters not much further along than before. ::facepalm:: Still, should be able to post more often for a while! \o/
Alegria lyrics (c) copyright Cirque du Soleil. <3
~4100 words.
Part I
Borealis: Star Light, Star Bright - Part II
Alegria
I see a spark of life shining
Alegria
I hear a young minstrel sing
Alegria
Beautiful roaring scream
Of joy and sorrow,
So extreme
There is a love in me raging
Alegria
A joyous,
Magical feeling
2031 - August
“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
? Oh.
“Ratchet’s still off. Easy. We could just-”
“Switch tables.”
“Mmmhmmm!” I have another memory you might like, if you’re interested.
Yes?
How about Optimus’?
!!!
Hehehe! Thought so.
You knew him from his beginning, you’ve been close to him for your entire life. Prowl made no effort to conceal his envy, though it was softened now by his own relationship with Prime and the pleasant warmth of post-interface base-state.
Mmhmm, Jazz purred, smirking. Kiss me and I’ll share.
Prowl tilted his head, lowering his face slowly towards Jazz’s. Their lips brushed, clung, slid, mouths opening, internal fields unfolding in complex geometries of heat and want, whorled by their oral polyhedra. Prowl cradled Jazz’s helm with one hand, sliding the other down Jazz’s chest, fingertips rubbing the still-warm central seam. Jazz moaned, arching under the touch. Prowl maneuvered a little, turning them on their sides, never breaking the kiss, but aligning their chests more closely. He tipped his head the other way, until their helms were parallel, straight on - and extended his chevron forward and out, until the hot crimson tips, glowing, touched the winglike, beautiful silver swooping shapes of Jazz’s main antennae. Controlled feedback crackled across their armor, tickling deeper structures, as the sensory load grew, fractal-fine and heavy as worlds their senses overlapping, a synaesthesia of pleasure and curiosity and fundamental longings and sheer, overwhelming physicality.
As Jazz lay there twitching, a silly little grin on his face, Prowl pinged him a query. He really wanted that memory.
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuh! Jazz whimpered. I see. Okay. I gotcha. You could tell me twice if you wanted, but I doubt I could stay conscious for the end. Here…
…
9 million years ago.
Connection / Threat assessment 0.02 percent
Twin hands touching / Touching hands twin
Self Optimus / Self Megatron
Initiating contact access granted
Brother Megatron Lord Protector / Brother Optimus ir-Prime
Together we
Spark loss Volant / Occasion of building kindling
Grieving Cybertron world people / Grieving Alpha Trion
Together we / Forever we
Within acceptable parameters
Agreed.
Passage of 0.000263 astroseconds. Optics lighting, meeting optics, brother-twin taller; warmth of air/kindling platform. Hands reaching toward them, beckoning, faces surrounding.
“Prime. Lord.” Voices murmur, welcoming. Waves of hope and gladness sailing from the crowd like great wings - concepts and words alight in his mind, though he has not yet seen these things. Ah, there are wings folded across the shoulders of some who watch, including Lord Alpha Trion, who takes their hands now, leading them down from the platform, from the weight and warmth of the Allspark behind them.
Names appear beside faces: Lever, Faience, Machicolation, Tabulus, Funicular, Susurrus, Skyfire, Nonsequitur, Semblance, Ratchet, Brimstone, Ironhide, Magnus, Thundercracker, Circumlocution… He looks out among the crowd, finding he knows every name, can call up basic information on nearly all of them. They are all so beautiful - he loves them individually and collectively. He loves this metal ground his tender feet walk upon, he loves the hands and the sparks that connect him to his brother, he loves the air vibrating with symphonies of voices, and beyond the air, the immensities and the stars, each with their own voices, too.
…
Prowl curled around Jazz, holding him tenderly like a precious thing, not fragile but necessary for vital function.
Nice, isn’t it, Jazz hummed very quietly, stroking Prowl’s helm. Ah, Prowl, so easily affected; though Prowl didn’t seem to feel this was a vulnerability, not a weakness. It was a treasure, not to be hoarded and guarded, but shared, worn openly, as his love for Prime always had been.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Silverbolt?
I’ll be right there, Ratchet!
…
The cloud mind enveloped his consciousness as he came online. Relief, affection, gentle teasing, and brightest, rowdiest of all the overlapping, entwined thoughts of the Aerialbots. Skyfire! Skyfire! Skyfire!/Knew you’d be all right!/Pff! Needs to learn not to lead with his chin./Scared us half to the Pit!/Love you, slag it…
“Oof! Ow, Silverbolt, easy.”
“I’m so sorry! Ratchet!”
“If you could possibly refrain from crushing him for a week or two, his self-repair systems will have time to heal the welds.”
“That doesn’t mean stop altogether,” Skyfire said, pulling Silverbolt back into his lap.
“Sparks fly when deltas meet.” Ratchet chuckled the old adage and left them, slipping into the growth tank chamber to check on Evac and Blades’ progeny. Skyfire made a rude gesture at Ratchet’s back, but his expression was affectionate.
Silverbolt gingerly traced a weld seam on Skyfire’s chest. “Are you going to go as a zombie this Halloween?”
“What? You’ve been on this planet too long. When are you leaving?”
“Soon.”
“Oh. Of course.” The dismay Skyfire tried to hide beneath joking nonchalance was transmitted in full force through his harmonics and subharmonics. Deltas rarely spent much time down gravity wells, though being part of a gestalt meant Silverbolt had slightly different programming and had adapted to living with his shorter-range brothers. Parting was an assumed element of their relationships and interactions. That didn’t mean it made them happy.
Silverbolt leaned in, pressing his mid-helm buttress to Skyfire’s. Ultra Magnus and Kup want to leave soon, to harry Jhiaxus and Bludgeon and Turmoil if we can. Elita’s team nearly has the last of Shockwave’s drones cleaned up. They finally found and demolished the fabrication site!
I suppose Chromia has thrown a rod because she missed that? Skyfire chuckled, tilting his head slightly so their lip components brushed.
“Mmm. The only reason you didn’t hear her, even in stasis, is because Ironhide and Arcee and Fireflight have been very busy distracting her.” Silverbolt rubbed his cheek flange against Skyfire’s. They fanned their sensory fins toward each other, waving gently, stroking delicate edges, their fields meshing and interfering in a slow rise of heat. Skyfire cuddled Silverbolt closer, welds be fragged.
“How soon?” Skyfire asked. He touched and tapped his temporal vanes to Silverbolt’s helm, catching on a cheek flange, tugging a little, then disengaging to press a tiny kiss on Silverbolt’s mid-helm buttress tip.
Not today, Silverbolt hummed low. Not tomorrow. Mmmm. Week or two. Magnus wants to make sure the ship’s fully charged, moved it out to the Earth-Sun L4.
Ratchet’s going to let Kup get away without taking his progeny after all, eh?
Silverbolt grinned, and kissed Skyfire’s shoulder. The Wreckers aren’t going to sit around for two years when there are Decepticons out there getting away with who knows what kind of mayhem; they’d go crazy.
I suppose we have been lazy, sitting around down here with the humans…
Hardly! Silverbolt knew there were mechs - including Slingshot - who thought the Autobots and Prime were wasting their time on Earth. They should have left as soon as they’d chased the Cons off Mars; maybe to make of themselves a more tempting target, so that the Cons would leave Earth alone. Take the fight back to their own galaxy where it belonged. Especially now that the humans were better able to defend themselves. Sure, before Mission City, a handful of Cons could have ended human civilization even without a battleship, but now? Maybe not. Once Shockwave got whatever he was building up and running, that would be trouble. But if the remaining Autobots concentrated their numbers and firepower on Chaar, maybe they could keep old Shocky from even completing whatever it was.
It was almost, it suddenly occurred to Silverbolt, like Prime himself had formed a splinter group of neutrals, sick of the war, sick of what they’d become. He tight-beamed the thought to Skyfire.
Yes. I agree, Skyfire said, nodding. Up to a point. Prime is yet willing to fight, as are most of the rest of us. Our stance has shifted very dramatically to the defensive, though.
Not Elita’s.
No. It will be interesting to see if the Decepticons leave Cybertron abandoned long enough for Perceptor to put his plan into effect.
Silverbolt grinned, hugging Skyfire again a little tighter than he ought to. To have a sun again! Perceptor and Hound built a sim of what it will look like, orbiting Alpha Centauri B - the nights, Skyfire! The long blue nights for half the year! So beautiful!
And the days, more to the point, Skyfire said, chuckling. Earth’s sun still felt too young, too bright to him. Alpha Centauri B had the decency to shine a little less exuberantly, its dimmer, more orange light easy on the optics.
Yes, Silverbolt murmured. Sunrises and sunsets. He wondered if Skyfire would stay to help rebuild, or if, released from any tactical duties, he would flee to the outer volumes of unexplored space, other galaxies, and lose himself in his primary programming again. Except that, technically, Skyfire had only recently come back from a twelve-thousand year long search mission. It might be another century or more before the deltan native restlessness stirred in his spark. In any case, Silverbolt meant to make the best use of whatever time they had left together.
Deltas generally packed nearly as much sensory equipment in their hands as their heads. Skyfire ran fingertips over Silverbolt’s helm, tangling in secondary antennae, sweeping across shoulders and out to wing-segment edges, petting and stroking, sending and receiving, firmly sliding over space-hardened armor, dipping into the spaces Silverbolt widened to admit them. Silverbolt made small hums and whirs, nuzzling Skyfire’s mouth open, oral polyhedron rolling to send their internal fields whirling, the feedback singing softly in their CPUs. Skyfire wished he could say he wanted to go with Silverbolt and the others. He wanted to stretch his senses out beyond the confines of a single solar system. But he had work to do here. Good work. And someone had to help Wheeljack keep Perceptor from overworking himself, or getting too crazy with the theoretical physics.
They fanned their cooling and sensory vanes out around each other’s helms, central buttresses bumping, letting their medial mandibular hinges tap and slide, cheek guards and flanges slipping with a cool metallic hush, almost lost in the small array of sounds their facial components made as they moved, alloy tesserae shifting against one another. They kissed as their mouths happened to be in alignment, the rubbing of vanes more stimulating at the moment than kisses, soft hisses of minute hydraulics, cooling fans whirring to life in their throats and chests and helms. Little pecking kisses punctuated with soft hums and moans and chirrs that weren’t really much like any sounds any creatures that had evolved on Earth had ever made.
Silverbolt initiated cables with some reluctance. He was afraid of hurting Skyfire again. Spark-to-spark contact seemed out of the question, though he supposed he could comm Ratchet to find out for sure, but it was up to Skyfire in any case.
Skyfire accepted the cables and the link, letting his restlessness diffuse across. Was he repaired or not? He was. He was refueled, recharged, the welds were Ratchet-welds; they would hold through strenuous aerobatics, though they might pain him. He wasn’t going to fall apart any second. He wanted air, sky, to taste distant thunderstorms and look up through the veils of atmosphere to the stars who were always there, always his guides and companions. As usual he only spared the slightest of calculations for whether there were any humans or human-run machines about that might spot them if they went outside. Silverbolt laughed.
“Come on. Ratchet didn’t say you had to stay aberth.” Silverbolt tugged Skyfire upright and off the repair table. “I have something to show you.”
They flew to the mesa top, Silverbolt watching Skyfire’s leap and engines with first trepidation and then relief. Skyfire landed solidly, if a bit more carefully than usual.
“Now,” Silverbolt said, taking Skyfire’s hands and drawing him to the center of the mesa. For a wonder no one else was up there. No, not a wonder; Trailbreaker had sounded the alert as he’d seen the deltas leave the embassy hangar. Whomever had been up here had courteously abandoned their perch to let the deltas play. For a while at least. The other Aerialbots were out flying Earth’s blue, blue skies, but there was a limit to their forbearance. “Place one hand on my shoulder and the other on my upper hip guard. Yes, like that.” Silverbolt did the same, arranging his hands the opposite to Skyfire’s, drawing their bodies closer. He offered an arm cable. Skyfire raised an optical ridge but accepted the brief proprioception data transfer. “The rhythm is one two three, one two three, one two three… scan my feet… we’ll make small circles…”
Skyfire watched Silverbolt’s face as Silverbolt taught him how to waltz. Shining with amusement and pleasure at showing the elder seeker something new, something Skyfire hadn’t known already, whole internet downloads notwithstanding. The file Silverbolt had created with Borealis’ help was new; made as a gift specifically for Skyfire. Silverbolt was happy to present Skyfire with a bit of anthropological data, the kind of thing Skyfire had studied in cultures across their home galaxy eons ago, before the war. And the younger jet was also inexpressibly glad to have Skyfire out of CR, out of recharge, on his feet again, after the terrible wounds inflicted on him by Thunderwing. Bleeding out obviously wasn’t always fatal, and memory cores weren’t volatile, but it was hard on all a mech’s systems, and as Air Raid had pointed out, refueling a mech Skyfire’s size had taken quite a while.
Skyfire was sorry to have worried everyone so, but the blow he had intercepted would have killed Nightbeat, shattering the young mech’s much smaller frame, breaching a spark chamber hidden behind much thinner layers of armor and protoform. And Evac’s death had shown them what happened to sparks entangled as progenitor and progeny’s were, when one was extinguished. If Nightbeat had been killed, Prowl and Hound would have gone down like Blades, but might not have gotten up again so readily. Foolish. Skyfire understood the population pressure completely, but the method Prime and the others had chosen was staggeringly risky.
They danced. Rio sent them music - lively waltzes first, then ones where the tempo changed, even cheekily slipping in Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre as a nod to Silverbolt’s line about zombies. Then slower and slower they turned, recalling the scale of galaxies, hurtling through spacetime as they were, yet tens of millions of years in each revolution. Holding each other closer with each turn, in defiance of centripetal physics. A pair of suns coalescing, then, sparks bright in their cocoon of dark matter. Silverbolt let slip his curiosity regarding merges, shivering with a blaze of embarrassment, expecting or half-expecting a half-life of scorn or pity or perhaps worst yet, a sad shaking of Skyfire’s pale helm.
Too dangerous, Skyfire murmured, his harmonics calm, unperturbed by any of the things Silverbolt was afraid of. When the war is over; ask me then. Ask me again. It’s too soon for me. Yes, even Vector’s way. I’ve been listening all this time but I don’t know how the others are wrapping their processors around this. Prime could be our Allspark now, we don’t need to risk ourselves. I make Ratchet angry, thinking that. Prime chose. I don’t know, Bolt. It’s too soon.
Silverbolt was hard pressed to conceal his elation. Skyfire hadn’t said definitively no! It was something.
Short flight? Silverbolt suggested, nipping and kissing at Skyfire’s lips, holding his hands warm against Skyfire’s chest between them, between their sparks. An acknowledgement of Skyfire’s wishes and fears, an agreement, from someone who was afraid, too.
Halfway to the moon? It’s directly overhead.
Yes!
Still in robot mode, they engaged their engines; Skyfire warming his systems up cautiously, slowly, running the checks repeatedly and watching the feedback. Not that Ratchet would have let him out of stasis for anything less than full function. Still holding hands, they lifted off the mesa top, toes curling into protective shapes, legs held at careful angles to avoid the exhaust fires which the humans thought looked like afterburners but weren’t. The deltas’ engines were far too efficient than to need afterburners. Holding hands, they spiraled up into the darkening sky, through the thinning veils of air and wind, up through the Heaviside Layer, past the ionosphere, feeling the temperature gradients only vaguely as they continued to kiss and nudge and nuzzle, fins stroking vanes, living plumage, wick and sensate, not dead protein.
Gravitational awareness swept outward like wings from their bodies as they rose, holding hands, into the black, feeling their way, among planets, between themselves, until they found that resting spot, the easy little nest where the faint forces could rock them gently to and fro, neither tugging perilously into freefall nor ejecting from the swing and plunge of the harmonically tuned system. Gravity as music, as color, as textures. The true mass balance point of the Earth-Moon system was inside the volume of the Earth, but there were other resting places, nearer the Moon, where they could hold one another in that silvery light, bodies gleaming, armor bright, optics for each other alone, just for a little while.
White and silver curled around each other in the starlight, meshing their complicated shapes - now the sharp angles and narrow gaps in their structures gave them handholds, footholds, anchors in one another as they slowly spun, giggling with inertia. Cables drew them closer yet. They flew into the cumulonimbus nebulae of their minds; tumbling, rolling somersaulting, spinning, whirling, dancing; freer than immense, heavy bodies could be, powerful engines and arrow-dynamic design notwithstanding. They closed and opened wings of memory, of shared equations of energy and light and flightpaths, the depthless quantum singing of the universe, the ringing, thrumming songs of stars.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
He stood on the copper disk of the sun, his solar sails rustling on his shoulders and flanks, restless to extend, to taste the currents of air in this place. Safeguard coiled on his wrist and forearm, the minicon’s own senses unfurled to admire the workmanship.
The thirteen planets of Cybertron’s home system moved around him, suspended three meters above the floor by AG fields, set on courses logarithmically scaled and delineated by hematite inlays of mathematical poetry - including some of Borealis and Perceptor’s web-published exchanges. Tread and Trample had compromised. The planets, also logarithmically scaled, were composed of melted stones - mostly granites - reshaped to resemble their inspirations, most of them tiled with metal leaf for the cities; Cybertron itself a puzzle-sphere of alloyed complexity. Vector Prime noted all six original moons were represented. The system as it was during the time of the Firstforged.
Crystalline trees lined the outer wall of the cavern, light sources at their bases casting lacy shadows across the domed ceiling. The mosaic floor shifted colors depending on what spectrum one viewed it in; more poetry in arrays of glyphs glowed from a dark background in ultraviolet, fluorescing when the light from the trees passed through the proper wavelengths.
“Who are you?” The unmistakable sounds of weapons systems powering up accompanied the voice, echoing from all three arched entrances to the cavern, though none of the Constructicons had stepped into the tree-light.
“My name is Vector Prime.”
“Liar.”
“Hmm. Are you scanning what I’m scanning?”
“You don’t think…?”
“He’s found us, we should kill him.”
Safeguard shifted slightly on his wrist, but Vector kept his hands at his sides, watching calmly as Scrapper and Hook ventured forward, Scavenger and Mixmaster following a little behind. The other four remained in the tunnels, target locked.
“How did you find us?” Scrapper growled, keeping his pistol aimed at the intruder’s helm.
“The humans are quite good at detecting and triangulating vibrations in their planet’s crust. The Autobots have therefore known where you are for some time as well.”
“What do you want?” Hook asked.
Vector watched the planets as they passed through a particularly lovely configuration. “Such beauty. I am glad your creative impulses remain unrestrained.” He looked at Hook. “If Cybertron could be given a sun again, would you be interested in participating in such a project?”
The Constructicons stared at him.
“I am here to convey the offer. The Autobots are proceeding in any case. It is your choice.”
Faster than even Rampage could track, there was a flash of light and the strange intruder was gone. Over the gestalt channel, an argument began that would rage for months.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“May I accompany you?” The vivid minicon, Orris, darted out of Wheeljack’s tower and flew to Borealis’ face-height, hovering there as Perceptor and Wheeljack maneuvered the prototype gate-field emitter through the door.
“Of course,” Borealis said. The minicons had helped build the thing, it made sense at least one of them would want to come along when Borealis and Skyfire took it out beyond the Oort for secondary testing.
Orris grinned when the big delta failed to offer her arm or bare a helm port. “You’ve never emplaced a minicon, have you.”
“Oh! Um, well, no.” She had the basic historical files, with a lot filled in by Mirage’s stories and anecdotes from Bee and Jazz and others, but she knew very little concretely about the minicons. Orris landed on her shoulder and tapped her helm next to the primary cephalic data port. She irised the port open, only a microsecond of hesitation flickering across her CPU. Cephalic ports were - in her experience - only used during hardcore medical procedures.
Orris was glad it was him, not Pulse, initializing this bulk. Pulse wasn’t the most patient mech and could get grumpy when people didn’t follow directions exactly and immediately. Don’t worry, Orris tight-beamed. It won’t hurt a bit, I promise. He transformed slightly, wrapping himself around the curve of her temporal flanges like a bright blue dragonfly decorating her helm, jacking in gently and opening the link slowly, letting her get used to that level before settling into fully bonded mode.
It was like most cable links, Borealis thought, reassured, not certain what she’d expected. Then the constraints fell away, and the universe leapt into clean focus as if she was borrowing Perceptor’s optical feed. Every sensor’s range and accuracy increased, minor static interference in her CPU smoothed away, her fuel systems ran more efficiently. Another mind settled beside hers, sharing knowledge and perspective so smoothly it didn’t feel like an other at all. More like an always-locked door had been opened in a mansion she had grown up in, revealing immense arrays of chambers she’d never known were there but now comprehended intimately, down to the last word in the last volume on the library shelves.
It is a bit like gestalt, came a thought through her wonder - from herself or Orris she wasn’t sure. Oooohhhhh!
She transformed, leaning forward and stretching and tucking bits in and she’d never felt so sleek and catlike, sheathed in power before. Wheeljack and Perceptor loaded the prototype into her forward cargo pod, Perceptor chirping her a data packet of painfully detailed instructions before he headed back inside Jack’s tower to get to work on the next set of plans. Wheeljack waved as she taxied down the tower path to the embassy road, warming her engines for takeoff. Skyfire was already at the test radius, canoodling with Silverbolt while they waited, but one could hardly blame him.
Oh, she could do VTOL, but it sucked power like a sumbitch; if she had a runway she’d take it. With Orris bonded, though, she was tempted to jump for it. Madre de Dios, this feels amazing, Orris!
It does, Orris said, a smile in his transmission. That’s why there have been periods when my people have had to fight not to be considered valuable accessories. And why Megatron wanted all of us captive. And why we left the war, the planet, early.
Holy crap. I guess so! She took off, pointing nose-upward immediately, heading for the big cold dark. Does it…okay, look, there’s no delicate way to ask this, and my sensory differentiation is muddled or something…so, uh, is it just as good for you?
Orris laughed. Usually, yes. Like any other deep-level link, it depends on who you bond with. Vector Prime, as an extreme example, is amazing. Like bonding with a young star while overcharged on the finest ultra-high-grade.
Oooooooooh! I bet! Heehee!
Part III
Part IV
Table of Contents
.
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): Prowl/Jazz, Skyfire/Silverbolt, ensemble
Warnings: fluff, PnP
Summary: Wherein Jazz shares Optimus' first memory with Prowl, Skyfire gets out of the med-bay finally, Vector Prime has a little chat with the Structies, and Borealis learns what the big deal about minicons is. ;D
Notes: Ehehehe, this chapter will either have to be at least another two parts in addition to this, or I'll have to make those parts new chapters and increase the denominator up there. ^^;;; NaNoWriMo has addded a lot of new material, whilst leaving a lot of later chapters not much further along than before. ::facepalm:: Still, should be able to post more often for a while! \o/
Alegria lyrics (c) copyright Cirque du Soleil. <3
~4100 words.
Part I
Borealis: Star Light, Star Bright - Part II
Alegria
I see a spark of life shining
Alegria
I hear a young minstrel sing
Alegria
Beautiful roaring scream
Of joy and sorrow,
So extreme
There is a love in me raging
Alegria
A joyous,
Magical feeling
2031 - August
“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
? Oh.
“Ratchet’s still off. Easy. We could just-”
“Switch tables.”
“Mmmhmmm!” I have another memory you might like, if you’re interested.
Yes?
How about Optimus’?
!!!
Hehehe! Thought so.
You knew him from his beginning, you’ve been close to him for your entire life. Prowl made no effort to conceal his envy, though it was softened now by his own relationship with Prime and the pleasant warmth of post-interface base-state.
Mmhmm, Jazz purred, smirking. Kiss me and I’ll share.
Prowl tilted his head, lowering his face slowly towards Jazz’s. Their lips brushed, clung, slid, mouths opening, internal fields unfolding in complex geometries of heat and want, whorled by their oral polyhedra. Prowl cradled Jazz’s helm with one hand, sliding the other down Jazz’s chest, fingertips rubbing the still-warm central seam. Jazz moaned, arching under the touch. Prowl maneuvered a little, turning them on their sides, never breaking the kiss, but aligning their chests more closely. He tipped his head the other way, until their helms were parallel, straight on - and extended his chevron forward and out, until the hot crimson tips, glowing, touched the winglike, beautiful silver swooping shapes of Jazz’s main antennae. Controlled feedback crackled across their armor, tickling deeper structures, as the sensory load grew, fractal-fine and heavy as worlds their senses overlapping, a synaesthesia of pleasure and curiosity and fundamental longings and sheer, overwhelming physicality.
As Jazz lay there twitching, a silly little grin on his face, Prowl pinged him a query. He really wanted that memory.
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuh! Jazz whimpered. I see. Okay. I gotcha. You could tell me twice if you wanted, but I doubt I could stay conscious for the end. Here…
…
9 million years ago.
Connection / Threat assessment 0.02 percent
Twin hands touching / Touching hands twin
Self Optimus / Self Megatron
Initiating contact access granted
Brother Megatron Lord Protector / Brother Optimus ir-Prime
Together we
Spark loss Volant / Occasion of building kindling
Grieving Cybertron world people / Grieving Alpha Trion
Together we / Forever we
Within acceptable parameters
Agreed.
Passage of 0.000263 astroseconds. Optics lighting, meeting optics, brother-twin taller; warmth of air/kindling platform. Hands reaching toward them, beckoning, faces surrounding.
“Prime. Lord.” Voices murmur, welcoming. Waves of hope and gladness sailing from the crowd like great wings - concepts and words alight in his mind, though he has not yet seen these things. Ah, there are wings folded across the shoulders of some who watch, including Lord Alpha Trion, who takes their hands now, leading them down from the platform, from the weight and warmth of the Allspark behind them.
Names appear beside faces: Lever, Faience, Machicolation, Tabulus, Funicular, Susurrus, Skyfire, Nonsequitur, Semblance, Ratchet, Brimstone, Ironhide, Magnus, Thundercracker, Circumlocution… He looks out among the crowd, finding he knows every name, can call up basic information on nearly all of them. They are all so beautiful - he loves them individually and collectively. He loves this metal ground his tender feet walk upon, he loves the hands and the sparks that connect him to his brother, he loves the air vibrating with symphonies of voices, and beyond the air, the immensities and the stars, each with their own voices, too.
…
Prowl curled around Jazz, holding him tenderly like a precious thing, not fragile but necessary for vital function.
Nice, isn’t it, Jazz hummed very quietly, stroking Prowl’s helm. Ah, Prowl, so easily affected; though Prowl didn’t seem to feel this was a vulnerability, not a weakness. It was a treasure, not to be hoarded and guarded, but shared, worn openly, as his love for Prime always had been.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Silverbolt?
I’ll be right there, Ratchet!
…
The cloud mind enveloped his consciousness as he came online. Relief, affection, gentle teasing, and brightest, rowdiest of all the overlapping, entwined thoughts of the Aerialbots. Skyfire! Skyfire! Skyfire!/Knew you’d be all right!/Pff! Needs to learn not to lead with his chin./Scared us half to the Pit!/Love you, slag it…
“Oof! Ow, Silverbolt, easy.”
“I’m so sorry! Ratchet!”
“If you could possibly refrain from crushing him for a week or two, his self-repair systems will have time to heal the welds.”
“That doesn’t mean stop altogether,” Skyfire said, pulling Silverbolt back into his lap.
“Sparks fly when deltas meet.” Ratchet chuckled the old adage and left them, slipping into the growth tank chamber to check on Evac and Blades’ progeny. Skyfire made a rude gesture at Ratchet’s back, but his expression was affectionate.
Silverbolt gingerly traced a weld seam on Skyfire’s chest. “Are you going to go as a zombie this Halloween?”
“What? You’ve been on this planet too long. When are you leaving?”
“Soon.”
“Oh. Of course.” The dismay Skyfire tried to hide beneath joking nonchalance was transmitted in full force through his harmonics and subharmonics. Deltas rarely spent much time down gravity wells, though being part of a gestalt meant Silverbolt had slightly different programming and had adapted to living with his shorter-range brothers. Parting was an assumed element of their relationships and interactions. That didn’t mean it made them happy.
Silverbolt leaned in, pressing his mid-helm buttress to Skyfire’s. Ultra Magnus and Kup want to leave soon, to harry Jhiaxus and Bludgeon and Turmoil if we can. Elita’s team nearly has the last of Shockwave’s drones cleaned up. They finally found and demolished the fabrication site!
I suppose Chromia has thrown a rod because she missed that? Skyfire chuckled, tilting his head slightly so their lip components brushed.
“Mmm. The only reason you didn’t hear her, even in stasis, is because Ironhide and Arcee and Fireflight have been very busy distracting her.” Silverbolt rubbed his cheek flange against Skyfire’s. They fanned their sensory fins toward each other, waving gently, stroking delicate edges, their fields meshing and interfering in a slow rise of heat. Skyfire cuddled Silverbolt closer, welds be fragged.
“How soon?” Skyfire asked. He touched and tapped his temporal vanes to Silverbolt’s helm, catching on a cheek flange, tugging a little, then disengaging to press a tiny kiss on Silverbolt’s mid-helm buttress tip.
Not today, Silverbolt hummed low. Not tomorrow. Mmmm. Week or two. Magnus wants to make sure the ship’s fully charged, moved it out to the Earth-Sun L4.
Ratchet’s going to let Kup get away without taking his progeny after all, eh?
Silverbolt grinned, and kissed Skyfire’s shoulder. The Wreckers aren’t going to sit around for two years when there are Decepticons out there getting away with who knows what kind of mayhem; they’d go crazy.
I suppose we have been lazy, sitting around down here with the humans…
Hardly! Silverbolt knew there were mechs - including Slingshot - who thought the Autobots and Prime were wasting their time on Earth. They should have left as soon as they’d chased the Cons off Mars; maybe to make of themselves a more tempting target, so that the Cons would leave Earth alone. Take the fight back to their own galaxy where it belonged. Especially now that the humans were better able to defend themselves. Sure, before Mission City, a handful of Cons could have ended human civilization even without a battleship, but now? Maybe not. Once Shockwave got whatever he was building up and running, that would be trouble. But if the remaining Autobots concentrated their numbers and firepower on Chaar, maybe they could keep old Shocky from even completing whatever it was.
It was almost, it suddenly occurred to Silverbolt, like Prime himself had formed a splinter group of neutrals, sick of the war, sick of what they’d become. He tight-beamed the thought to Skyfire.
Yes. I agree, Skyfire said, nodding. Up to a point. Prime is yet willing to fight, as are most of the rest of us. Our stance has shifted very dramatically to the defensive, though.
Not Elita’s.
No. It will be interesting to see if the Decepticons leave Cybertron abandoned long enough for Perceptor to put his plan into effect.
Silverbolt grinned, hugging Skyfire again a little tighter than he ought to. To have a sun again! Perceptor and Hound built a sim of what it will look like, orbiting Alpha Centauri B - the nights, Skyfire! The long blue nights for half the year! So beautiful!
And the days, more to the point, Skyfire said, chuckling. Earth’s sun still felt too young, too bright to him. Alpha Centauri B had the decency to shine a little less exuberantly, its dimmer, more orange light easy on the optics.
Yes, Silverbolt murmured. Sunrises and sunsets. He wondered if Skyfire would stay to help rebuild, or if, released from any tactical duties, he would flee to the outer volumes of unexplored space, other galaxies, and lose himself in his primary programming again. Except that, technically, Skyfire had only recently come back from a twelve-thousand year long search mission. It might be another century or more before the deltan native restlessness stirred in his spark. In any case, Silverbolt meant to make the best use of whatever time they had left together.
Deltas generally packed nearly as much sensory equipment in their hands as their heads. Skyfire ran fingertips over Silverbolt’s helm, tangling in secondary antennae, sweeping across shoulders and out to wing-segment edges, petting and stroking, sending and receiving, firmly sliding over space-hardened armor, dipping into the spaces Silverbolt widened to admit them. Silverbolt made small hums and whirs, nuzzling Skyfire’s mouth open, oral polyhedron rolling to send their internal fields whirling, the feedback singing softly in their CPUs. Skyfire wished he could say he wanted to go with Silverbolt and the others. He wanted to stretch his senses out beyond the confines of a single solar system. But he had work to do here. Good work. And someone had to help Wheeljack keep Perceptor from overworking himself, or getting too crazy with the theoretical physics.
They fanned their cooling and sensory vanes out around each other’s helms, central buttresses bumping, letting their medial mandibular hinges tap and slide, cheek guards and flanges slipping with a cool metallic hush, almost lost in the small array of sounds their facial components made as they moved, alloy tesserae shifting against one another. They kissed as their mouths happened to be in alignment, the rubbing of vanes more stimulating at the moment than kisses, soft hisses of minute hydraulics, cooling fans whirring to life in their throats and chests and helms. Little pecking kisses punctuated with soft hums and moans and chirrs that weren’t really much like any sounds any creatures that had evolved on Earth had ever made.
Silverbolt initiated cables with some reluctance. He was afraid of hurting Skyfire again. Spark-to-spark contact seemed out of the question, though he supposed he could comm Ratchet to find out for sure, but it was up to Skyfire in any case.
Skyfire accepted the cables and the link, letting his restlessness diffuse across. Was he repaired or not? He was. He was refueled, recharged, the welds were Ratchet-welds; they would hold through strenuous aerobatics, though they might pain him. He wasn’t going to fall apart any second. He wanted air, sky, to taste distant thunderstorms and look up through the veils of atmosphere to the stars who were always there, always his guides and companions. As usual he only spared the slightest of calculations for whether there were any humans or human-run machines about that might spot them if they went outside. Silverbolt laughed.
“Come on. Ratchet didn’t say you had to stay aberth.” Silverbolt tugged Skyfire upright and off the repair table. “I have something to show you.”
They flew to the mesa top, Silverbolt watching Skyfire’s leap and engines with first trepidation and then relief. Skyfire landed solidly, if a bit more carefully than usual.
“Now,” Silverbolt said, taking Skyfire’s hands and drawing him to the center of the mesa. For a wonder no one else was up there. No, not a wonder; Trailbreaker had sounded the alert as he’d seen the deltas leave the embassy hangar. Whomever had been up here had courteously abandoned their perch to let the deltas play. For a while at least. The other Aerialbots were out flying Earth’s blue, blue skies, but there was a limit to their forbearance. “Place one hand on my shoulder and the other on my upper hip guard. Yes, like that.” Silverbolt did the same, arranging his hands the opposite to Skyfire’s, drawing their bodies closer. He offered an arm cable. Skyfire raised an optical ridge but accepted the brief proprioception data transfer. “The rhythm is one two three, one two three, one two three… scan my feet… we’ll make small circles…”
Skyfire watched Silverbolt’s face as Silverbolt taught him how to waltz. Shining with amusement and pleasure at showing the elder seeker something new, something Skyfire hadn’t known already, whole internet downloads notwithstanding. The file Silverbolt had created with Borealis’ help was new; made as a gift specifically for Skyfire. Silverbolt was happy to present Skyfire with a bit of anthropological data, the kind of thing Skyfire had studied in cultures across their home galaxy eons ago, before the war. And the younger jet was also inexpressibly glad to have Skyfire out of CR, out of recharge, on his feet again, after the terrible wounds inflicted on him by Thunderwing. Bleeding out obviously wasn’t always fatal, and memory cores weren’t volatile, but it was hard on all a mech’s systems, and as Air Raid had pointed out, refueling a mech Skyfire’s size had taken quite a while.
Skyfire was sorry to have worried everyone so, but the blow he had intercepted would have killed Nightbeat, shattering the young mech’s much smaller frame, breaching a spark chamber hidden behind much thinner layers of armor and protoform. And Evac’s death had shown them what happened to sparks entangled as progenitor and progeny’s were, when one was extinguished. If Nightbeat had been killed, Prowl and Hound would have gone down like Blades, but might not have gotten up again so readily. Foolish. Skyfire understood the population pressure completely, but the method Prime and the others had chosen was staggeringly risky.
They danced. Rio sent them music - lively waltzes first, then ones where the tempo changed, even cheekily slipping in Saint-Saens’ Danse Macabre as a nod to Silverbolt’s line about zombies. Then slower and slower they turned, recalling the scale of galaxies, hurtling through spacetime as they were, yet tens of millions of years in each revolution. Holding each other closer with each turn, in defiance of centripetal physics. A pair of suns coalescing, then, sparks bright in their cocoon of dark matter. Silverbolt let slip his curiosity regarding merges, shivering with a blaze of embarrassment, expecting or half-expecting a half-life of scorn or pity or perhaps worst yet, a sad shaking of Skyfire’s pale helm.
Too dangerous, Skyfire murmured, his harmonics calm, unperturbed by any of the things Silverbolt was afraid of. When the war is over; ask me then. Ask me again. It’s too soon for me. Yes, even Vector’s way. I’ve been listening all this time but I don’t know how the others are wrapping their processors around this. Prime could be our Allspark now, we don’t need to risk ourselves. I make Ratchet angry, thinking that. Prime chose. I don’t know, Bolt. It’s too soon.
Silverbolt was hard pressed to conceal his elation. Skyfire hadn’t said definitively no! It was something.
Short flight? Silverbolt suggested, nipping and kissing at Skyfire’s lips, holding his hands warm against Skyfire’s chest between them, between their sparks. An acknowledgement of Skyfire’s wishes and fears, an agreement, from someone who was afraid, too.
Halfway to the moon? It’s directly overhead.
Yes!
Still in robot mode, they engaged their engines; Skyfire warming his systems up cautiously, slowly, running the checks repeatedly and watching the feedback. Not that Ratchet would have let him out of stasis for anything less than full function. Still holding hands, they lifted off the mesa top, toes curling into protective shapes, legs held at careful angles to avoid the exhaust fires which the humans thought looked like afterburners but weren’t. The deltas’ engines were far too efficient than to need afterburners. Holding hands, they spiraled up into the darkening sky, through the thinning veils of air and wind, up through the Heaviside Layer, past the ionosphere, feeling the temperature gradients only vaguely as they continued to kiss and nudge and nuzzle, fins stroking vanes, living plumage, wick and sensate, not dead protein.
Gravitational awareness swept outward like wings from their bodies as they rose, holding hands, into the black, feeling their way, among planets, between themselves, until they found that resting spot, the easy little nest where the faint forces could rock them gently to and fro, neither tugging perilously into freefall nor ejecting from the swing and plunge of the harmonically tuned system. Gravity as music, as color, as textures. The true mass balance point of the Earth-Moon system was inside the volume of the Earth, but there were other resting places, nearer the Moon, where they could hold one another in that silvery light, bodies gleaming, armor bright, optics for each other alone, just for a little while.
White and silver curled around each other in the starlight, meshing their complicated shapes - now the sharp angles and narrow gaps in their structures gave them handholds, footholds, anchors in one another as they slowly spun, giggling with inertia. Cables drew them closer yet. They flew into the cumulonimbus nebulae of their minds; tumbling, rolling somersaulting, spinning, whirling, dancing; freer than immense, heavy bodies could be, powerful engines and arrow-dynamic design notwithstanding. They closed and opened wings of memory, of shared equations of energy and light and flightpaths, the depthless quantum singing of the universe, the ringing, thrumming songs of stars.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
He stood on the copper disk of the sun, his solar sails rustling on his shoulders and flanks, restless to extend, to taste the currents of air in this place. Safeguard coiled on his wrist and forearm, the minicon’s own senses unfurled to admire the workmanship.
The thirteen planets of Cybertron’s home system moved around him, suspended three meters above the floor by AG fields, set on courses logarithmically scaled and delineated by hematite inlays of mathematical poetry - including some of Borealis and Perceptor’s web-published exchanges. Tread and Trample had compromised. The planets, also logarithmically scaled, were composed of melted stones - mostly granites - reshaped to resemble their inspirations, most of them tiled with metal leaf for the cities; Cybertron itself a puzzle-sphere of alloyed complexity. Vector Prime noted all six original moons were represented. The system as it was during the time of the Firstforged.
Crystalline trees lined the outer wall of the cavern, light sources at their bases casting lacy shadows across the domed ceiling. The mosaic floor shifted colors depending on what spectrum one viewed it in; more poetry in arrays of glyphs glowed from a dark background in ultraviolet, fluorescing when the light from the trees passed through the proper wavelengths.
“Who are you?” The unmistakable sounds of weapons systems powering up accompanied the voice, echoing from all three arched entrances to the cavern, though none of the Constructicons had stepped into the tree-light.
“My name is Vector Prime.”
“Liar.”
“Hmm. Are you scanning what I’m scanning?”
“You don’t think…?”
“He’s found us, we should kill him.”
Safeguard shifted slightly on his wrist, but Vector kept his hands at his sides, watching calmly as Scrapper and Hook ventured forward, Scavenger and Mixmaster following a little behind. The other four remained in the tunnels, target locked.
“How did you find us?” Scrapper growled, keeping his pistol aimed at the intruder’s helm.
“The humans are quite good at detecting and triangulating vibrations in their planet’s crust. The Autobots have therefore known where you are for some time as well.”
“What do you want?” Hook asked.
Vector watched the planets as they passed through a particularly lovely configuration. “Such beauty. I am glad your creative impulses remain unrestrained.” He looked at Hook. “If Cybertron could be given a sun again, would you be interested in participating in such a project?”
The Constructicons stared at him.
“I am here to convey the offer. The Autobots are proceeding in any case. It is your choice.”
Faster than even Rampage could track, there was a flash of light and the strange intruder was gone. Over the gestalt channel, an argument began that would rage for months.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
“May I accompany you?” The vivid minicon, Orris, darted out of Wheeljack’s tower and flew to Borealis’ face-height, hovering there as Perceptor and Wheeljack maneuvered the prototype gate-field emitter through the door.
“Of course,” Borealis said. The minicons had helped build the thing, it made sense at least one of them would want to come along when Borealis and Skyfire took it out beyond the Oort for secondary testing.
Orris grinned when the big delta failed to offer her arm or bare a helm port. “You’ve never emplaced a minicon, have you.”
“Oh! Um, well, no.” She had the basic historical files, with a lot filled in by Mirage’s stories and anecdotes from Bee and Jazz and others, but she knew very little concretely about the minicons. Orris landed on her shoulder and tapped her helm next to the primary cephalic data port. She irised the port open, only a microsecond of hesitation flickering across her CPU. Cephalic ports were - in her experience - only used during hardcore medical procedures.
Orris was glad it was him, not Pulse, initializing this bulk. Pulse wasn’t the most patient mech and could get grumpy when people didn’t follow directions exactly and immediately. Don’t worry, Orris tight-beamed. It won’t hurt a bit, I promise. He transformed slightly, wrapping himself around the curve of her temporal flanges like a bright blue dragonfly decorating her helm, jacking in gently and opening the link slowly, letting her get used to that level before settling into fully bonded mode.
It was like most cable links, Borealis thought, reassured, not certain what she’d expected. Then the constraints fell away, and the universe leapt into clean focus as if she was borrowing Perceptor’s optical feed. Every sensor’s range and accuracy increased, minor static interference in her CPU smoothed away, her fuel systems ran more efficiently. Another mind settled beside hers, sharing knowledge and perspective so smoothly it didn’t feel like an other at all. More like an always-locked door had been opened in a mansion she had grown up in, revealing immense arrays of chambers she’d never known were there but now comprehended intimately, down to the last word in the last volume on the library shelves.
It is a bit like gestalt, came a thought through her wonder - from herself or Orris she wasn’t sure. Oooohhhhh!
She transformed, leaning forward and stretching and tucking bits in and she’d never felt so sleek and catlike, sheathed in power before. Wheeljack and Perceptor loaded the prototype into her forward cargo pod, Perceptor chirping her a data packet of painfully detailed instructions before he headed back inside Jack’s tower to get to work on the next set of plans. Wheeljack waved as she taxied down the tower path to the embassy road, warming her engines for takeoff. Skyfire was already at the test radius, canoodling with Silverbolt while they waited, but one could hardly blame him.
Oh, she could do VTOL, but it sucked power like a sumbitch; if she had a runway she’d take it. With Orris bonded, though, she was tempted to jump for it. Madre de Dios, this feels amazing, Orris!
It does, Orris said, a smile in his transmission. That’s why there have been periods when my people have had to fight not to be considered valuable accessories. And why Megatron wanted all of us captive. And why we left the war, the planet, early.
Holy crap. I guess so! She took off, pointing nose-upward immediately, heading for the big cold dark. Does it…okay, look, there’s no delicate way to ask this, and my sensory differentiation is muddled or something…so, uh, is it just as good for you?
Orris laughed. Usually, yes. Like any other deep-level link, it depends on who you bond with. Vector Prime, as an extreme example, is amazing. Like bonding with a young star while overcharged on the finest ultra-high-grade.
Oooooooooh! I bet! Heehee!
Part III
Part IV
Table of Contents
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