[fic] Dawning: Horizon (movieverse, Seaspray/Thundercracker)
Title: Dawning: Horizon
Author: White Aster
Fandom: Transformers (movieverse)
Characters: Seaspray, Thundercracker
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers franchise or these characters and make no profit from them.
Warnings: near-death situation, giant robots having Feelings for each other
Summary: Damaged and alone in space, Seaspray meets a starving Decepticon. The unlikely meeting leads to an even more unlikely truce that will follow him all the way to the little blue water world called Earth.
Author’s Notes:
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I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As the Autobot leader's message reached the volatile little ball of rock he was currently calling home, Seaspray was nearly 1000 mechanometers into the crust, swearing at the universe's tiniest, most jury-rigged geothermal energon refinery. The little refinery had served him well over the long vorns in space, catalyzing energon from whatever energy sources he could scrounge up, but it was beginning to show its age and needed constant tending. When he finally emerged--dusty and overheated but triumphant--from the cave system, the Prime's signal had moved on.
"Storm's coming," Star Treader said, the seeker transforming and dropping into the middle of their makeshift camp. "And I found something that'll probably work to repair your radial coolant valve." He held up a bit of...something unrecognizable. Mechanical, at least. The two of them weren't the first living beings on this planet. It had been, at some point, a progenitor or colony world to some unknown species. They'd found dwellings and the remnants of advanced machinery, but the inhabitants had long ago abandoned it or died. Star Treader had been pleasantly surprised at the quality of their metalworking, though, and had been spending his time scavenging while Seaspray tended the refinery.
"Great! It's getting a little warm down there, if you know what I mean." Seaspray sent a glyph of polite gratitude and glanced over the seeker's shoulder. The storm, as always, was visible on the horizon as a great cloud of gray dust and flickering lightning. "We'd better get down." He vented in irritation. The last place he wanted to be was back in the caves, but those dust storms could scour the paint from a mech's plating, and that was only if they didn't fry his circuits with a stray bolt first.
Still, he thought glumly as he followed the seeker back to the cave entrance. We have to do what we have to do. And at least he wasn't alone, in general or in his feelings on the caves. He was fairly sure that Star Treader disliked hiding underground at least as much as he did. Nearly twice Seaspray's size, the seeker had a considerably harder time getting past the caverns' natural contours and occasionally low ceilings. Seaspray hid his fascination each time he saw Star Treader navigate it, though. He'd never known that seeker wings could fold and pivot in such a manner.
Long enough out in space, and even a Decepticon could be pleasant company, evidently.
They'd met three star systems ago: both alone, Star Treader starving and Seaspray damaged from a thoroughly unpleasant trip through a meteor storm. After a wary bit of circling, the Decepticon had actually been the one to suggest the trade: he'd repair Seaspray in return for some of his spare energon, and they'd go their separate ways. Seaspray, leaking energon and coolant from his protoform at an alarming rate, hadn't been in a position to argue. The halving of his energon supply, though, had been cause for concern, and when his scan of the system had turned up the promising little volcanic planet, he'd taken the chance to replenish his reserves.
Seaspray wasn't sure why he'd invited the seeker along. Maybe he felt a remaining debt, since his need had been greater than Star Treader's. Maybe it was because the seeker had been as good as his word, repairing Seaspray with efficient competency even though Seaspray, transformed out of his cometary form, was more protoform than armor and would have been an easy kill. It had probably been that.
That and the fact that Seaspray had been alone, canvasing fruitlessly for the Allspark, for more vorns than he cared to think about, with only his own thoughts and the occasional long-range comm for company. It was more than a little pathetic, but Seaspray was fine with that. He was in better repair than he'd been since having his interstellar drive installed and leaving Cybertron. And Primus was it good to have someone else's EM field brushing against his sensors. Cybertronians--Decepticons and Autobots both--were social creatures, and Seaspray had never felt that more keenly than when he was scouting solo.
When they were semi-comfortably ensconced in the underground secondary camp, Seaspray pulled the refinery's latest batch out of his subspace: a full, if small, cube that he made an amused show of splitting exactly in two before handing Star Treader his half. The seeker's lips turned up in a smirk. "What, don't want the repair first?"
Seaspray scoffed. "I think I can trust you that far." He actually thought he could trust the seeker farther than that but figured it would be counterproductive to say so.
After they'd finished their energon and Star Treader had spent a bit of time lit by the glow of his torch as he reformed the whatever he'd found, he made a satisfied noise. "Ready when you are."
Seaspray shuffled away the calculations he'd been doing and gladly popped the required bits of plating to expose his coolant system. The Decepticon chuckled, not unkindly. "Eager."
"Underground all day, in the heat," Seaspray reminded him. "It's not enough to be dangerous, but it's not comfortable, that's for sure."
Star Treader settled his greater mass down next to Seaspray with the scrape of metal against stone. A worklight appeared and shone itself on Seaspray's bared internals. The Seeker brought out a pair of work servos and fiddled a bit. A whole section of Seaspray's upper chest went disturbingly dead-feeling as he cut the sensors and clamped the tubing. He tapped the part in question as he removed the damaged valve. "This is still efficient enough. You shouldn't be getting that hot, unless I'm really misjudging your frame specs."
Seaspray chuckled. "I run hot because I'm a patchwork, aquatic to land. My frame was built to be liquid-cooled: low-temperature liquid ventilation, heat dumping directly into the environment via external plating, all that. In an aquatic environment it's a lot more efficient. Not good enough for gas environments, but I had my cooling systems reformatted when..." when the Decepticons destroyed Hypos "...when I left my colony. The modding works, just...not as good as when I'm swimming."
"That explains why your coolant system is a complete clusterfrag," Star Treader said, flicking a servo against a bit of tubing with a soft chime. "I wondered. Granted I haven't done this in a long time, but I didn't think coolant systems changed THAT much."
"Nope. Just me. Not the most efficient even at the best of times. Put me in a heated atmosphere like down by the lava with a bad valve and it just stresses the system more." He tried not to jump as Star Treader moved his servos and a pressure warning popped up. "Um!"
"Sorry," the seeker muttered, pulling back his servos. He looked at the piece he'd been trying to place, then Seaspray's internals, then the piece again, critically. "I'm going to have to machine this some more. I thought it would fit, but I guess not." His curse was oddly intoned but familiar. "I'd rather not overwork it but--what?"
"What?"
"You read happy suddenly."
Seaspray tamped down on his field as Star Treader reinstalled the faulty part and released the clamps. "Sorry. You just...reminded me of some engineers I used to know." Evidently the language of dealing with recalcitrant machinery was universal. "ARE you an engineer? Or a medic?"
Star Treader's crimson optics shuttered at him briefly, blinking bright in the semidarkness. "Engineer. Used to be." He rose, backing carefully away to "his" side of the cavern. "This might take awhile. Close up and reboot."
Seaspray cut his vocalizer around the "yes, sir" response that had been drilled into him by every medic who'd ever touched his systems, closing his chestplates and rebooting his motor relays.
He grimaced at the gritty scrape as he flexed his arm and servo again. The dust was getting into everywhere: tiny sharp-edged diamonds wearing away at everything they touched. In the silence of the underground, away from the wind or the hissing spit of the lower caverns, he could hear it in his own joints and in Star Treader's, could feel it building up and grating against delicate connections and sensors.
Much longer and they'd start seeing the effects in motor function and in filters that only medics were supposed to change. Not that they had any parts to change them with. Seaspray had expected to be gone by the time that became an issue.
Seaspray leaned against the cavern wall, some of his cheer evaporating.
He could leave. He could. He had enough energon in his tanks to make it to the next system over, where the sun was young enough for him to set up the refinery to run on solar power.
It would mean Star Treader's death. His heavier frame meant his interstellar engines required more energon than Seaspray's, and the whole reason he was still here was because he didn't yet have enough energon to get to anywhere useful. Seaspray couldn't leave the refinery for him. That would be suicide. He'd have to leave the seeker here, effectively grounded, with no way to refuel.
Will it come to that? Seaspray wondered. Will it come to him leaving Star Treader behind, before this place makes him unable to leave at all?
Seaspray shoved the thought to the back of his processing queue. He was an Autobot, a soldier, and they were at war. He'd killed before. But never like that. Killing in battle was one thing. Leaving a mech--a mech who had saved your life, no matter how calculated a trade it had been--to starve was another.
"I guess you missed the transmission."
Seaspray looked up from his depressing line of thought. "...transmission?"
Star Treader's laser torch was back out, the blue glow highlighting him against the back wall, turning his pinpointed red optics' glow white. He turned the part over, sending the shadows jumping and a file transfer winging to Seaspray. Seaspray accepted it, recognizing immediately the compressed and encrypted form of an official Autobot transmission. Judging by the notations, VERY official.
Seaspray stared at nothing for a klik. He hadn't seen the Prime's official seal in...a long time. His spark warmed, the reminder of Optimus Prime, alive and well, banishing some of the dark thoughts. "Did you read it?"
"Do I look like an Autobot?" Star Treader asked, not looking up. "I'm no hacker."
It wouldn't have taken much hacking. It was a fairly easy encryption scheme, meant for every Autobot of any rank to be able to decode. Either the seeker didn't know that or was pretending not to.
Seaspray shuttered his optics, allowing the transmission to unfold in his mind, the Prime's voice and glyph structure wrapping around him like the steady warmth of a sun. His optics shot open again somewhere in the middle, his helm clanging back against the cavern wall as he jerked.
"I don't suppose he's ordering a surrender?" Star Treader asked idly.
"Megatron is dead." Seaspray whispered, barely louder than the hiss of the seeker's torch.
Megatron was dead. Megatron was dead. Seaspray, out of respect for who was sharing his cavern, kept himself from whooping in joy, though he couldn't keep it out of his EM field.
Star Treader's servos had stopped, the torch cutting off and his optics spiralling wide again in the dimness.
Seaspray ran through the message again, inputting the coordinates into his navigation and his spark pulsing when he realized that this Earth was so close. Practically the next system over. Oh, the Allspark had been so close! And now lost...such a tragedy. But...with Megatron gone...perhaps....
Seaspray's spark leapt with hope he'd not felt in long, long vorns. Could the war really be nearing an end? Without Megatron, without the Allspark...would the Decepticons still insist on fighting? Didn't it make more sense to work together?
His optics slid over to Star Treader, who was still focused on the part in his hands. The part he was quite capably remaking so that he could repair an Autobot.
It DID make more sense to work together. Star Treader was proof that the Decepticons could realize that. Were the Autobots' and Decepticons' positions that different than Seaspray's and Star Treader's had been? Both in dire enough need to allow cooperation? There were so few of them left....
Seaspray carefully stripped the communication of anything that would be overly useful to a Decepticon before sending the transmission back to Star Treader. He watched the seeker's face closely as he paused again in his work, obviously playing it. Star Treader flicked a servo in dismissal before turning his torch back on.
"You don't believe it?" Seaspray asked.
Star Treader vented a snort. "Believe it when I see it. Isn't the first time the Autobots thought they killed Megatron."
Seaspray nodded. "But still...if it's true...."
"...if it's true, what?"
"I don't know. What will the rest of the Decepticons do?"
"Whatever their commanders tell them to do, same as always."
"Do you think they'll...surrender?"
"Never." Star Treader's reply was immediate, certain. "Oh, some might. The young ones, or the weak ones. But the rest? After this long? No."
Seaspray slumped. "But.... You and I get along well enough. Why can't others?"
Star Treader looked at him for a long moment, then shook his helm. "Why did you join the Autobots?"
Seaspray looked up into the shadows of the cave ceiling. "Because Hypos...my colony was destroyed. It was a geothermal refinery. The Decepticons were retreating and we were on the way, and they didn't want...to leave anything useful behind."
Star Treader nodded, unsurprised. "So you joined for what...revenge? Justice for your friends? A place to feel useful? Something to DO?"
Seaspray shuttered his optics. "All of those...I guess." It was so long ago. So many vorns and so much fighting.... "But what--"
"I've got a point here. Stay with me for a klik." The seeker returned to his work, his deep voice rumbling through the cavern over the scrape of metal on metal. "You had your reasons to join. And now you've got others. Autobot friends to defend. Lost battles to get even for. Or maybe just because it's been so long you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you weren't fighting anymore. So." The grinding cut out, and Star Treader's optics focused on him with laser precision. "Optimus Prime is dead. Again. What would YOU do?"
I'd keep fighting. Because others would. Because otherwise what has this all been FOR? Seaspray's helm made a dull clunk as it hit the cave wall again. "This is never going to end, is it?"
"Probably not. You want me to try this again or what?"
"What? Oh...yes, please." Seaspray uncurled slowly as Star Treader came back over. He was a bit afraid that the Decepticon's field would be hostile after that little exchange, but he didn't feel anything aggressive at all. Star Treader's field was as calm as a windless sea. Seaspray envied him that.
When the part and the working servos and the worklight were back, Seaspray looked up at the ceiling rather than risk meeting the Decepticon's optics. Star Treader's servos clicked delicately over his internals.
This was probably a stupid idea, Seaspray thought. He still had to try. Because otherwise what had it all been for? "You could come to Earth. I mean, with me. To Earth. To the Autobots."
Star Treader's servos stopped, his field shifting in surprise even if it didn't show anywhere else. Surprise and amusement. "Are you seriously suggesting I defect? While I'm here three servos into your cooling system?"
Seaspray squirmed internally at his tone, but nodded.
Star Treader just huffed a chuckle. "You've got bearings, I'll give you that. You try that with every Decepticon you come across?"
"Just the reasonable ones."
"Mmm. And how's that worked for you?"
"Not terribly well, but at least it makes ME feel better."
That, oddly, earned him a laugh. "At least you're honest." There was an odd tug on Seaspray's frame as something popped loose.
Seaspray ignored the flash of error warnings, and after another pop, this time of something slotting in, they went away. "So that's a no, I take it."
Star Treader unclamped his lines again. "That's a no."
Seaspray let regret color his field, caged in a question he didn't quite know how to voice. Star Treader shook his helm and Seaspray wasn't sure if he was answering him or just his own trail of thoughts. The seeker paused, watching his own still servos for a klik. "You're so naive. This little temporary truce you and I've got going is one thing. Defecting is something else entirely."
The seeker sat back on his thrusters, his voice not particularly unkind but not apologetic, either. "Precious few of the reasons I became a Decepticon have changed. Besides, Starscream is on that Earth planet as well, and--"
"Starscream!" On the same planet as the Prime? Oh, that was not good. "How...do you know that?"
Star Treader just looked at him. "What, you think that Autobots have some kind of monopoly on interstellar communication? He's my Air Commander."
Seeker. Right. Well, Seaspray thought, today was just his day for forgetting ENTIRELY what he was talking to, wasn't it? In his own defense, Star Treader was about as different from the ruthless Decepticon second-in-command as a seeker could get.
"Also," Star Treader continued, "Seekers do not defect. We have oaths that go deeper than any factions, and if the Air Commander goes, we go with him. End of story."
Seaspray just stared at him in vague horror. "That sounds terrible. What if he's on the wrong side?"
"Then we make it the RIGHT side." Something flashed in Star Treader's optics, his field flaring with enough aggressive agitation that Seaspray took the hint and didn't say anything more on the subject that night.
He figured he'd get another chance. After all, they were stuck here, weren't they? He planned to wait a day or two, then ease back into the subject. Figure out if there was a way around Star Treader's objections.
The next day, though, changed everything.
Seaspray returned from the caverns as usual to find Star Treader waiting for him, pacing outside the cave entrance. His formerly calm field was rife with the urgent rush of excitement and anxiety. He stopped in front of Seaspray. "You need to leave."
Seaspray pulled his cube out of subspace and offered it to the seeker. "Nice to see you, too."
Star Treader didn't take it. "No, you need to leave NOW. Do you have enough energon to make it to that Earth planet?"
"I...yes, but you don't. I'm not going to--"
"Forget about me. Take your stuff and leave." A file transfer request pinged, and Seaspray accepted it for lack of anything better to do. Interstellar coordinates scrolled across his processor. "Use this heading," Star Treader continued. "When you get into the Earth system, avoid this moon and the fourth planet. Head straight to Earth and run silent until you get there."
The seeker's entire body language had changed, Seaspray noticed. His wings were no longer still, instead flaring and combing through the air. It was almost hypnotic. "What HAPPENED?" he demanded, though he started his pre-flight check just in case.
Star Treader looked up at the sky. Seaspray followed his gaze but couldn't see anything. "My wingmate is coming."
"Oh." Then Seaspray started, realizing just what that meant. Not just Star Treader's wingmate. A DECEPTICON. "Oh!"
"Yeah. You need to NOT be here when he gets here."
Seaspray prioritized his flight systems diagnostic. "Do I have time to go get the refinery?"
"Yeah, but don't dawdle." Star Treader turned away, his wings flaring up in preparation for flight.
Seaspray reached out a hand that had no hope of actually catching him. "Wait!"
The seeker paused, the very edges of his EM field glassy and opaque.
Words tripped through Seaspray's processor. Slag it, there wasn't enough TIME for them all and never would be, now. He settled for a hurried burst of glyphs, artless with haste and too little time to do more than toss together a hurried Thank you, his glyph choice bright and sloppy with modifiers of gratitude, respect, affection, and sadness.
The seeker didn't reply for a long moment, long enough for Seaspray to bow his helm. He turned to head back to the cavern entrance as Star Treader leapt into the sky, the roar of his thrusters breaking him free of gravity.
The reply came just as Seaspray reached the cavern mouth, as Star Treader flew by overhead, toward wherever he was going. Thank you. The glyphs were crisper than Seaspray's, practically ornate with modifiers that were more expressive than the root: the respect of an enemy well-met, the determined weight of tradition, and an insistent edge of urgency.
Seaspray's pre-flight check results came back in the green, and he dove into the caverns, queueing up diagnostics and inputting flight coordinates.
He buried Star Treader's last sending deep in his archives and didn't think on it until he was safely out of system, his cometary form hurtling toward Earth. Only then did he fully unpack the glyph structure and find, buried so deeply that Seaspray almost missed it, the regret of chances missed and the smallest shade of hope.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The trip to Earth was not uneventful. Seaspray detected several other Cybertronian signals on his scanners as he entered the solar system. Like him, they weren't transmitting an ident signal. He deviated from Star Treader's course to avoid them, then again to lose one of them in an asteroid field when it tried to follow him in a distinctly hostile manner.
His cooling system sputtered halfway to Earth, Star Treader's repairs holding but a handful of regulators failing. Seaspray tweaked and coaxed and tried to compensate as he hurtled through space, his core temperature rising.
It wasn't, he knew, anything that could be fixed by a cleverly-machined patch. He monitored his energon levels, the curve of his temperature readings. Barring any more long detours, he could make it to Earth. But unless he immediately found a medic or the planet was a giant snowball like a few of the moons he'd passed, it wouldn't be long before he overheated and shut down with Primus knew what damage to his processor.
It was a sad, lonely thought in the darkness of space. He pushed his engines harder. If he was going to die, he'd do it answering his Prime's summons to the very best of his ability.
However, the astrosecond Seaspray came within sensor range of the blue planet, hope kindled in his spark. The planet was only mildly volcanic. Its temperature range was such that he probably wouldn't overheat immediately. And it was nearly covered in water.
Thank Primus, the Allspark had led them to a WATER planet.
Water on the surface of the land, water in the atmosphere, water in vast oceans floating on top of the crust.... Dihydrogen monoxide, by the spectra, and probably rich in salts of various sorts. Seaspray imagined its weight flowing over his plating, streaming through his ventilation system, buoying him up and letting him SWIM.... The glorious thoughts sustained him as Earth filled his sensors and his temperature inched into the red.
::Ark to unidentified Cybertronian, identify yourself.::
Ark? The ARK had made it here as well? Seaspray's spark leapt in joy. The last he'd heard, the Ark had been damaged and marooned. Seaspray turned his ident transmitter back on. ::Ark, this is Tech Sergeant Scout Seaspray, responding to the Prime's summons. I am heavily damaged and in need of a medic or three ASAP. Permission to board?::
Seaspray's temperature slid a tick higher. He could barely detect the Ark on his sensors over the curve of the blue planet below. He couldn't tell if that was due to the Ark, the planet, or his own, staticky sensors.
::We're running on struts and vitals here, Seaspray. Our only medic is on the planet below. Can you handle a cometary entry or should we send a shuttle to transport you?::
Slag. Seaspray devoted a processor thread to praying. ::My cooling systems are compromised, Ark, and I'm already in the red. The shuttle'll take too long to do me any good. I'll...I'll take my chances with re-entry. Can you give me a water landing?::
::Affirmative, Seaspray. Transmitting coordinates and entry lane. There's native life down there, so do not deviate or you'll risk hitting an aircraft. Primus be with you, Seaspray.::
::Thanks, Ark.:: It occurred to Seaspray that this might be the last mech he ever talked to. ::What's your designation, Ark?::
::...Prowl.::
Seaspray's engines nearly missed a stroke. He'd been casually chatting with the Autobot second-in-command. Who was manning the Ark's comm while everyone else was on the planet below. This, Seaspray thought, was one story he hoped he lived to hear. ::Thank you, sir.::
He wasn't far from his entry lane, and another jolt of his thrusters got him there.
There was a long, tremulous pause, and then Seaspray let the planet's gravity drag him down.
He started getting errors almost immediately, his failing coolant system attempting and failing to compensate for the heat of re-entry. His cometary plating reflected much of it, but the rest sank into his frame until he felt like his circuits must be melting. There wasn't much he could do about it but pray, so he did that and kept going.
Around him, space turned to sky. The atmosphere around him (blue, Seaspray noted idly, before his visual sensors started to fritz) was mildly conductive and bled off some of the heat, but not enough. He tried rebooting his sensors and then quickly forgot them in the struggle to keep his main engines from emergency shutdown. He held the burn for a long, long moment before letting them slip offline so he could concentrate on keeping his maneuvering thrusters and staying on his designated flight path.
His sensors winked out one after the other as he sped towards a layer of fluffy white atmosphere. His analytic sensors noted mostly dihydrogen monoxide before shutting down, his visual sensors following suit but not before he cleared the clouds and got a glimpse of endless blue water far below.
Please, he prayed, his memory banks starting to throw corruption errors. Just a bit more.
He lost his thrusters, then everything else, system after system cascading into shutdown. He felt like he was on fire. He probably was.
Blind, he fell and fell and fell, with no way to maneuver and no way of telling how much further he had to go, processor starting to stutter, too far gone even for error messages, and Seaspray keened as he felt relays blow, his power system failing as his conductors started to melt and--
Impact. It shuddered through him, but he was still falling, albeit slower.
He thought for a horrible moment that his last few sensors had gone as well, when they noted his hull temperature dropping rapidly. Then his descent slowed, then slowed again, then stopped as he came to rest.
His hull temperature kept dropping.
The ocean, he realized, as his systems struggled to reboot. He groped for his transformation cogs, prioritizing them over all others, and still it was almost a breem before he could activate the emergence sequence.
The feel of salt water seeping, then rushing in as his outer hull cracked and transformed away, was like Primus' own blessing. Seaspray uncurled, slowly, the water cooling everything it touched. With a great, shuddering gasp, he switched his ventilation systems back to aquatic mode. Cold water rushed in, flooding his system and making his frame groan with the shiver of contracting metal until he'd cooled enough for the water not to evaporate on contact.
One by one, Seaspray's systems attempted to reboot, until he could think and see again. The water was murky, rich with tiny bits of organic material. He laid on a sand of silicates and yet more organic matter, and it was...soft. He couldn't even begrudge how it was probably getting under his plating. It cheered him to think that it could compete with the volcano planet's dust for occupation of his joints.
His comm crackled with an unfamiliar voice. ::Ratchet to Seaspray, respond.:: The sending was thick with the blessed weight of a medic-grade authority code.
It took Seaspray a moment to remember how to activate his comm. ::Seaspray here. I love this planet already.:: Then his internal sensors came back online, realized that he had about five ventilations worth of energon left in his tanks, and slammed him into the oblivion of emergency stasis.
He onlined to the sound of his own ventilation systems burbling as they sucked warm gas atmosphere. He reset his HUD several times to clear it of the backlog of error warnings, until he got to the reassuring notice of medical access to his systems. The notations of his medical logs scrolled in an endless list of diagnostics run, components repaired, code restored.
"How do you feel?"
Seaspray onlined his optics, his helm turning towards the voice. A stocky, solid mech with a commanding air and a hardline still attached to Seaspray's thoracic port had to be the medic, Ratchet. "Wonderful." One very familiar warning was still stubbornly refusing to be dismissed, though. "Coolant system...."
"Yeah, I know. You've slagged it but good, in several places. It'll take awhile to fix. You're the first aquatic frame that's shown up, and your entire coolant system's not standard. I'll have to go up to the Ark to fabricate the parts, which might take a bit." Ratchet's optics flickered as he consulted his HUD then hmmphed. "Until then, you're going to have cooling problems in atmosphere. I suggest spending as much time in the water as you can, to take advantage of your liquid cooling systems. I imagine that's what you'd prefer anyway."
Yes. Primus, yes.
"Thank you," Seaspray said, reveling in the feel of a competent professional combing through his internal settings. It had been VORNS since he'd been seen to by a real medic, and the relief was incredible. He'd made it. He wasn't dying. His systems, finally convinced that they could ease off of crisis mode, started pinging him with an insistent need to recharge. The only thing that kept him from listening to them was a wash of red and blue over the medic's shoulder. The frame it belonged to was at first unfamiliar, the large mech obviously having taken on some kind of wheeled Earth alt mode, but the spark...the spark under it resonated with a pure, strut-deep tone that no Cybertronian could mistake for anything but--
"Prime!" Seaspray's spark soared, and he scrambled to get up, to kneel, to SOMETHING, and was prevented by a hand on his chestplates shoving him back.
"Stay down, slaggit, I'm not finished. You can bow and scrape in a klik," the medic growled.
A deep chuckle, and Optimus Prime stepped closer, addressing Seaspray with an added glyph of amusement. "At ease, soldier. Medic's orders first, always. You've had a rough journey."
Seaspray thought of "Star Treader" with a pang of regret. "Not as bad as it could have been, sir. I...I'm glad I could make it."
"As we are glad to have you, Seaspray."
"Thank you, sir." Seaspray groped after military protocol, sending a databurst reporting on vorns of searching and exploration, and Prime accepted it with a reassuring "mission accomplished" notation.
"At ease. You can give a full report later, as well as being briefed on the full situation here on Earth. For now, the basics...." Seaspray accepted the Prime's own databurst, unpacking it and processing through it for a long moment. When he was finished, Ratchet had disconnected, and Seaspray's processor was swimming with several new languages and a world's worth of cultural and environmental data. As well as status reports on the Autobots' mission objectives and troop strengths and....
That...had he READ that right?
Seaspray checked the file, but it wasn't corrupted. He read it again. He looked up at the Prime, barely daring to hope. "A ceasefire?"
Optimus Prime chuckled. "You missed the declaration, I take it."
"I...I lost my long-range comms shortly after I entered this system." Even the intricate Cybertronian language failed him. Seaspray fell back on military glyphs: Ceasefire? he asked, tentatively using the glyph for a temporary lull in an ongoing battle.
The Prime shook his helm, his field resonating with a happiness that fell against the edges of Seaspray's own field like the warm yellow sunlight on his plating. Ceasefire, the Prime replied. The variant he used was more definitive: a mutually agreed-upon end to hostilities preceeding a permanent peace, the glyph modified by sigils of hope, unity, and joy.
Seaspray shuttered his optics, overcome at the implications, and the Prime laid a hand on his bowed helm.
Welcome to Earth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thundercracker had to admit that he kind of liked the dirt planet. The key, he'd found, was to avoid the dirt part of it whenever possible. The Earth's atmosphere cradled a tangle of mildly interesting jetstreams, weather systems that at the very least provided the amusing opportunity to fly in rain that wasn't dangerously acidic, and very few humans to worry about.
It wasn't that Thundercracker didn't like the humans. He just didn't see any use to interacting with them. They were technologically weak, ridiculously fragile, and he had yet to meet one that hadn't been automatically hostile. He gladly left interacting with them to Megatron and Starscream, instead flying long patrols whenever he could. He didn't mind it at all, especially since compared to Cybertron in its prime, Earth's skies were a seeker's paradise of wide open space and no one to care if he completed his route in a lazy half-recharge, solar panels soaking in the bright yellow sun.
After vorns of stealing, scraping up, and killing for barely enough energon to keep himself airborne, being able to gather enough power for a light sprint simply by spreading his wings was a glorious luxury he took every opportunity to enjoy.
He was doing just that as he flew the boundaries of the Autobots' tiny Indian Ocean base, when he caught the spark signature on his scanners.
Was that....?
Thundercracker circled around for another pass, sensors focused more tightly this time.
It WAS.
Thundercracker banked again, circling lazily around the signal, thinking. In the end, agitated and uncertain, he pulled up, streaking back along his patrol route and leaving the signal behind.
He couldn't forget about it, though, and now that he was looking for it he could always find it when he flew the Diego Garcia route. That spark signal would ping closer in the atoll itself or circling further out, probably running patrol.
When Thundercracker found himself pacing that signal, crisscrossing the sky high above it just for the momentary blip on his scanners, he told himself he was being ridiculous and to just do something about it already.
The weight of water against his plating was a shock. He froze for a long moment, letting himself sink to the sandy bottom as his sensors recalibrated for the new environment. He'd never served on an aquatic world, had never been immersed in any liquid but the goo of a CR tank. The association wasn't pleasant, but as his sensors stopped sending him errors and warnings, the feel of the liquid surrounding him became nothing worse than...odd. Strangely reminiscent of flying in heavy gravity.
Following the ping on his scanners, Thundercracker turned and headed further inland.
He was scouted before he found his quarry. Like in space, there was little cover other than degradation of sensor range, and he detected the sleek shapes swimming toward him long before they reached him. A preliminary scan revealed them to be native organic life forms (family Delphinidae, genus Tursiops, common name bottlenose dolphin), generally harmless even to the humans, so he ignored them as he engaged his thrusters just enough to float him across the ocean floor. The creatures circled around him in increasingly tight spirals, his sensors picking up sound vocalizations distinctly unlike any human speech: clicks and whistles and squeaks. The creatures circled him close enough that he slowed, not particularly wanting to damage them with a stray movement, all considered. One creature in particular seemed fascinated with him, nudging him with its proboscis and whistling at him incomprehensibly.
::They want to play.:: The sending came on an open channel, neither Autobot nor Decepticon. Thundercracker turned slowly to see a small Cybertronian form approaching. Taking an Earthen alt mode had changed his frame slightly, smoothing and sleeking the familiar angles, but Seaspray's small, sturdy form was still quite recognizable.
::You understand them?:: he sent back, stretching out a servo, which the adventurous creature bumped up into before swimming away.
::Some. They do not have a true language. More a very rudimentary sound-glyph system. They are not sentient, though they are very close and might become so, if the humans give them enough time to evolve.:: One of the dolphin creatures swam away to dart in front of, then behind, then under and around Seaspray. He swam in a slow spiral, letting it chase him before it broke off to join the other creature in its examination of Thundercracker.
::Star Treader,:: Seaspray sent in greeting as he slowed and held his position a polite distance away. The sending was bright with pleased markers that made Thundercracker feel...all right, perhaps just a bit guilty. Just a bit. A conscience wasn't exactly standard issue in the Decepticon army, after all.
::That's...not my real designation.:: He let some of his regret bleed through. Seaspray had been, oddly enough, one of the best partners he'd had in a long, long time, and though it had been prudent, the Autobot had such an innocent spark that it seemed almost shamefully easy to lie to him.
::I know.:: Seaspray's reply bubbled gently with laughter. ::I got bored on the way to Earth. I was curious about you, so I went back through my identification files. Couldn't find a seeker designated Star Treader, but I did remember a seeker named Thundercracker who looked awfully familiar....:: He danced briefly with the larger of the dolphins, who whistled at him before shooting up to the surface. The aquatic mech floated through the water almost as gracefully as a seeker in the air. Looking at him more closely now, Thundercracker could see the same aerodynamic touches to Seaspray's frame, making his stocky build sleek like a worn stone. Thundercracker's attention was dragged back as Seaspray asked, ::Why didn't you tell me your real name?::
::It's not smart to be too important, when you're meeting a stranger at a disadvantage.::
::I...guess I could see that. Though I don't think either of us had an advantage there. We both were dying. Luckily of different things.::
::I saw that, later. At the time I thought you were better off, though. My first scan just read the outer damage. Figured you might have trouble transforming, at least. I missed all the inner wounds. How you managed to get a meteor lodged that deep into your protoform I have no idea.::
::Sheer luck, I guess. I still have it, you know. The meteor. And the luck, I suppose.:: Seaspray floated closer. ::You could have told me later.::
Thundercracker caged his reply in glyphs of indifference, slapping on a past modifier at the very end: I was indifferent then, instead of I am indifferent now. ::Why? No point. Besides, then the stakes were only slightly better. You had my only method of refueling, and you seemed willing to give it to me. Why tell you and risk you leaving me to die there?::
Seaspray tilted his head, sadness creeping into his glyphs. ::You thought I would do that?::
Not really. But Thundercracker hadn't survived as long as he had by taking chances. ::Wouldn't you have? Given the chance to take out one of the highest-ranked Decepticon seekers?::
::I...:: Seaspray rolled slowly, thoughtfully in the current for a long moment. ::I wouldn't have let you die. I don't know what I would have done if I'd known who you were...but I wouldn't have let you die. I'm not that kind of mech.:: His sending was amazingly clear of the usual Autobot self-righteousness. All the markers for importance were personal ones: not the moral righteousness of "this was right", but the personal certainty of "this was right for me".
Thundercracker didn't know what to say to that. Had it been him, he knew he wouldn't have given a starving little Autobot a second thought. Other than to debate whether it was worth the energon to put him out of his misery.
::So,:: Seaspray said, straightening just a bit. Remembering, perhaps, who he was talking to and what the tangled web of the Autobot-Decepticon chain of command looked like these days. ::To what do I owe the visit, sir?::
Thundercracker wondered if there was a way to say "I was passing by and felt your spark signature and decided to dunk myself in the ocean and thus endure Starscream's eternal mockery to talk to you out here, where our factions and ranks don't matter" without sounding like an idiot. He suspected there wasn't. Even thanking the Autobot would be...no. He'd already done that, back on that volcanic dustball. ::I was flying by. Scouting the area.:: True enough. Though still not a particularly good reason for why he was on the bottom of the ocean.
Seaspray didn't call him on it, though his acknowledgment was...knowing. Thundercracker was beginning to think that what he'd taken for naivete was really an incredibly keen ability to hear all the things unsaid. ::Well, sir, I am on patrol, if you would care to accompany me.::
Thundercracker laughed as he followed. ::Do you ask every Decepticon you run across to go on patrol with you?::
Seaspray twisted and dove in evident delight. ::Only the reasonable ones. And you're not my enemy anymore. Unless you know something I don't know, Second-In-Flight Thundercracker, sir?:: Thundercracker supposed that technically that was true, but before he could reply, the dolphins returned, with a few new friends that circled Thundercracker in fascination, repeating the cycle of click-whistling and nose-bumping. ::Besides,:: Seaspray said. ::My scouts indicate that you appear to be peaceful and...well, I don't imagine that being called a shiny-large-playmate sounds very flattering, but rest assured, it is very impressive to them.::
Seaspray flipped back in the water, coming back to circle close to Thundercracker, so close that Thundercracker could feel the current he dragged behind him, the affectionate warm slide of his EM field brushing Thundercracker's sensors. It was amazingly reminiscent of a seeker mating maneuver. Thundercracker wondered if Seaspray was doing it on purpose. ::I take you at your word, sir, that you have no ill intent and are here merely to...scout.:: His sending was crisp with the glyphs of military correctness, while his field was...something else. Something teasing and familiar and surprisingly bold about it.
He was definitely doing it on purpose, Thundercracker decided. That was fine. The traditional response to such a mating overture was to ignore it. For awhile, at least. Until one decided to do something about it.
Seaspray shot up, nearly surfacing before coming back down in a graceful arc, and honestly, had the little Autobot STUDIED seeker body language, or was this something eerily similar between aquatic and air frames? One more brush just SO against Thundercracker's field, and he darted away. "Well, sir, if I might suggest heading this way? There is an absolutely gorgeous--and terribly strategically important, of course--coral reef just a mile on that hardly any mech will ever see...."
Thundercracker had no idea what a coral reef was, but he followed the little Autobot anyway, certain that Seaspray would tell him all about it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For fun? Seaspray's scanned alt form is this beauty.
Author: White Aster
Fandom: Transformers (movieverse)
Characters: Seaspray, Thundercracker
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I do not own the Transformers franchise or these characters and make no profit from them.
Warnings: near-death situation, giant robots having Feelings for each other
Summary: Damaged and alone in space, Seaspray meets a starving Decepticon. The unlikely meeting leads to an even more unlikely truce that will follow him all the way to the little blue water world called Earth.
Author’s Notes:
- This was written for the mer_ficathon (where the deadline's past but the mod hasn't posted the fic yet...) Thank you to darthneko for the wonderful beta!
- Also, some helpful terms:
vorn: a Cybertronian "year", equivalent to ~83 Earth years.
klik: a second
breem: ~8.3 minutes - The ::blah:: coding is internal comms communication.
- This fic is part of my Dawning universe. If you haven't read that and don't want to, then just think of this as happening in a post-Revenge of the Fallen AU where Megatron shakes the Fallen out of his processor and calls for peace.
- This story itself takes place intertwined in the movies. The first part happens after the first Transformers movie, the second part just after Revenge of the Fallen, and the third part about a year after that. This fic completely ignores Dark of the Moon.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars. We are here. We are waiting.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As the Autobot leader's message reached the volatile little ball of rock he was currently calling home, Seaspray was nearly 1000 mechanometers into the crust, swearing at the universe's tiniest, most jury-rigged geothermal energon refinery. The little refinery had served him well over the long vorns in space, catalyzing energon from whatever energy sources he could scrounge up, but it was beginning to show its age and needed constant tending. When he finally emerged--dusty and overheated but triumphant--from the cave system, the Prime's signal had moved on.
"Storm's coming," Star Treader said, the seeker transforming and dropping into the middle of their makeshift camp. "And I found something that'll probably work to repair your radial coolant valve." He held up a bit of...something unrecognizable. Mechanical, at least. The two of them weren't the first living beings on this planet. It had been, at some point, a progenitor or colony world to some unknown species. They'd found dwellings and the remnants of advanced machinery, but the inhabitants had long ago abandoned it or died. Star Treader had been pleasantly surprised at the quality of their metalworking, though, and had been spending his time scavenging while Seaspray tended the refinery.
"Great! It's getting a little warm down there, if you know what I mean." Seaspray sent a glyph of polite gratitude and glanced over the seeker's shoulder. The storm, as always, was visible on the horizon as a great cloud of gray dust and flickering lightning. "We'd better get down." He vented in irritation. The last place he wanted to be was back in the caves, but those dust storms could scour the paint from a mech's plating, and that was only if they didn't fry his circuits with a stray bolt first.
Still, he thought glumly as he followed the seeker back to the cave entrance. We have to do what we have to do. And at least he wasn't alone, in general or in his feelings on the caves. He was fairly sure that Star Treader disliked hiding underground at least as much as he did. Nearly twice Seaspray's size, the seeker had a considerably harder time getting past the caverns' natural contours and occasionally low ceilings. Seaspray hid his fascination each time he saw Star Treader navigate it, though. He'd never known that seeker wings could fold and pivot in such a manner.
Long enough out in space, and even a Decepticon could be pleasant company, evidently.
They'd met three star systems ago: both alone, Star Treader starving and Seaspray damaged from a thoroughly unpleasant trip through a meteor storm. After a wary bit of circling, the Decepticon had actually been the one to suggest the trade: he'd repair Seaspray in return for some of his spare energon, and they'd go their separate ways. Seaspray, leaking energon and coolant from his protoform at an alarming rate, hadn't been in a position to argue. The halving of his energon supply, though, had been cause for concern, and when his scan of the system had turned up the promising little volcanic planet, he'd taken the chance to replenish his reserves.
Seaspray wasn't sure why he'd invited the seeker along. Maybe he felt a remaining debt, since his need had been greater than Star Treader's. Maybe it was because the seeker had been as good as his word, repairing Seaspray with efficient competency even though Seaspray, transformed out of his cometary form, was more protoform than armor and would have been an easy kill. It had probably been that.
That and the fact that Seaspray had been alone, canvasing fruitlessly for the Allspark, for more vorns than he cared to think about, with only his own thoughts and the occasional long-range comm for company. It was more than a little pathetic, but Seaspray was fine with that. He was in better repair than he'd been since having his interstellar drive installed and leaving Cybertron. And Primus was it good to have someone else's EM field brushing against his sensors. Cybertronians--Decepticons and Autobots both--were social creatures, and Seaspray had never felt that more keenly than when he was scouting solo.
When they were semi-comfortably ensconced in the underground secondary camp, Seaspray pulled the refinery's latest batch out of his subspace: a full, if small, cube that he made an amused show of splitting exactly in two before handing Star Treader his half. The seeker's lips turned up in a smirk. "What, don't want the repair first?"
Seaspray scoffed. "I think I can trust you that far." He actually thought he could trust the seeker farther than that but figured it would be counterproductive to say so.
After they'd finished their energon and Star Treader had spent a bit of time lit by the glow of his torch as he reformed the whatever he'd found, he made a satisfied noise. "Ready when you are."
Seaspray shuffled away the calculations he'd been doing and gladly popped the required bits of plating to expose his coolant system. The Decepticon chuckled, not unkindly. "Eager."
"Underground all day, in the heat," Seaspray reminded him. "It's not enough to be dangerous, but it's not comfortable, that's for sure."
Star Treader settled his greater mass down next to Seaspray with the scrape of metal against stone. A worklight appeared and shone itself on Seaspray's bared internals. The Seeker brought out a pair of work servos and fiddled a bit. A whole section of Seaspray's upper chest went disturbingly dead-feeling as he cut the sensors and clamped the tubing. He tapped the part in question as he removed the damaged valve. "This is still efficient enough. You shouldn't be getting that hot, unless I'm really misjudging your frame specs."
Seaspray chuckled. "I run hot because I'm a patchwork, aquatic to land. My frame was built to be liquid-cooled: low-temperature liquid ventilation, heat dumping directly into the environment via external plating, all that. In an aquatic environment it's a lot more efficient. Not good enough for gas environments, but I had my cooling systems reformatted when..." when the Decepticons destroyed Hypos "...when I left my colony. The modding works, just...not as good as when I'm swimming."
"That explains why your coolant system is a complete clusterfrag," Star Treader said, flicking a servo against a bit of tubing with a soft chime. "I wondered. Granted I haven't done this in a long time, but I didn't think coolant systems changed THAT much."
"Nope. Just me. Not the most efficient even at the best of times. Put me in a heated atmosphere like down by the lava with a bad valve and it just stresses the system more." He tried not to jump as Star Treader moved his servos and a pressure warning popped up. "Um!"
"Sorry," the seeker muttered, pulling back his servos. He looked at the piece he'd been trying to place, then Seaspray's internals, then the piece again, critically. "I'm going to have to machine this some more. I thought it would fit, but I guess not." His curse was oddly intoned but familiar. "I'd rather not overwork it but--what?"
"What?"
"You read happy suddenly."
Seaspray tamped down on his field as Star Treader reinstalled the faulty part and released the clamps. "Sorry. You just...reminded me of some engineers I used to know." Evidently the language of dealing with recalcitrant machinery was universal. "ARE you an engineer? Or a medic?"
Star Treader's crimson optics shuttered at him briefly, blinking bright in the semidarkness. "Engineer. Used to be." He rose, backing carefully away to "his" side of the cavern. "This might take awhile. Close up and reboot."
Seaspray cut his vocalizer around the "yes, sir" response that had been drilled into him by every medic who'd ever touched his systems, closing his chestplates and rebooting his motor relays.
He grimaced at the gritty scrape as he flexed his arm and servo again. The dust was getting into everywhere: tiny sharp-edged diamonds wearing away at everything they touched. In the silence of the underground, away from the wind or the hissing spit of the lower caverns, he could hear it in his own joints and in Star Treader's, could feel it building up and grating against delicate connections and sensors.
Much longer and they'd start seeing the effects in motor function and in filters that only medics were supposed to change. Not that they had any parts to change them with. Seaspray had expected to be gone by the time that became an issue.
Seaspray leaned against the cavern wall, some of his cheer evaporating.
He could leave. He could. He had enough energon in his tanks to make it to the next system over, where the sun was young enough for him to set up the refinery to run on solar power.
It would mean Star Treader's death. His heavier frame meant his interstellar engines required more energon than Seaspray's, and the whole reason he was still here was because he didn't yet have enough energon to get to anywhere useful. Seaspray couldn't leave the refinery for him. That would be suicide. He'd have to leave the seeker here, effectively grounded, with no way to refuel.
Will it come to that? Seaspray wondered. Will it come to him leaving Star Treader behind, before this place makes him unable to leave at all?
Seaspray shoved the thought to the back of his processing queue. He was an Autobot, a soldier, and they were at war. He'd killed before. But never like that. Killing in battle was one thing. Leaving a mech--a mech who had saved your life, no matter how calculated a trade it had been--to starve was another.
"I guess you missed the transmission."
Seaspray looked up from his depressing line of thought. "...transmission?"
Star Treader's laser torch was back out, the blue glow highlighting him against the back wall, turning his pinpointed red optics' glow white. He turned the part over, sending the shadows jumping and a file transfer winging to Seaspray. Seaspray accepted it, recognizing immediately the compressed and encrypted form of an official Autobot transmission. Judging by the notations, VERY official.
Seaspray stared at nothing for a klik. He hadn't seen the Prime's official seal in...a long time. His spark warmed, the reminder of Optimus Prime, alive and well, banishing some of the dark thoughts. "Did you read it?"
"Do I look like an Autobot?" Star Treader asked, not looking up. "I'm no hacker."
It wouldn't have taken much hacking. It was a fairly easy encryption scheme, meant for every Autobot of any rank to be able to decode. Either the seeker didn't know that or was pretending not to.
Seaspray shuttered his optics, allowing the transmission to unfold in his mind, the Prime's voice and glyph structure wrapping around him like the steady warmth of a sun. His optics shot open again somewhere in the middle, his helm clanging back against the cavern wall as he jerked.
"I don't suppose he's ordering a surrender?" Star Treader asked idly.
"Megatron is dead." Seaspray whispered, barely louder than the hiss of the seeker's torch.
Megatron was dead. Megatron was dead. Seaspray, out of respect for who was sharing his cavern, kept himself from whooping in joy, though he couldn't keep it out of his EM field.
Star Treader's servos had stopped, the torch cutting off and his optics spiralling wide again in the dimness.
Seaspray ran through the message again, inputting the coordinates into his navigation and his spark pulsing when he realized that this Earth was so close. Practically the next system over. Oh, the Allspark had been so close! And now lost...such a tragedy. But...with Megatron gone...perhaps....
Seaspray's spark leapt with hope he'd not felt in long, long vorns. Could the war really be nearing an end? Without Megatron, without the Allspark...would the Decepticons still insist on fighting? Didn't it make more sense to work together?
His optics slid over to Star Treader, who was still focused on the part in his hands. The part he was quite capably remaking so that he could repair an Autobot.
It DID make more sense to work together. Star Treader was proof that the Decepticons could realize that. Were the Autobots' and Decepticons' positions that different than Seaspray's and Star Treader's had been? Both in dire enough need to allow cooperation? There were so few of them left....
Seaspray carefully stripped the communication of anything that would be overly useful to a Decepticon before sending the transmission back to Star Treader. He watched the seeker's face closely as he paused again in his work, obviously playing it. Star Treader flicked a servo in dismissal before turning his torch back on.
"You don't believe it?" Seaspray asked.
Star Treader vented a snort. "Believe it when I see it. Isn't the first time the Autobots thought they killed Megatron."
Seaspray nodded. "But still...if it's true...."
"...if it's true, what?"
"I don't know. What will the rest of the Decepticons do?"
"Whatever their commanders tell them to do, same as always."
"Do you think they'll...surrender?"
"Never." Star Treader's reply was immediate, certain. "Oh, some might. The young ones, or the weak ones. But the rest? After this long? No."
Seaspray slumped. "But.... You and I get along well enough. Why can't others?"
Star Treader looked at him for a long moment, then shook his helm. "Why did you join the Autobots?"
Seaspray looked up into the shadows of the cave ceiling. "Because Hypos...my colony was destroyed. It was a geothermal refinery. The Decepticons were retreating and we were on the way, and they didn't want...to leave anything useful behind."
Star Treader nodded, unsurprised. "So you joined for what...revenge? Justice for your friends? A place to feel useful? Something to DO?"
Seaspray shuttered his optics. "All of those...I guess." It was so long ago. So many vorns and so much fighting.... "But what--"
"I've got a point here. Stay with me for a klik." The seeker returned to his work, his deep voice rumbling through the cavern over the scrape of metal on metal. "You had your reasons to join. And now you've got others. Autobot friends to defend. Lost battles to get even for. Or maybe just because it's been so long you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you weren't fighting anymore. So." The grinding cut out, and Star Treader's optics focused on him with laser precision. "Optimus Prime is dead. Again. What would YOU do?"
I'd keep fighting. Because others would. Because otherwise what has this all been FOR? Seaspray's helm made a dull clunk as it hit the cave wall again. "This is never going to end, is it?"
"Probably not. You want me to try this again or what?"
"What? Oh...yes, please." Seaspray uncurled slowly as Star Treader came back over. He was a bit afraid that the Decepticon's field would be hostile after that little exchange, but he didn't feel anything aggressive at all. Star Treader's field was as calm as a windless sea. Seaspray envied him that.
When the part and the working servos and the worklight were back, Seaspray looked up at the ceiling rather than risk meeting the Decepticon's optics. Star Treader's servos clicked delicately over his internals.
This was probably a stupid idea, Seaspray thought. He still had to try. Because otherwise what had it all been for? "You could come to Earth. I mean, with me. To Earth. To the Autobots."
Star Treader's servos stopped, his field shifting in surprise even if it didn't show anywhere else. Surprise and amusement. "Are you seriously suggesting I defect? While I'm here three servos into your cooling system?"
Seaspray squirmed internally at his tone, but nodded.
Star Treader just huffed a chuckle. "You've got bearings, I'll give you that. You try that with every Decepticon you come across?"
"Just the reasonable ones."
"Mmm. And how's that worked for you?"
"Not terribly well, but at least it makes ME feel better."
That, oddly, earned him a laugh. "At least you're honest." There was an odd tug on Seaspray's frame as something popped loose.
Seaspray ignored the flash of error warnings, and after another pop, this time of something slotting in, they went away. "So that's a no, I take it."
Star Treader unclamped his lines again. "That's a no."
Seaspray let regret color his field, caged in a question he didn't quite know how to voice. Star Treader shook his helm and Seaspray wasn't sure if he was answering him or just his own trail of thoughts. The seeker paused, watching his own still servos for a klik. "You're so naive. This little temporary truce you and I've got going is one thing. Defecting is something else entirely."
The seeker sat back on his thrusters, his voice not particularly unkind but not apologetic, either. "Precious few of the reasons I became a Decepticon have changed. Besides, Starscream is on that Earth planet as well, and--"
"Starscream!" On the same planet as the Prime? Oh, that was not good. "How...do you know that?"
Star Treader just looked at him. "What, you think that Autobots have some kind of monopoly on interstellar communication? He's my Air Commander."
Seeker. Right. Well, Seaspray thought, today was just his day for forgetting ENTIRELY what he was talking to, wasn't it? In his own defense, Star Treader was about as different from the ruthless Decepticon second-in-command as a seeker could get.
"Also," Star Treader continued, "Seekers do not defect. We have oaths that go deeper than any factions, and if the Air Commander goes, we go with him. End of story."
Seaspray just stared at him in vague horror. "That sounds terrible. What if he's on the wrong side?"
"Then we make it the RIGHT side." Something flashed in Star Treader's optics, his field flaring with enough aggressive agitation that Seaspray took the hint and didn't say anything more on the subject that night.
He figured he'd get another chance. After all, they were stuck here, weren't they? He planned to wait a day or two, then ease back into the subject. Figure out if there was a way around Star Treader's objections.
The next day, though, changed everything.
Seaspray returned from the caverns as usual to find Star Treader waiting for him, pacing outside the cave entrance. His formerly calm field was rife with the urgent rush of excitement and anxiety. He stopped in front of Seaspray. "You need to leave."
Seaspray pulled his cube out of subspace and offered it to the seeker. "Nice to see you, too."
Star Treader didn't take it. "No, you need to leave NOW. Do you have enough energon to make it to that Earth planet?"
"I...yes, but you don't. I'm not going to--"
"Forget about me. Take your stuff and leave." A file transfer request pinged, and Seaspray accepted it for lack of anything better to do. Interstellar coordinates scrolled across his processor. "Use this heading," Star Treader continued. "When you get into the Earth system, avoid this moon and the fourth planet. Head straight to Earth and run silent until you get there."
The seeker's entire body language had changed, Seaspray noticed. His wings were no longer still, instead flaring and combing through the air. It was almost hypnotic. "What HAPPENED?" he demanded, though he started his pre-flight check just in case.
Star Treader looked up at the sky. Seaspray followed his gaze but couldn't see anything. "My wingmate is coming."
"Oh." Then Seaspray started, realizing just what that meant. Not just Star Treader's wingmate. A DECEPTICON. "Oh!"
"Yeah. You need to NOT be here when he gets here."
Seaspray prioritized his flight systems diagnostic. "Do I have time to go get the refinery?"
"Yeah, but don't dawdle." Star Treader turned away, his wings flaring up in preparation for flight.
Seaspray reached out a hand that had no hope of actually catching him. "Wait!"
The seeker paused, the very edges of his EM field glassy and opaque.
Words tripped through Seaspray's processor. Slag it, there wasn't enough TIME for them all and never would be, now. He settled for a hurried burst of glyphs, artless with haste and too little time to do more than toss together a hurried Thank you, his glyph choice bright and sloppy with modifiers of gratitude, respect, affection, and sadness.
The seeker didn't reply for a long moment, long enough for Seaspray to bow his helm. He turned to head back to the cavern entrance as Star Treader leapt into the sky, the roar of his thrusters breaking him free of gravity.
The reply came just as Seaspray reached the cavern mouth, as Star Treader flew by overhead, toward wherever he was going. Thank you. The glyphs were crisper than Seaspray's, practically ornate with modifiers that were more expressive than the root: the respect of an enemy well-met, the determined weight of tradition, and an insistent edge of urgency.
Seaspray's pre-flight check results came back in the green, and he dove into the caverns, queueing up diagnostics and inputting flight coordinates.
He buried Star Treader's last sending deep in his archives and didn't think on it until he was safely out of system, his cometary form hurtling toward Earth. Only then did he fully unpack the glyph structure and find, buried so deeply that Seaspray almost missed it, the regret of chances missed and the smallest shade of hope.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The trip to Earth was not uneventful. Seaspray detected several other Cybertronian signals on his scanners as he entered the solar system. Like him, they weren't transmitting an ident signal. He deviated from Star Treader's course to avoid them, then again to lose one of them in an asteroid field when it tried to follow him in a distinctly hostile manner.
His cooling system sputtered halfway to Earth, Star Treader's repairs holding but a handful of regulators failing. Seaspray tweaked and coaxed and tried to compensate as he hurtled through space, his core temperature rising.
It wasn't, he knew, anything that could be fixed by a cleverly-machined patch. He monitored his energon levels, the curve of his temperature readings. Barring any more long detours, he could make it to Earth. But unless he immediately found a medic or the planet was a giant snowball like a few of the moons he'd passed, it wouldn't be long before he overheated and shut down with Primus knew what damage to his processor.
It was a sad, lonely thought in the darkness of space. He pushed his engines harder. If he was going to die, he'd do it answering his Prime's summons to the very best of his ability.
However, the astrosecond Seaspray came within sensor range of the blue planet, hope kindled in his spark. The planet was only mildly volcanic. Its temperature range was such that he probably wouldn't overheat immediately. And it was nearly covered in water.
Thank Primus, the Allspark had led them to a WATER planet.
Water on the surface of the land, water in the atmosphere, water in vast oceans floating on top of the crust.... Dihydrogen monoxide, by the spectra, and probably rich in salts of various sorts. Seaspray imagined its weight flowing over his plating, streaming through his ventilation system, buoying him up and letting him SWIM.... The glorious thoughts sustained him as Earth filled his sensors and his temperature inched into the red.
::Ark to unidentified Cybertronian, identify yourself.::
Ark? The ARK had made it here as well? Seaspray's spark leapt in joy. The last he'd heard, the Ark had been damaged and marooned. Seaspray turned his ident transmitter back on. ::Ark, this is Tech Sergeant Scout Seaspray, responding to the Prime's summons. I am heavily damaged and in need of a medic or three ASAP. Permission to board?::
Seaspray's temperature slid a tick higher. He could barely detect the Ark on his sensors over the curve of the blue planet below. He couldn't tell if that was due to the Ark, the planet, or his own, staticky sensors.
::We're running on struts and vitals here, Seaspray. Our only medic is on the planet below. Can you handle a cometary entry or should we send a shuttle to transport you?::
Slag. Seaspray devoted a processor thread to praying. ::My cooling systems are compromised, Ark, and I'm already in the red. The shuttle'll take too long to do me any good. I'll...I'll take my chances with re-entry. Can you give me a water landing?::
::Affirmative, Seaspray. Transmitting coordinates and entry lane. There's native life down there, so do not deviate or you'll risk hitting an aircraft. Primus be with you, Seaspray.::
::Thanks, Ark.:: It occurred to Seaspray that this might be the last mech he ever talked to. ::What's your designation, Ark?::
::...Prowl.::
Seaspray's engines nearly missed a stroke. He'd been casually chatting with the Autobot second-in-command. Who was manning the Ark's comm while everyone else was on the planet below. This, Seaspray thought, was one story he hoped he lived to hear. ::Thank you, sir.::
He wasn't far from his entry lane, and another jolt of his thrusters got him there.
There was a long, tremulous pause, and then Seaspray let the planet's gravity drag him down.
He started getting errors almost immediately, his failing coolant system attempting and failing to compensate for the heat of re-entry. His cometary plating reflected much of it, but the rest sank into his frame until he felt like his circuits must be melting. There wasn't much he could do about it but pray, so he did that and kept going.
Around him, space turned to sky. The atmosphere around him (blue, Seaspray noted idly, before his visual sensors started to fritz) was mildly conductive and bled off some of the heat, but not enough. He tried rebooting his sensors and then quickly forgot them in the struggle to keep his main engines from emergency shutdown. He held the burn for a long, long moment before letting them slip offline so he could concentrate on keeping his maneuvering thrusters and staying on his designated flight path.
His sensors winked out one after the other as he sped towards a layer of fluffy white atmosphere. His analytic sensors noted mostly dihydrogen monoxide before shutting down, his visual sensors following suit but not before he cleared the clouds and got a glimpse of endless blue water far below.
Please, he prayed, his memory banks starting to throw corruption errors. Just a bit more.
He lost his thrusters, then everything else, system after system cascading into shutdown. He felt like he was on fire. He probably was.
Blind, he fell and fell and fell, with no way to maneuver and no way of telling how much further he had to go, processor starting to stutter, too far gone even for error messages, and Seaspray keened as he felt relays blow, his power system failing as his conductors started to melt and--
Impact. It shuddered through him, but he was still falling, albeit slower.
He thought for a horrible moment that his last few sensors had gone as well, when they noted his hull temperature dropping rapidly. Then his descent slowed, then slowed again, then stopped as he came to rest.
His hull temperature kept dropping.
The ocean, he realized, as his systems struggled to reboot. He groped for his transformation cogs, prioritizing them over all others, and still it was almost a breem before he could activate the emergence sequence.
The feel of salt water seeping, then rushing in as his outer hull cracked and transformed away, was like Primus' own blessing. Seaspray uncurled, slowly, the water cooling everything it touched. With a great, shuddering gasp, he switched his ventilation systems back to aquatic mode. Cold water rushed in, flooding his system and making his frame groan with the shiver of contracting metal until he'd cooled enough for the water not to evaporate on contact.
One by one, Seaspray's systems attempted to reboot, until he could think and see again. The water was murky, rich with tiny bits of organic material. He laid on a sand of silicates and yet more organic matter, and it was...soft. He couldn't even begrudge how it was probably getting under his plating. It cheered him to think that it could compete with the volcano planet's dust for occupation of his joints.
His comm crackled with an unfamiliar voice. ::Ratchet to Seaspray, respond.:: The sending was thick with the blessed weight of a medic-grade authority code.
It took Seaspray a moment to remember how to activate his comm. ::Seaspray here. I love this planet already.:: Then his internal sensors came back online, realized that he had about five ventilations worth of energon left in his tanks, and slammed him into the oblivion of emergency stasis.
He onlined to the sound of his own ventilation systems burbling as they sucked warm gas atmosphere. He reset his HUD several times to clear it of the backlog of error warnings, until he got to the reassuring notice of medical access to his systems. The notations of his medical logs scrolled in an endless list of diagnostics run, components repaired, code restored.
"How do you feel?"
Seaspray onlined his optics, his helm turning towards the voice. A stocky, solid mech with a commanding air and a hardline still attached to Seaspray's thoracic port had to be the medic, Ratchet. "Wonderful." One very familiar warning was still stubbornly refusing to be dismissed, though. "Coolant system...."
"Yeah, I know. You've slagged it but good, in several places. It'll take awhile to fix. You're the first aquatic frame that's shown up, and your entire coolant system's not standard. I'll have to go up to the Ark to fabricate the parts, which might take a bit." Ratchet's optics flickered as he consulted his HUD then hmmphed. "Until then, you're going to have cooling problems in atmosphere. I suggest spending as much time in the water as you can, to take advantage of your liquid cooling systems. I imagine that's what you'd prefer anyway."
Yes. Primus, yes.
"Thank you," Seaspray said, reveling in the feel of a competent professional combing through his internal settings. It had been VORNS since he'd been seen to by a real medic, and the relief was incredible. He'd made it. He wasn't dying. His systems, finally convinced that they could ease off of crisis mode, started pinging him with an insistent need to recharge. The only thing that kept him from listening to them was a wash of red and blue over the medic's shoulder. The frame it belonged to was at first unfamiliar, the large mech obviously having taken on some kind of wheeled Earth alt mode, but the spark...the spark under it resonated with a pure, strut-deep tone that no Cybertronian could mistake for anything but--
"Prime!" Seaspray's spark soared, and he scrambled to get up, to kneel, to SOMETHING, and was prevented by a hand on his chestplates shoving him back.
"Stay down, slaggit, I'm not finished. You can bow and scrape in a klik," the medic growled.
A deep chuckle, and Optimus Prime stepped closer, addressing Seaspray with an added glyph of amusement. "At ease, soldier. Medic's orders first, always. You've had a rough journey."
Seaspray thought of "Star Treader" with a pang of regret. "Not as bad as it could have been, sir. I...I'm glad I could make it."
"As we are glad to have you, Seaspray."
"Thank you, sir." Seaspray groped after military protocol, sending a databurst reporting on vorns of searching and exploration, and Prime accepted it with a reassuring "mission accomplished" notation.
"At ease. You can give a full report later, as well as being briefed on the full situation here on Earth. For now, the basics...." Seaspray accepted the Prime's own databurst, unpacking it and processing through it for a long moment. When he was finished, Ratchet had disconnected, and Seaspray's processor was swimming with several new languages and a world's worth of cultural and environmental data. As well as status reports on the Autobots' mission objectives and troop strengths and....
That...had he READ that right?
Seaspray checked the file, but it wasn't corrupted. He read it again. He looked up at the Prime, barely daring to hope. "A ceasefire?"
Optimus Prime chuckled. "You missed the declaration, I take it."
"I...I lost my long-range comms shortly after I entered this system." Even the intricate Cybertronian language failed him. Seaspray fell back on military glyphs: Ceasefire? he asked, tentatively using the glyph for a temporary lull in an ongoing battle.
The Prime shook his helm, his field resonating with a happiness that fell against the edges of Seaspray's own field like the warm yellow sunlight on his plating. Ceasefire, the Prime replied. The variant he used was more definitive: a mutually agreed-upon end to hostilities preceeding a permanent peace, the glyph modified by sigils of hope, unity, and joy.
Seaspray shuttered his optics, overcome at the implications, and the Prime laid a hand on his bowed helm.
Welcome to Earth.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thundercracker had to admit that he kind of liked the dirt planet. The key, he'd found, was to avoid the dirt part of it whenever possible. The Earth's atmosphere cradled a tangle of mildly interesting jetstreams, weather systems that at the very least provided the amusing opportunity to fly in rain that wasn't dangerously acidic, and very few humans to worry about.
It wasn't that Thundercracker didn't like the humans. He just didn't see any use to interacting with them. They were technologically weak, ridiculously fragile, and he had yet to meet one that hadn't been automatically hostile. He gladly left interacting with them to Megatron and Starscream, instead flying long patrols whenever he could. He didn't mind it at all, especially since compared to Cybertron in its prime, Earth's skies were a seeker's paradise of wide open space and no one to care if he completed his route in a lazy half-recharge, solar panels soaking in the bright yellow sun.
After vorns of stealing, scraping up, and killing for barely enough energon to keep himself airborne, being able to gather enough power for a light sprint simply by spreading his wings was a glorious luxury he took every opportunity to enjoy.
He was doing just that as he flew the boundaries of the Autobots' tiny Indian Ocean base, when he caught the spark signature on his scanners.
Was that....?
Thundercracker circled around for another pass, sensors focused more tightly this time.
It WAS.
Thundercracker banked again, circling lazily around the signal, thinking. In the end, agitated and uncertain, he pulled up, streaking back along his patrol route and leaving the signal behind.
He couldn't forget about it, though, and now that he was looking for it he could always find it when he flew the Diego Garcia route. That spark signal would ping closer in the atoll itself or circling further out, probably running patrol.
When Thundercracker found himself pacing that signal, crisscrossing the sky high above it just for the momentary blip on his scanners, he told himself he was being ridiculous and to just do something about it already.
The weight of water against his plating was a shock. He froze for a long moment, letting himself sink to the sandy bottom as his sensors recalibrated for the new environment. He'd never served on an aquatic world, had never been immersed in any liquid but the goo of a CR tank. The association wasn't pleasant, but as his sensors stopped sending him errors and warnings, the feel of the liquid surrounding him became nothing worse than...odd. Strangely reminiscent of flying in heavy gravity.
Following the ping on his scanners, Thundercracker turned and headed further inland.
He was scouted before he found his quarry. Like in space, there was little cover other than degradation of sensor range, and he detected the sleek shapes swimming toward him long before they reached him. A preliminary scan revealed them to be native organic life forms (family Delphinidae, genus Tursiops, common name bottlenose dolphin), generally harmless even to the humans, so he ignored them as he engaged his thrusters just enough to float him across the ocean floor. The creatures circled around him in increasingly tight spirals, his sensors picking up sound vocalizations distinctly unlike any human speech: clicks and whistles and squeaks. The creatures circled him close enough that he slowed, not particularly wanting to damage them with a stray movement, all considered. One creature in particular seemed fascinated with him, nudging him with its proboscis and whistling at him incomprehensibly.
::They want to play.:: The sending came on an open channel, neither Autobot nor Decepticon. Thundercracker turned slowly to see a small Cybertronian form approaching. Taking an Earthen alt mode had changed his frame slightly, smoothing and sleeking the familiar angles, but Seaspray's small, sturdy form was still quite recognizable.
::You understand them?:: he sent back, stretching out a servo, which the adventurous creature bumped up into before swimming away.
::Some. They do not have a true language. More a very rudimentary sound-glyph system. They are not sentient, though they are very close and might become so, if the humans give them enough time to evolve.:: One of the dolphin creatures swam away to dart in front of, then behind, then under and around Seaspray. He swam in a slow spiral, letting it chase him before it broke off to join the other creature in its examination of Thundercracker.
::Star Treader,:: Seaspray sent in greeting as he slowed and held his position a polite distance away. The sending was bright with pleased markers that made Thundercracker feel...all right, perhaps just a bit guilty. Just a bit. A conscience wasn't exactly standard issue in the Decepticon army, after all.
::That's...not my real designation.:: He let some of his regret bleed through. Seaspray had been, oddly enough, one of the best partners he'd had in a long, long time, and though it had been prudent, the Autobot had such an innocent spark that it seemed almost shamefully easy to lie to him.
::I know.:: Seaspray's reply bubbled gently with laughter. ::I got bored on the way to Earth. I was curious about you, so I went back through my identification files. Couldn't find a seeker designated Star Treader, but I did remember a seeker named Thundercracker who looked awfully familiar....:: He danced briefly with the larger of the dolphins, who whistled at him before shooting up to the surface. The aquatic mech floated through the water almost as gracefully as a seeker in the air. Looking at him more closely now, Thundercracker could see the same aerodynamic touches to Seaspray's frame, making his stocky build sleek like a worn stone. Thundercracker's attention was dragged back as Seaspray asked, ::Why didn't you tell me your real name?::
::It's not smart to be too important, when you're meeting a stranger at a disadvantage.::
::I...guess I could see that. Though I don't think either of us had an advantage there. We both were dying. Luckily of different things.::
::I saw that, later. At the time I thought you were better off, though. My first scan just read the outer damage. Figured you might have trouble transforming, at least. I missed all the inner wounds. How you managed to get a meteor lodged that deep into your protoform I have no idea.::
::Sheer luck, I guess. I still have it, you know. The meteor. And the luck, I suppose.:: Seaspray floated closer. ::You could have told me later.::
Thundercracker caged his reply in glyphs of indifference, slapping on a past modifier at the very end: I was indifferent then, instead of I am indifferent now. ::Why? No point. Besides, then the stakes were only slightly better. You had my only method of refueling, and you seemed willing to give it to me. Why tell you and risk you leaving me to die there?::
Seaspray tilted his head, sadness creeping into his glyphs. ::You thought I would do that?::
Not really. But Thundercracker hadn't survived as long as he had by taking chances. ::Wouldn't you have? Given the chance to take out one of the highest-ranked Decepticon seekers?::
::I...:: Seaspray rolled slowly, thoughtfully in the current for a long moment. ::I wouldn't have let you die. I don't know what I would have done if I'd known who you were...but I wouldn't have let you die. I'm not that kind of mech.:: His sending was amazingly clear of the usual Autobot self-righteousness. All the markers for importance were personal ones: not the moral righteousness of "this was right", but the personal certainty of "this was right for me".
Thundercracker didn't know what to say to that. Had it been him, he knew he wouldn't have given a starving little Autobot a second thought. Other than to debate whether it was worth the energon to put him out of his misery.
::So,:: Seaspray said, straightening just a bit. Remembering, perhaps, who he was talking to and what the tangled web of the Autobot-Decepticon chain of command looked like these days. ::To what do I owe the visit, sir?::
Thundercracker wondered if there was a way to say "I was passing by and felt your spark signature and decided to dunk myself in the ocean and thus endure Starscream's eternal mockery to talk to you out here, where our factions and ranks don't matter" without sounding like an idiot. He suspected there wasn't. Even thanking the Autobot would be...no. He'd already done that, back on that volcanic dustball. ::I was flying by. Scouting the area.:: True enough. Though still not a particularly good reason for why he was on the bottom of the ocean.
Seaspray didn't call him on it, though his acknowledgment was...knowing. Thundercracker was beginning to think that what he'd taken for naivete was really an incredibly keen ability to hear all the things unsaid. ::Well, sir, I am on patrol, if you would care to accompany me.::
Thundercracker laughed as he followed. ::Do you ask every Decepticon you run across to go on patrol with you?::
Seaspray twisted and dove in evident delight. ::Only the reasonable ones. And you're not my enemy anymore. Unless you know something I don't know, Second-In-Flight Thundercracker, sir?:: Thundercracker supposed that technically that was true, but before he could reply, the dolphins returned, with a few new friends that circled Thundercracker in fascination, repeating the cycle of click-whistling and nose-bumping. ::Besides,:: Seaspray said. ::My scouts indicate that you appear to be peaceful and...well, I don't imagine that being called a shiny-large-playmate sounds very flattering, but rest assured, it is very impressive to them.::
Seaspray flipped back in the water, coming back to circle close to Thundercracker, so close that Thundercracker could feel the current he dragged behind him, the affectionate warm slide of his EM field brushing Thundercracker's sensors. It was amazingly reminiscent of a seeker mating maneuver. Thundercracker wondered if Seaspray was doing it on purpose. ::I take you at your word, sir, that you have no ill intent and are here merely to...scout.:: His sending was crisp with the glyphs of military correctness, while his field was...something else. Something teasing and familiar and surprisingly bold about it.
He was definitely doing it on purpose, Thundercracker decided. That was fine. The traditional response to such a mating overture was to ignore it. For awhile, at least. Until one decided to do something about it.
Seaspray shot up, nearly surfacing before coming back down in a graceful arc, and honestly, had the little Autobot STUDIED seeker body language, or was this something eerily similar between aquatic and air frames? One more brush just SO against Thundercracker's field, and he darted away. "Well, sir, if I might suggest heading this way? There is an absolutely gorgeous--and terribly strategically important, of course--coral reef just a mile on that hardly any mech will ever see...."
Thundercracker had no idea what a coral reef was, but he followed the little Autobot anyway, certain that Seaspray would tell him all about it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For fun? Seaspray's scanned alt form is this beauty.