[Challenge response] 2013 New Beginnings
Title: Solar
Author: tainry
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mentions of offscreen violence
Continuity TF: Prime
Summary: Vector Prime wakes up in a strange place and gets some upgrades from an unexpected source.
Notes: For the tf_rare_pairing Challenge 2013 “New Beginnings”. Pairing: Solus Prime/Vector Prime - prompt “Novel equipment”. Okay, I failed a little at the prompt. u_u;;;
Sllllllllightly AU, but plausible, dammit! Also, I made up a name for the supposed first beast-mode Prime. The mini-con Prime someone on the wiki has suggested naming Beta Maxx, so I went with that. Also also, those familiar with the Culture novels will detect the possible cameo appearance of a GSV. Who may or may not be the GSV So Much For Subtlety. La la la.
~2300 words
Humm. Whrrr. Click-tik-tik. Soft sounds, reassuring. Odd for audio to return first, as his consciousness began an agonizingly slow reboot. Audio, EM, as his CPU warmed, layer by layer. Memory core. Awareness of spark-self ...no, that had been there, baseline, all along. Haptics and proprioception, gravimetrics. He was prone, face-down, on an unyielding surface, metal. Tang of familiar alloys. A rich taste bloomed through his mouth and throat; his fuel mixture had been altered. Gravity felt artificial. Ship? Station? Something about the way he could feel things, feeds, cables, hooked into most of his systems, told him it would not be wise to try to move. Not yet. Something was missing. He was open, had been opened, gaping - but not the great wounds inflicted upon him by ...he could not remember. The sword lay nearby, fields quiet, and that was reassuring, too. His optics lit. Floor, mostly hidden by cables and haphazard crates of components he could not identify.
He was not deactivated. But where had the sword taken him? No, more importantly, when? A sharp spike of alarm gave power to his reaching with time-sense; the universe his orrery. No one thing - star or life - could be his touchstone - scale and change the only metrics that mattered.
His body jolted as the answer coalesced in his mind. Something bleeped. He held still.
The future. He had folded to the future. He had never done so before, on this leg of the complex non-linearity of his own personal timeline. Jumping to the past was a known quality, or as known as anything could be. But the future was dangerously fluid; there were enormous tides, rips, and small, unpredictable streams that could suddenly take on immense importance. One could end up anywhere, anywhen.
"Do not fret," someone said, and a long hand patted his starboard ankle. "Rhisling is right beside you."
He knew that voice. Something warm spun through him, like and unlike the tingle of a fellow-being's field. He had not thought to hear that voice again, except in memory. "Rhisling?"
"Sword. Ah. I never said? It wanted to be called that."
"It...?" No use asking. He remembered now, she did such things. Her creations were in some sense alive to her, as they, the Thirteen, were alive to Primus. "Solus. We thought you were dead." Murdered. A new thing, Prime slaying Prime. A new punishment had been contrived for it.
"Good. I hate being interrupted."
That was true. Prima had said interrupting her work made Solus cranky, finding out the hard way.
"Do not move," she told him, and patted his ankle again. The whir and whine of heavy machinery, hydraulics and stranger things, came above him. He felt pressure, a weight, no a pair of weights, settling on him, into him. Bright, hot, awareness of new limbs coursed through him. He moaned softly, his mind trembling as his body dared not. He delved into the autonomic recording of what had happened while he was unconscious. He had been dying, his spark flickering, fading. She had repaired him, rebuilt him. She had placed a round object on his back. From this there had been an unfolding of matter throughout his body, filaments branching, weaving, mending gaps, molten and inexorable - he was glad he had not been online. Individually the filaments were microscopic, but collectively, much of his mass had been supported, augmented. Dents pounded out from within.
Now, she was changing him again. Vector felt a surge of early memory. They thought they had been Twelve; Prima thought he had come online First, but Solus had appeared, having already constructed for herself a workshop made of and embedded within Primus' outer armor. She came to them and put into their hands the things she had made. Most of which had been turned to use as weapons, whether they had been intended as such or not. They had been made, they knew, to fight, to turn the tide against the Unmaker. Primus' other half.
Solus moved around him, disconnecting monitoring cables and fuel lines, her touch firm but gentle.
"I should have realized," Vector said. "I searched for your body." Megatronus... the Fallen had bragged of his deed. Defeating the Weaponsmaster had been no small thing. "We came to the conclusion that you had been caught by the sun."
"Almost was," Solus said, fiddling with things on his back. Nothing hurt, but it felt peculiar. "Almost died. That fragger."
"That what?"
"Maker of fragmentation. Fragger."
"I...see." She was at the head of the repair table now, and leaned down to look him in the optics, grinning. Her face was the same as he remembered, the last time he had seen her, before the betrayal, but she had added things to her helm. Was that another optic?
"You can get up now," she said, tapping his helm. "Careful with the panels."
He levered himself up on his arms, swung his legs one at a time over the side of the table. His balance would be different. Not wrong. Different. Fully upright, the additions rested smoothly against his back, attached just above his waist, below his center of gravity.
"They are primarily for your alternate mode," Solus explained. "Solar panels. You will not need much energon now. Maybe none for centuries." She walked around him as he shifted his footing, accustoming himself to the weight and configuration. "You do look rather as though you are wearing Alchemist's cloak, though."
"Oh dear." He craned his head around, trying to see behind him, past his new, upswept spaulders. The panels moved, could extend, flick, lift, fall. He would find that they could be expressive, and that he would have occasion to suppress this. Blue-green, reflective, glittering, crystalline, in frames of dark metal.
"So conservative," she said, as though only just now realizing. Rather than ask how he felt, she snapped a hardline into his wrist and poked through the link he thus allowed. Interpersonal niceties were not her forte. Nor were they Vector's especial strong suit, so he did not mind the brief physical intrusion. They shared for a moment the far-reaching, deep-rooted power of his frame, the purring, leashed power of hers, and the spinning, dangerously brilliant gamma burst kaleidoscope of her mind, which suffused her body rather than crouching, limited to a CPU as his was.
She withdrew, pleased. Even the dim light from readouts and holo-panels was enough to send charge into his systems. He was flush, burgeoning with energy, newly-repaired, brought from the brink of death but whole now and stronger, fleeter than before. Rhisling pulsed softly as he took it up, slipping it gently into its notch across his dorsal hull.
"What is this place?" He asked, not demanding, merely curious. He ran a hand over his own flank, bright with new metal. He had, he thought, perhaps bled out from there. She watched him settle fully into his new, expanded body.
"Show you," she said, leading him from the hunched, cluttered repair bay, into a sinuously curving, satiny corridor. Ship? Station? He still was not certain. The quantum thrum he felt in the air and under his feet might be engines, but a station would have power distributors and generators, might have orbital engines. The difference between a deep space station and a ship might be subtle.
To their left, the corridor became a rail-less catwalk, opening abruptly into light and hazy expanses of air. Sweeping terraces kilometers long sleeked against a far curve of bulkhead through which could be seen the glimmering shadows of stars. Solus leapt out, small fields at her heels and shoulders fanning out like invisible wings. Vector transformed and followed. They flew past layers of parks and dwellings and community areas, each merging and blending into the others; the silver, white, grey, gold of the architecture softened by peculiar, mostly green structures. Plants. The word rose to the surface of his memory.
Thousands of figures moved among the terraces (mostly bipedal, and the vast majority smaller than himself and his sister Prime), and he and Solus were required to dodge numerous other flying beings? Vehicles? They descended through a kilometer-wide ramp into another sky-bright level, similar to the first, also filled with motion and color. In the central valley - for lack of a better term - rested a large circular depression, floored in lapis, ringed by an elegant white balustrade. The depression was deeper than Vector was tall, he found, once they had landed. Around the curving walls were projected a mosaic of three-dimensional images. Solus gestured to one set in particular.
Highly detailed schematics showed an ellipsoid shape, wreathed in many layers of powerful fields, with perhaps hundreds of decks of multipurpose spaces, dozens of small hangars, several very large hangars and assembly halls, and a central core of what appeared to be engine mass of some kind. A blinking red dot indicated that he and Solus were on the third deck down from the top, near the bow.
"A ship, then." Of impressive size, even by Cybertronian standards. 60 kilometers long, half that wide and tall.
"Yes."
"Are they alive?" He nodded at the moving figures around them. An inquisitive ovoid device hovered close and flashed colors across its fields at Solus, who waved back before it disappeared into the stream of traffic.
"Of course."
"Are they really?" He could detect no spark signature in the little drones or the ship itself. Though what he presumed were their power sources were potent and tucked away mostly in other dimensions. A neat bit of work, that.
"Having a spark is not the only way to be alive, Vector."
He smiled, laughing at himself. He had been, he remembered suddenly, discovering this. Visiting other worlds, watching them, and the civilizations they gave rise to, develop through time. It was becoming a great, quiet joy in his spark. "Yes."
She touched his hand, lifted on her repulsors. He followed. They were watched, but not interfered with. Up through the two decks he’d seen, up again and forward. They landed this time on a sort of balcony, where the layered fields ahead and above them had been made transparent, and the stars glittered in all their terrible beauty, and the great swath of the galactic edge arced so brightly no other lights were needed, even for the diurnal mammals who called the ship home.
Vector stretched and settled. The upgraded engines felt good, his transformation smooth and swift. Solus scanned him, flicking imaginary dust from his breastplate and starboard fauld.
“How came you here?” Vector asked.
“I was caught by the sun, as you thought,” she said. “But fell into a slingshot orbit. By the time I had been accelerated to the edge of the system I was amidst repairing myself. I was not properly functional for some time. My Forge was lost…”
“Alpha has it.” Nexus had taken the Forge at first, but gave it to Alpha before departing Cybertron. Nexus had his own secrets to preserve, had little interest in pursuing the secrets of others.
“Better him than others. In the asteroids I found raw materials, had tools enough in hand. I built a small ship.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She could have returned, taken revenge, but had not. She was not certain why. It did not matter to her now, she told herself. “This ship found me. I have lived here a while. Will stay a while longer, I think. There are friends here worth talking with.”
“I am glad, then,” Vector said, his field tentatively brushing hers. His inclination toward solitude was greater even than hers. But he was glad to see her again, glad she was not dead. Deeply grateful that she had saved his life. Events following one after another. Small actions, small chances, adding up. He understood this intimately.
She leaned into him suddenly, wrapping her arms around the torso she had rebuilt, pleased by the solidity of it, the planes of his armor against hers. She had been separated from her brothers for far longer than she ever had closeted herself away in her workshop before. His voice, his fields, reminded her of first days, first battles won. Happiness amidst their fierce struggle.
“There are things I cannot change," he murmured against her helm, settling his arms and fields around her, closing his optics. He remembered now the foe who had so nearly extinguished him. Neither his traitor brothers nor agents of the Unmaker. Five-faced beings of terrible malice. He must take up sword and battle again, but he had time.
"And things you will not." He had not tried to undo her murder - attempted murder. And yet in so refraining he had freed her completely. Maker below, she was glad she had not been given his task.
"If you wish it, I will not tell our brothers." He flexed his new solar wings, restless. She could feel him trembling with desire for the stars. She stroked the fine mechanisms of his fingers, which she had so enjoyed cleaning and polishing while he lay on her repair table.
She lifted her spaulders, considering, let them drop. Nexus would want to know. She had found him interesting; his joy in change and experimentation, their shared compulsion for creation. But he had been a little too proud of the Weaponsmaster's attention. Let him mourn and move on. He had no doubt done so already. Alpha Trion and Alchemist, though. Therius and Beta. And Prima. Would it not be unkind to leave them ignorant? Perhaps. But they were all scattering, Vector was right. They were all finding new lives after the Unmaker's defeat. Most of them would never meet again in any case. "Please do not," she said.
He turned his hand beneath hers, curled his fingers around her palm. He would keep her secret across all eternities. “Very well,” he said. He knew she would not have allowed him to become aware of her presence if she had thought he would betray such a confidence.
Smiling, she clasped his hands, caressed him with her fields. “Fare well,” she murmured, and turning, left him. She had work to do.
Vector transformed, anxious now to put his new body to a fuller test. The vast ship flexed its shields around him, forming a neat passage for him, out into space. The stars and their worlds called to him.
Author: tainry
Rating: PG
Warnings: Mentions of offscreen violence
Continuity TF: Prime
Summary: Vector Prime wakes up in a strange place and gets some upgrades from an unexpected source.
Notes: For the tf_rare_pairing Challenge 2013 “New Beginnings”. Pairing: Solus Prime/Vector Prime - prompt “Novel equipment”. Okay, I failed a little at the prompt. u_u;;;
Sllllllllightly AU, but plausible, dammit! Also, I made up a name for the supposed first beast-mode Prime. The mini-con Prime someone on the wiki has suggested naming Beta Maxx, so I went with that. Also also, those familiar with the Culture novels will detect the possible cameo appearance of a GSV. Who may or may not be the GSV So Much For Subtlety. La la la.
~2300 words
Humm. Whrrr. Click-tik-tik. Soft sounds, reassuring. Odd for audio to return first, as his consciousness began an agonizingly slow reboot. Audio, EM, as his CPU warmed, layer by layer. Memory core. Awareness of spark-self ...no, that had been there, baseline, all along. Haptics and proprioception, gravimetrics. He was prone, face-down, on an unyielding surface, metal. Tang of familiar alloys. A rich taste bloomed through his mouth and throat; his fuel mixture had been altered. Gravity felt artificial. Ship? Station? Something about the way he could feel things, feeds, cables, hooked into most of his systems, told him it would not be wise to try to move. Not yet. Something was missing. He was open, had been opened, gaping - but not the great wounds inflicted upon him by ...he could not remember. The sword lay nearby, fields quiet, and that was reassuring, too. His optics lit. Floor, mostly hidden by cables and haphazard crates of components he could not identify.
He was not deactivated. But where had the sword taken him? No, more importantly, when? A sharp spike of alarm gave power to his reaching with time-sense; the universe his orrery. No one thing - star or life - could be his touchstone - scale and change the only metrics that mattered.
His body jolted as the answer coalesced in his mind. Something bleeped. He held still.
The future. He had folded to the future. He had never done so before, on this leg of the complex non-linearity of his own personal timeline. Jumping to the past was a known quality, or as known as anything could be. But the future was dangerously fluid; there were enormous tides, rips, and small, unpredictable streams that could suddenly take on immense importance. One could end up anywhere, anywhen.
"Do not fret," someone said, and a long hand patted his starboard ankle. "Rhisling is right beside you."
He knew that voice. Something warm spun through him, like and unlike the tingle of a fellow-being's field. He had not thought to hear that voice again, except in memory. "Rhisling?"
"Sword. Ah. I never said? It wanted to be called that."
"It...?" No use asking. He remembered now, she did such things. Her creations were in some sense alive to her, as they, the Thirteen, were alive to Primus. "Solus. We thought you were dead." Murdered. A new thing, Prime slaying Prime. A new punishment had been contrived for it.
"Good. I hate being interrupted."
That was true. Prima had said interrupting her work made Solus cranky, finding out the hard way.
"Do not move," she told him, and patted his ankle again. The whir and whine of heavy machinery, hydraulics and stranger things, came above him. He felt pressure, a weight, no a pair of weights, settling on him, into him. Bright, hot, awareness of new limbs coursed through him. He moaned softly, his mind trembling as his body dared not. He delved into the autonomic recording of what had happened while he was unconscious. He had been dying, his spark flickering, fading. She had repaired him, rebuilt him. She had placed a round object on his back. From this there had been an unfolding of matter throughout his body, filaments branching, weaving, mending gaps, molten and inexorable - he was glad he had not been online. Individually the filaments were microscopic, but collectively, much of his mass had been supported, augmented. Dents pounded out from within.
Now, she was changing him again. Vector felt a surge of early memory. They thought they had been Twelve; Prima thought he had come online First, but Solus had appeared, having already constructed for herself a workshop made of and embedded within Primus' outer armor. She came to them and put into their hands the things she had made. Most of which had been turned to use as weapons, whether they had been intended as such or not. They had been made, they knew, to fight, to turn the tide against the Unmaker. Primus' other half.
Solus moved around him, disconnecting monitoring cables and fuel lines, her touch firm but gentle.
"I should have realized," Vector said. "I searched for your body." Megatronus... the Fallen had bragged of his deed. Defeating the Weaponsmaster had been no small thing. "We came to the conclusion that you had been caught by the sun."
"Almost was," Solus said, fiddling with things on his back. Nothing hurt, but it felt peculiar. "Almost died. That fragger."
"That what?"
"Maker of fragmentation. Fragger."
"I...see." She was at the head of the repair table now, and leaned down to look him in the optics, grinning. Her face was the same as he remembered, the last time he had seen her, before the betrayal, but she had added things to her helm. Was that another optic?
"You can get up now," she said, tapping his helm. "Careful with the panels."
He levered himself up on his arms, swung his legs one at a time over the side of the table. His balance would be different. Not wrong. Different. Fully upright, the additions rested smoothly against his back, attached just above his waist, below his center of gravity.
"They are primarily for your alternate mode," Solus explained. "Solar panels. You will not need much energon now. Maybe none for centuries." She walked around him as he shifted his footing, accustoming himself to the weight and configuration. "You do look rather as though you are wearing Alchemist's cloak, though."
"Oh dear." He craned his head around, trying to see behind him, past his new, upswept spaulders. The panels moved, could extend, flick, lift, fall. He would find that they could be expressive, and that he would have occasion to suppress this. Blue-green, reflective, glittering, crystalline, in frames of dark metal.
"So conservative," she said, as though only just now realizing. Rather than ask how he felt, she snapped a hardline into his wrist and poked through the link he thus allowed. Interpersonal niceties were not her forte. Nor were they Vector's especial strong suit, so he did not mind the brief physical intrusion. They shared for a moment the far-reaching, deep-rooted power of his frame, the purring, leashed power of hers, and the spinning, dangerously brilliant gamma burst kaleidoscope of her mind, which suffused her body rather than crouching, limited to a CPU as his was.
She withdrew, pleased. Even the dim light from readouts and holo-panels was enough to send charge into his systems. He was flush, burgeoning with energy, newly-repaired, brought from the brink of death but whole now and stronger, fleeter than before. Rhisling pulsed softly as he took it up, slipping it gently into its notch across his dorsal hull.
"What is this place?" He asked, not demanding, merely curious. He ran a hand over his own flank, bright with new metal. He had, he thought, perhaps bled out from there. She watched him settle fully into his new, expanded body.
"Show you," she said, leading him from the hunched, cluttered repair bay, into a sinuously curving, satiny corridor. Ship? Station? He still was not certain. The quantum thrum he felt in the air and under his feet might be engines, but a station would have power distributors and generators, might have orbital engines. The difference between a deep space station and a ship might be subtle.
To their left, the corridor became a rail-less catwalk, opening abruptly into light and hazy expanses of air. Sweeping terraces kilometers long sleeked against a far curve of bulkhead through which could be seen the glimmering shadows of stars. Solus leapt out, small fields at her heels and shoulders fanning out like invisible wings. Vector transformed and followed. They flew past layers of parks and dwellings and community areas, each merging and blending into the others; the silver, white, grey, gold of the architecture softened by peculiar, mostly green structures. Plants. The word rose to the surface of his memory.
Thousands of figures moved among the terraces (mostly bipedal, and the vast majority smaller than himself and his sister Prime), and he and Solus were required to dodge numerous other flying beings? Vehicles? They descended through a kilometer-wide ramp into another sky-bright level, similar to the first, also filled with motion and color. In the central valley - for lack of a better term - rested a large circular depression, floored in lapis, ringed by an elegant white balustrade. The depression was deeper than Vector was tall, he found, once they had landed. Around the curving walls were projected a mosaic of three-dimensional images. Solus gestured to one set in particular.
Highly detailed schematics showed an ellipsoid shape, wreathed in many layers of powerful fields, with perhaps hundreds of decks of multipurpose spaces, dozens of small hangars, several very large hangars and assembly halls, and a central core of what appeared to be engine mass of some kind. A blinking red dot indicated that he and Solus were on the third deck down from the top, near the bow.
"A ship, then." Of impressive size, even by Cybertronian standards. 60 kilometers long, half that wide and tall.
"Yes."
"Are they alive?" He nodded at the moving figures around them. An inquisitive ovoid device hovered close and flashed colors across its fields at Solus, who waved back before it disappeared into the stream of traffic.
"Of course."
"Are they really?" He could detect no spark signature in the little drones or the ship itself. Though what he presumed were their power sources were potent and tucked away mostly in other dimensions. A neat bit of work, that.
"Having a spark is not the only way to be alive, Vector."
He smiled, laughing at himself. He had been, he remembered suddenly, discovering this. Visiting other worlds, watching them, and the civilizations they gave rise to, develop through time. It was becoming a great, quiet joy in his spark. "Yes."
She touched his hand, lifted on her repulsors. He followed. They were watched, but not interfered with. Up through the two decks he’d seen, up again and forward. They landed this time on a sort of balcony, where the layered fields ahead and above them had been made transparent, and the stars glittered in all their terrible beauty, and the great swath of the galactic edge arced so brightly no other lights were needed, even for the diurnal mammals who called the ship home.
Vector stretched and settled. The upgraded engines felt good, his transformation smooth and swift. Solus scanned him, flicking imaginary dust from his breastplate and starboard fauld.
“How came you here?” Vector asked.
“I was caught by the sun, as you thought,” she said. “But fell into a slingshot orbit. By the time I had been accelerated to the edge of the system I was amidst repairing myself. I was not properly functional for some time. My Forge was lost…”
“Alpha has it.” Nexus had taken the Forge at first, but gave it to Alpha before departing Cybertron. Nexus had his own secrets to preserve, had little interest in pursuing the secrets of others.
“Better him than others. In the asteroids I found raw materials, had tools enough in hand. I built a small ship.” She crossed her arms over her chest. She could have returned, taken revenge, but had not. She was not certain why. It did not matter to her now, she told herself. “This ship found me. I have lived here a while. Will stay a while longer, I think. There are friends here worth talking with.”
“I am glad, then,” Vector said, his field tentatively brushing hers. His inclination toward solitude was greater even than hers. But he was glad to see her again, glad she was not dead. Deeply grateful that she had saved his life. Events following one after another. Small actions, small chances, adding up. He understood this intimately.
She leaned into him suddenly, wrapping her arms around the torso she had rebuilt, pleased by the solidity of it, the planes of his armor against hers. She had been separated from her brothers for far longer than she ever had closeted herself away in her workshop before. His voice, his fields, reminded her of first days, first battles won. Happiness amidst their fierce struggle.
“There are things I cannot change," he murmured against her helm, settling his arms and fields around her, closing his optics. He remembered now the foe who had so nearly extinguished him. Neither his traitor brothers nor agents of the Unmaker. Five-faced beings of terrible malice. He must take up sword and battle again, but he had time.
"And things you will not." He had not tried to undo her murder - attempted murder. And yet in so refraining he had freed her completely. Maker below, she was glad she had not been given his task.
"If you wish it, I will not tell our brothers." He flexed his new solar wings, restless. She could feel him trembling with desire for the stars. She stroked the fine mechanisms of his fingers, which she had so enjoyed cleaning and polishing while he lay on her repair table.
She lifted her spaulders, considering, let them drop. Nexus would want to know. She had found him interesting; his joy in change and experimentation, their shared compulsion for creation. But he had been a little too proud of the Weaponsmaster's attention. Let him mourn and move on. He had no doubt done so already. Alpha Trion and Alchemist, though. Therius and Beta. And Prima. Would it not be unkind to leave them ignorant? Perhaps. But they were all scattering, Vector was right. They were all finding new lives after the Unmaker's defeat. Most of them would never meet again in any case. "Please do not," she said.
He turned his hand beneath hers, curled his fingers around her palm. He would keep her secret across all eternities. “Very well,” he said. He knew she would not have allowed him to become aware of her presence if she had thought he would betray such a confidence.
Smiling, she clasped his hands, caressed him with her fields. “Fare well,” she murmured, and turning, left him. She had work to do.
Vector transformed, anxious now to put his new body to a fuller test. The vast ship flexed its shields around him, forming a neat passage for him, out into space. The stars and their worlds called to him.