Becoming - Chapter 11
Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Becoming
11
Present
The snowfall had slacked off, and they were faced only with barren rock. Hours had passed since they had last seen Sam, and they couldn’t find him. Blaster and his cassettes had shown up shortly after they had lost him, being careful to mask their frequencies as they neared Decepticon territory. But even with his help, tracking down Sam was difficult. Whatever was going on in Sam’s mind was worsening, and his frequencies seemed to be coming everywhere at once. Blaster simply couldn’t pinpoint his location.
They retraced their path along towards the Decepticon base, thinking that he must have retreated there.
The situation worsened when, suddenly, Blaster doubled over, optics shuttering and hands to his temple. His cassettes crowded him, their combined questions and worries overriding the individual words.
“Blaster? Are you okay?” Bumblebee asked, nearing his comrade.
The way Blaster looked when he turned towards Bumblebee…that look would haunt the scout for vorns to come. With his optics a faded white-blue, the communications mech whispered, “He knows.”
It only took an astrosecond of confusion before all of them realized who Blaster was talking about. Bumblebee’s spark skipped a pulse.
Time was against their side, now. Soundwave knew that his precious project had gone missing.
They had to find him.
But they had been looking for Sam with the question of where Sonar would go. They never asked where Sam would go, and as soon as that realization hit them, they knew where he was.
They just hoped they could get there in time.
Past
Sometimes, Mikaela thought that she and Sam must have loved each other in a selfish way.
Well, no. Not really. Selfish love wasn’t really love at all. But sometimes she wondered if she and Sam got together for less than pure reasons. Maybe, to Sam, she was a charity case that he couldn’t bring himself to abandon. Maybe, to her, Sam was the last remnant of her human life that she was too scared to let go of.
Once she almost told him of her fears, but he knew what she was getting at even before she said it.
“Don’t say that,” he told her, eyes hard. “Don’t you ever say that.”
Sam was a good guy. He was a nice, dorky boy-next-door who had an unexpected spine of steel in him. He felt too much and showed it, too, and he was easily flustered, frustrated, and embarrassed. But you had to push a lot of buttons to get him truly angry.
That was the only time she could remember when he had been angry at her, and though she could scarcely feel it, she knew that his grip tightened on her hand that had, even without the upgrades, already dwarfed his.
He had brushed his fingers against her temple, mimicking the motions that he used to do when she had been in a human body and he had brushed the hair from her eyes. His eyes turned soft again, and he smiled that strange, strained smile.
They didn’t tell each other that they loved each other then. There was no need to.
No matter what it was in the beginning, it was love in the end. For them, that was enough.
He stayed with her through everything. He was there when the horrifying changes started happening to her. He was there, holding her hand, when Ratchet told her exactly what had happened, what was inside her, and what would need to be done. He was with her when disguised government agents lied to her father while she said good-bye from a distance. He was with her through New-bot “physiotherapy,” through training sessions, through mission simulations…He was always with her.
And then, one day, he was gone, somehow taken from the very heart of the Autobot base.
She wanted to be gone, too.
She wouldn’t realize until later how horrified the Autobots must have been. The loss of a precious friend had shocked them badly, and now they were forced to watch her wither away. They tried their best to help her, but in the end, the decision was hers…as it always had been.
She went away for awhile, deciding to continue her training with Elita-1’s squad. The Autobots who had essentially raised her let her go, deciding that she could use the change and the space and the…the time.
Defeat was uncharacteristic of Miss Mikaela Banes, and she was still Mikaela, no matter what had happened. Optimus, and Bumblebee, and Sam…they had all helped her to see that. Somehow, she picked up the pieces, just taking it day by day, step by step. She had to let go. She had to grow up.
She would fight, she would live.
For Sam, for Bumblebee, for herself.
Present
He didn’t know how long he had been walking. It must have been quite some time-an orn, maybe more, because he found himself at the outskirts of a human city, and he knew that this particular city was unnervingly close to the Autobot base. The thought of the Autobots being so close and Soundwave being so far away and out of contact sent him trembling, but even though fear and panic had slowly given way to fatigue, he could not stop. He was being controlled by a force greater than himself. It wasn’t until he had reached his destination that the voices in his head quieted and that-
Hey Sam! There’s my boy!
Mommy missed you, Sammy.
--that he could look down where he had been unwillingly dragged.
He had left his helmet somewhere-maybe back at the cave with the strange femme, he couldn’t quite remember. But now, not only could he easily see that he was in human burial ground, but he could also see the names on each tombstone, faded with the passage of time.
And in front of him was a cluster of three tombstones. The one on the left read “Judy Witwicky,” the right bore the name of “Ronald Witwicky.” All his fears, all his worries, all his questions about the femme whose name he knew was Mikaela and the Autobot whose name he knew was Bumblebee although he didn’t know why he knew that-it all went away, replaced by sheer horror. He felt his eyes widen in disbelief, felt tears stinging his face and clouding his vision, felt himself numb to anything but the grief welling deep inside him, and he did not know why.
And the pain.
He was hurting worse than when he was first upgraded, his implants burning into him, dulled only by the soft reassurances that he would realize later came from Soundwave and from his siblings. But this was different, because there was so much pain on the inside, and nothing would make it go away. It burned and twisted until he wanted to scream, to howl to the skies, and it was all because those two humans in the ground were gone from him.
They’d never laugh with him again, never scold him again, never hug him, never worry about him, never hold him.
Had they ever? He didn’t know these two humans, did he?
But if he didn’t, then why did he hurt so?
They were gone to wherever humans went when their time came.
Gone, gone, gone.
And his gaze strayed to the gravestone in the centre, where the name “Samuel Witwicky” was chiseled into the stone. He sank to his knees, just staring at the little human family, acutely aware that he had lost something very important, but, like many things, he still didn’t know what.
“Why do you matter to me?” he whispered to the long-gone humans, still speaking in that strange human language that was, at the same time, alien and familiar.
He felt very tired, then. He just wanted to lie there, hidden in the snow and in the shadows, until the world forgot him and he could be with them again.
Past
They came slowly, sometimes in twos, sometimes in threes, sometimes more. They rarely ever came alone. Even before they had found their guardians, they found each other first. Something in each of them-perhaps their frequencies, perhaps their spark-pulse, perhaps something else-craved each other’s company. And Sonar, apparently, sent out the strongest signals. That’s how they found the rest of their family, by answering to Sonar’s broadcasts, by following the signals. They didn’t understand why the older Decepticons were very solitary at times. Sure, each New-con had an own “territory,” but not to the extent of their elders.
Perhaps it was all part of growing up. Perhaps it was just something in their design or in their programming.
They sensed that their elders disapproved of their groupings. Sonar, a little better at reading frequencies due to an early training, could easily read the less than happy emotions coming off their watchers. A warrior who could not live alone could not fight alone.
One day, the Nokiacons Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Mo were scurrying along the shafts of the base and overheard a conversation between two elder Decepticons.
“Look at them, always crowding together. They scream like the Pit if we try to separate them. If Lord Megatron were here-“
“Mute it! Lord Starscream is leader now. You know those seekers. Trine mechs, through and through. Of course he’s going to encourage this.”
At the time, none of them could make any sense of this conversation. In any case, what was viewed as a childish behaviour was tolerated.
And as they grew older, they only grew closer. But that didn’t stop competition. Each of them trained every day, flaunted their limited talents and skills, hoping to be good enough to catch the optic of an elder and to be adopted.
None of them had creators. None of them had a creator to show them the way, to show them how to fight and how to survive.
None of them, save for Sonar.
The other New-cons were slightly jealous of the technopath and his cassette co-creations. As one of the highest-ranking and therefore as one of the strongest officers, many of the New-cons wanted Soundwave as an adopted creator. But it seemed as though the communications officer was quite content with his current number.
“So,” Blitz said conversationally one day, attempting to corner and catch the smaller New-con. Around them, the other New-cons watched, some in interest, some in boredom. “What’s he like?”
“Who?” Sonar asked distractedly as Blitz lunged and he ducked, scrambling out of the way. They turned to face one another again.
“Soundwave. Your creator.” A feint to the left, another lunge, and Sonar was too slow. He found himself pinned to the ground by his pack-mate, smirking faceplate inches away from his own. His sensors were going ballistic, almost blinding his eyes from behind the mask.
His frequencies scrambled, got a hold of a channel that Blitz had unknowingly left vulnerable, and twisted. The larger and heavier New-con howled in pain, scrambled off of him, and Sonar leaped to his feet.
Blitz’s frequencies writhed and flailed and went out of Sonar’s grip. The mental shields came down immediately. Blitz wouldn’t be making the same mistake.
The question actually surprised Sonar. “What’s he like?” he repeated slowly. “Umm…”
What could he say? Soundwave was his creator, his whole world. He’d do anything for him.
What was he like? He had heard his creator been described as dangerous when angered, although Sonar wasn’t any judge of that. Soundwave always seemed so controlled to him, so calm and so rational, a mech of peace in times of carnage. He was someone stable to hold on to. He was secretive, perhaps. Sonar always did have a feeling that Soundwave wasn’t telling him everything when he asked a question. But he was still very young, not more than half a vorn old. Maybe Soundwave thought that he wouldn’t be able to understand the answers yet.
The New-cons described him as powerful, but that was hardly a fair description. Sonar knew that ‘powerful’ had barely begun to describe him. Besides, the description wouldn’t satisfy Blitz anyway. The New-cons viewed a lot of the elder Decepticons as powerful.
What was he like? Sonar couldn’t quite answer that question.
Blitz barreled towards him, and Sonar scrambled out of the way, formulating an answer as Blitz regained control of his momentum and balance. It was a dumb thing to do; any other New-con would have taken advantage of the momentary weakness. But the question engrossed the technopath until the scuffle became a secondary matter.
Sonar knew the world in emotions. Knew the puppy-like admiration that the New-cons (including himself) felt towards the older Decepticons, knew the chaotic thoughts that emanated from Barricade, knew the sly triumph that came from Lord Starscream, knew the….the….
He couldn’t name it, what Soundwave felt towards him. He just knew that it was there, and, more importantly, he knew how Soundwave made him feel.
“He’s my creator,” he finally said lamely. But instead of mocking his less-than-elegant answer, Blitz just nodded before catching Sonar off-guard, trapping him in a bear-hug.
Sonar squirmed, frequencies thrashing, and Blitz’s grip tightened painfully. Grudgingly, he admitted defeat to his older pack-mate.
Grinning smugly, Blitz put him down, patting his head patronizingly.
But his thoughts were still on the conversation.
“That’s all anyone wants,” Blitz said quietly, almost to himself. Around them, the other New-cons listened to this exchange with interest, and Sonar could vaguely sense a strange and uncomfortable feeling deep inside them surface for just that moment.
They just wanted their creator. They just wanted to be together.
They just wanted to be loved.
Sadly, none of them would realize this for many vorns to come.
Present
Bumblebee and Mikaela’s suspicions were right. As they neared the graveyard, his signals became stronger, overriding all the other false leads in Blaster’s in-built radar.
“I better go in first,” he said, motioning to Bumblebee and Mikaela. He spoke through their protests. “It’d be best if a mech who didn’t know him…if a mech who isn’t in his memories talks to him. That way, he won’t have another one of those episodes as you’ve described.” Stiffly, reluctantly, they nodded.
They’d do anything at this point. They were so close now, yet still so far away.
They just wanted their friend back.
Blaster and his cassettes entered the graveyard, whispering fervent apologies to those who slumbered as they carefully made their way to where the signal was strongest.
Blaster found him, lying atop a grave. The cassettes looked at each other uneasily.
Sam was awake, but did not react to Blaster’s presence. His frequencies were placid, almost calm now, starkly contrasting the violent panic that had overridden them before. Carefully, very, very carefully, Blaster enveloped the smaller being’s frequencies with his own in what he hoped was a comforting way.
Still no response. Sam wasn’t clinging to him, as he did when he had mistaken him for Soundwave, but neither did he push him away. He was just very…passive, as if he’d just stopped caring about…well, about everything.
Blaster tried the less invasive, verbal method. “Sam?”
“Who were they?”
Blaster’s optics shuttered at the unexpected response. “Who, Sam?”
“Them.” He raised an arm, feebly gesturing towards the gravestone on the left, and then on the right. Blaster zoomed his viewscreens, and felt his spark give a strange pulse when he recognized the names.
Sam was lying atop his own grave.
There was a pause, and Blaster gently said, “They were your parents, kid.”
“Parents?” He said the word like it was alien to him. After all this time and after all that had happened, it might as well have been.
“Yeah. Your creators.”
“Soundwave…” Blaster forced his frequencies to be still, to not show his true feelings of shock and revulsion when Sam had said that name. How was he ever going to explain to Sam what Soundwave had done to him, or, more importantly, why he had done it? He couldn’t face the truth himself. Thankfully, Sam moved the conversation to a different subject. Maybe he couldn’t deal with it either.
“Were they happy?”
“Blaster,” Ramhorn hissed, pawing the ground nervously. They all knew that Soundwave was coming. They didn’t have time to indulge in these questions. The smart thing to do was to grab the kid and go.
But Blaster couldn’t bring himself to be that heartless.
“They were strong,” he said finally, knowing that it wasn’t much of an answer. How could he answer that? The family members of the New-bots were lied to, in order to keep them safe. But Sam was still physically human, and thus not under Autobot custody in the same way that the New-bots were. Ron and Judy Witwicky were one of the few human civilians who regularly contacted the Autobots, even after Sam had vanished. They wanted to make sure that no other parent had to bear their pain. He couldn’t remember Ron and Judy being happy. How could they, when they were convinced that they had outlived their son? Whenever Blaster remembered them, he remembered a haunted look in their features that Blaster recognized all too well. Time didn’t heal; it just made you better at hiding the scars.
He should know. Every Autobot, including himself, was living proof.
“Did they love me?”
“With all their being.”
He got up very, very slowly, gaze still cast towards the ground. Blaster saw that his eyes were damp, tears glistening on silver implants. Sam probably didn’t even realize that he was crying. He probably didn’t even know he could.
“Does Soundwave love me?”
He asked it in a small, almost desperate voice, and he sounded so pitiful that Blaster’s instinct was to tell an outrageous lie and say, Of course he loves you. But he held that urge in check. Sam had been starved so long of the truth; he wasn’t about to make things worse by encouraging Sam’s misplaced devotion to the twisted mech.
But telling the truth now would just about shatter him. He couldn’t handle that yet.
“Come home with us, Sam,” Blaster said instead, bending down and reaching out coaxingly. “It’ll all be better soon.”
Sam blinked, and then finally turned to stare at him, as though coming out of a trance. He hesitated, and his frequencies felt unsure and stiff in Blaster’s embrace, and he feared that he would bolt again. Soundwave had probably taught him to hate all Autobots in general, and Blaster in particular. If not Soundwave, than the cassettes would have educated him thusly.
Behind him, he could feel his own cassettes tense, preparing themselves for a chase. They didn’t want to hurt him, but letting Soundwave get him back would be worse for him than a few bruises.
“Okay,” he said, getting up slowly, and the cassettes backed down, surprised. As though he had been doing it ever since he was changed, Sam climbed into Blaster’s hand, and let the communications mech take him to the two people who had missed him so badly that it hurt.
X x X
They couldn’t find him. The signals were scrambled, either through Sonar’s own panic or through some Autobot mechanism, and the result was that Sonar’s frequencies seemed to be coming in from random directions. They painstakingly inspected each channel, trying to find which frequencies were real and which were merely echoes and echoes of echoes, forced to pause every so often to get their bearings.
Sonar still wasn’t responding to them.
None of them ever let the thought of what the Autobots would do to their brother consume them. That would never happen. They wouldn’t let it happen.
Each passing day, each passing hour only made them more desperate.
Glitching little fragger, Frenzy thought. Once you get back over here and Soundwave puts you right again, I am going to kick your sorry ass!
Inspecting one channel, Ratbat nearly ran into an all-too familiar frequency. Thankfully, Soundwave managed to pull him away before Blaster realized that he was being watched.
How strange. Even for a second-rate technopath, Blaster or his cassettes should still have sensed Ratbat there.
Which meant that they were all distracted by something…or someone.
Blaster was here, occupied and far away from the Autobot base where he usually hid.
And their brother was missing, and was in this general area.
They’d gouge out their own optics if it turned out to be a coincidence.
Just hang on, we’re coming.
~ Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 ~
Becoming
11
Present
The snowfall had slacked off, and they were faced only with barren rock. Hours had passed since they had last seen Sam, and they couldn’t find him. Blaster and his cassettes had shown up shortly after they had lost him, being careful to mask their frequencies as they neared Decepticon territory. But even with his help, tracking down Sam was difficult. Whatever was going on in Sam’s mind was worsening, and his frequencies seemed to be coming everywhere at once. Blaster simply couldn’t pinpoint his location.
They retraced their path along towards the Decepticon base, thinking that he must have retreated there.
The situation worsened when, suddenly, Blaster doubled over, optics shuttering and hands to his temple. His cassettes crowded him, their combined questions and worries overriding the individual words.
“Blaster? Are you okay?” Bumblebee asked, nearing his comrade.
The way Blaster looked when he turned towards Bumblebee…that look would haunt the scout for vorns to come. With his optics a faded white-blue, the communications mech whispered, “He knows.”
It only took an astrosecond of confusion before all of them realized who Blaster was talking about. Bumblebee’s spark skipped a pulse.
Time was against their side, now. Soundwave knew that his precious project had gone missing.
They had to find him.
But they had been looking for Sam with the question of where Sonar would go. They never asked where Sam would go, and as soon as that realization hit them, they knew where he was.
They just hoped they could get there in time.
Past
Sometimes, Mikaela thought that she and Sam must have loved each other in a selfish way.
Well, no. Not really. Selfish love wasn’t really love at all. But sometimes she wondered if she and Sam got together for less than pure reasons. Maybe, to Sam, she was a charity case that he couldn’t bring himself to abandon. Maybe, to her, Sam was the last remnant of her human life that she was too scared to let go of.
Once she almost told him of her fears, but he knew what she was getting at even before she said it.
“Don’t say that,” he told her, eyes hard. “Don’t you ever say that.”
Sam was a good guy. He was a nice, dorky boy-next-door who had an unexpected spine of steel in him. He felt too much and showed it, too, and he was easily flustered, frustrated, and embarrassed. But you had to push a lot of buttons to get him truly angry.
That was the only time she could remember when he had been angry at her, and though she could scarcely feel it, she knew that his grip tightened on her hand that had, even without the upgrades, already dwarfed his.
He had brushed his fingers against her temple, mimicking the motions that he used to do when she had been in a human body and he had brushed the hair from her eyes. His eyes turned soft again, and he smiled that strange, strained smile.
They didn’t tell each other that they loved each other then. There was no need to.
No matter what it was in the beginning, it was love in the end. For them, that was enough.
He stayed with her through everything. He was there when the horrifying changes started happening to her. He was there, holding her hand, when Ratchet told her exactly what had happened, what was inside her, and what would need to be done. He was with her when disguised government agents lied to her father while she said good-bye from a distance. He was with her through New-bot “physiotherapy,” through training sessions, through mission simulations…He was always with her.
And then, one day, he was gone, somehow taken from the very heart of the Autobot base.
She wanted to be gone, too.
She wouldn’t realize until later how horrified the Autobots must have been. The loss of a precious friend had shocked them badly, and now they were forced to watch her wither away. They tried their best to help her, but in the end, the decision was hers…as it always had been.
She went away for awhile, deciding to continue her training with Elita-1’s squad. The Autobots who had essentially raised her let her go, deciding that she could use the change and the space and the…the time.
Defeat was uncharacteristic of Miss Mikaela Banes, and she was still Mikaela, no matter what had happened. Optimus, and Bumblebee, and Sam…they had all helped her to see that. Somehow, she picked up the pieces, just taking it day by day, step by step. She had to let go. She had to grow up.
She would fight, she would live.
For Sam, for Bumblebee, for herself.
Present
He didn’t know how long he had been walking. It must have been quite some time-an orn, maybe more, because he found himself at the outskirts of a human city, and he knew that this particular city was unnervingly close to the Autobot base. The thought of the Autobots being so close and Soundwave being so far away and out of contact sent him trembling, but even though fear and panic had slowly given way to fatigue, he could not stop. He was being controlled by a force greater than himself. It wasn’t until he had reached his destination that the voices in his head quieted and that-
Hey Sam! There’s my boy!
Mommy missed you, Sammy.
--that he could look down where he had been unwillingly dragged.
He had left his helmet somewhere-maybe back at the cave with the strange femme, he couldn’t quite remember. But now, not only could he easily see that he was in human burial ground, but he could also see the names on each tombstone, faded with the passage of time.
And in front of him was a cluster of three tombstones. The one on the left read “Judy Witwicky,” the right bore the name of “Ronald Witwicky.” All his fears, all his worries, all his questions about the femme whose name he knew was Mikaela and the Autobot whose name he knew was Bumblebee although he didn’t know why he knew that-it all went away, replaced by sheer horror. He felt his eyes widen in disbelief, felt tears stinging his face and clouding his vision, felt himself numb to anything but the grief welling deep inside him, and he did not know why.
And the pain.
He was hurting worse than when he was first upgraded, his implants burning into him, dulled only by the soft reassurances that he would realize later came from Soundwave and from his siblings. But this was different, because there was so much pain on the inside, and nothing would make it go away. It burned and twisted until he wanted to scream, to howl to the skies, and it was all because those two humans in the ground were gone from him.
They’d never laugh with him again, never scold him again, never hug him, never worry about him, never hold him.
Had they ever? He didn’t know these two humans, did he?
But if he didn’t, then why did he hurt so?
They were gone to wherever humans went when their time came.
Gone, gone, gone.
And his gaze strayed to the gravestone in the centre, where the name “Samuel Witwicky” was chiseled into the stone. He sank to his knees, just staring at the little human family, acutely aware that he had lost something very important, but, like many things, he still didn’t know what.
“Why do you matter to me?” he whispered to the long-gone humans, still speaking in that strange human language that was, at the same time, alien and familiar.
He felt very tired, then. He just wanted to lie there, hidden in the snow and in the shadows, until the world forgot him and he could be with them again.
Past
They came slowly, sometimes in twos, sometimes in threes, sometimes more. They rarely ever came alone. Even before they had found their guardians, they found each other first. Something in each of them-perhaps their frequencies, perhaps their spark-pulse, perhaps something else-craved each other’s company. And Sonar, apparently, sent out the strongest signals. That’s how they found the rest of their family, by answering to Sonar’s broadcasts, by following the signals. They didn’t understand why the older Decepticons were very solitary at times. Sure, each New-con had an own “territory,” but not to the extent of their elders.
Perhaps it was all part of growing up. Perhaps it was just something in their design or in their programming.
They sensed that their elders disapproved of their groupings. Sonar, a little better at reading frequencies due to an early training, could easily read the less than happy emotions coming off their watchers. A warrior who could not live alone could not fight alone.
One day, the Nokiacons Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Mo were scurrying along the shafts of the base and overheard a conversation between two elder Decepticons.
“Look at them, always crowding together. They scream like the Pit if we try to separate them. If Lord Megatron were here-“
“Mute it! Lord Starscream is leader now. You know those seekers. Trine mechs, through and through. Of course he’s going to encourage this.”
At the time, none of them could make any sense of this conversation. In any case, what was viewed as a childish behaviour was tolerated.
And as they grew older, they only grew closer. But that didn’t stop competition. Each of them trained every day, flaunted their limited talents and skills, hoping to be good enough to catch the optic of an elder and to be adopted.
None of them had creators. None of them had a creator to show them the way, to show them how to fight and how to survive.
None of them, save for Sonar.
The other New-cons were slightly jealous of the technopath and his cassette co-creations. As one of the highest-ranking and therefore as one of the strongest officers, many of the New-cons wanted Soundwave as an adopted creator. But it seemed as though the communications officer was quite content with his current number.
“So,” Blitz said conversationally one day, attempting to corner and catch the smaller New-con. Around them, the other New-cons watched, some in interest, some in boredom. “What’s he like?”
“Who?” Sonar asked distractedly as Blitz lunged and he ducked, scrambling out of the way. They turned to face one another again.
“Soundwave. Your creator.” A feint to the left, another lunge, and Sonar was too slow. He found himself pinned to the ground by his pack-mate, smirking faceplate inches away from his own. His sensors were going ballistic, almost blinding his eyes from behind the mask.
His frequencies scrambled, got a hold of a channel that Blitz had unknowingly left vulnerable, and twisted. The larger and heavier New-con howled in pain, scrambled off of him, and Sonar leaped to his feet.
Blitz’s frequencies writhed and flailed and went out of Sonar’s grip. The mental shields came down immediately. Blitz wouldn’t be making the same mistake.
The question actually surprised Sonar. “What’s he like?” he repeated slowly. “Umm…”
What could he say? Soundwave was his creator, his whole world. He’d do anything for him.
What was he like? He had heard his creator been described as dangerous when angered, although Sonar wasn’t any judge of that. Soundwave always seemed so controlled to him, so calm and so rational, a mech of peace in times of carnage. He was someone stable to hold on to. He was secretive, perhaps. Sonar always did have a feeling that Soundwave wasn’t telling him everything when he asked a question. But he was still very young, not more than half a vorn old. Maybe Soundwave thought that he wouldn’t be able to understand the answers yet.
The New-cons described him as powerful, but that was hardly a fair description. Sonar knew that ‘powerful’ had barely begun to describe him. Besides, the description wouldn’t satisfy Blitz anyway. The New-cons viewed a lot of the elder Decepticons as powerful.
What was he like? Sonar couldn’t quite answer that question.
Blitz barreled towards him, and Sonar scrambled out of the way, formulating an answer as Blitz regained control of his momentum and balance. It was a dumb thing to do; any other New-con would have taken advantage of the momentary weakness. But the question engrossed the technopath until the scuffle became a secondary matter.
Sonar knew the world in emotions. Knew the puppy-like admiration that the New-cons (including himself) felt towards the older Decepticons, knew the chaotic thoughts that emanated from Barricade, knew the sly triumph that came from Lord Starscream, knew the….the….
He couldn’t name it, what Soundwave felt towards him. He just knew that it was there, and, more importantly, he knew how Soundwave made him feel.
“He’s my creator,” he finally said lamely. But instead of mocking his less-than-elegant answer, Blitz just nodded before catching Sonar off-guard, trapping him in a bear-hug.
Sonar squirmed, frequencies thrashing, and Blitz’s grip tightened painfully. Grudgingly, he admitted defeat to his older pack-mate.
Grinning smugly, Blitz put him down, patting his head patronizingly.
But his thoughts were still on the conversation.
“That’s all anyone wants,” Blitz said quietly, almost to himself. Around them, the other New-cons listened to this exchange with interest, and Sonar could vaguely sense a strange and uncomfortable feeling deep inside them surface for just that moment.
They just wanted their creator. They just wanted to be together.
They just wanted to be loved.
Sadly, none of them would realize this for many vorns to come.
Present
Bumblebee and Mikaela’s suspicions were right. As they neared the graveyard, his signals became stronger, overriding all the other false leads in Blaster’s in-built radar.
“I better go in first,” he said, motioning to Bumblebee and Mikaela. He spoke through their protests. “It’d be best if a mech who didn’t know him…if a mech who isn’t in his memories talks to him. That way, he won’t have another one of those episodes as you’ve described.” Stiffly, reluctantly, they nodded.
They’d do anything at this point. They were so close now, yet still so far away.
They just wanted their friend back.
Blaster and his cassettes entered the graveyard, whispering fervent apologies to those who slumbered as they carefully made their way to where the signal was strongest.
Blaster found him, lying atop a grave. The cassettes looked at each other uneasily.
Sam was awake, but did not react to Blaster’s presence. His frequencies were placid, almost calm now, starkly contrasting the violent panic that had overridden them before. Carefully, very, very carefully, Blaster enveloped the smaller being’s frequencies with his own in what he hoped was a comforting way.
Still no response. Sam wasn’t clinging to him, as he did when he had mistaken him for Soundwave, but neither did he push him away. He was just very…passive, as if he’d just stopped caring about…well, about everything.
Blaster tried the less invasive, verbal method. “Sam?”
“Who were they?”
Blaster’s optics shuttered at the unexpected response. “Who, Sam?”
“Them.” He raised an arm, feebly gesturing towards the gravestone on the left, and then on the right. Blaster zoomed his viewscreens, and felt his spark give a strange pulse when he recognized the names.
Sam was lying atop his own grave.
There was a pause, and Blaster gently said, “They were your parents, kid.”
“Parents?” He said the word like it was alien to him. After all this time and after all that had happened, it might as well have been.
“Yeah. Your creators.”
“Soundwave…” Blaster forced his frequencies to be still, to not show his true feelings of shock and revulsion when Sam had said that name. How was he ever going to explain to Sam what Soundwave had done to him, or, more importantly, why he had done it? He couldn’t face the truth himself. Thankfully, Sam moved the conversation to a different subject. Maybe he couldn’t deal with it either.
“Were they happy?”
“Blaster,” Ramhorn hissed, pawing the ground nervously. They all knew that Soundwave was coming. They didn’t have time to indulge in these questions. The smart thing to do was to grab the kid and go.
But Blaster couldn’t bring himself to be that heartless.
“They were strong,” he said finally, knowing that it wasn’t much of an answer. How could he answer that? The family members of the New-bots were lied to, in order to keep them safe. But Sam was still physically human, and thus not under Autobot custody in the same way that the New-bots were. Ron and Judy Witwicky were one of the few human civilians who regularly contacted the Autobots, even after Sam had vanished. They wanted to make sure that no other parent had to bear their pain. He couldn’t remember Ron and Judy being happy. How could they, when they were convinced that they had outlived their son? Whenever Blaster remembered them, he remembered a haunted look in their features that Blaster recognized all too well. Time didn’t heal; it just made you better at hiding the scars.
He should know. Every Autobot, including himself, was living proof.
“Did they love me?”
“With all their being.”
He got up very, very slowly, gaze still cast towards the ground. Blaster saw that his eyes were damp, tears glistening on silver implants. Sam probably didn’t even realize that he was crying. He probably didn’t even know he could.
“Does Soundwave love me?”
He asked it in a small, almost desperate voice, and he sounded so pitiful that Blaster’s instinct was to tell an outrageous lie and say, Of course he loves you. But he held that urge in check. Sam had been starved so long of the truth; he wasn’t about to make things worse by encouraging Sam’s misplaced devotion to the twisted mech.
But telling the truth now would just about shatter him. He couldn’t handle that yet.
“Come home with us, Sam,” Blaster said instead, bending down and reaching out coaxingly. “It’ll all be better soon.”
Sam blinked, and then finally turned to stare at him, as though coming out of a trance. He hesitated, and his frequencies felt unsure and stiff in Blaster’s embrace, and he feared that he would bolt again. Soundwave had probably taught him to hate all Autobots in general, and Blaster in particular. If not Soundwave, than the cassettes would have educated him thusly.
Behind him, he could feel his own cassettes tense, preparing themselves for a chase. They didn’t want to hurt him, but letting Soundwave get him back would be worse for him than a few bruises.
“Okay,” he said, getting up slowly, and the cassettes backed down, surprised. As though he had been doing it ever since he was changed, Sam climbed into Blaster’s hand, and let the communications mech take him to the two people who had missed him so badly that it hurt.
X x X
They couldn’t find him. The signals were scrambled, either through Sonar’s own panic or through some Autobot mechanism, and the result was that Sonar’s frequencies seemed to be coming in from random directions. They painstakingly inspected each channel, trying to find which frequencies were real and which were merely echoes and echoes of echoes, forced to pause every so often to get their bearings.
Sonar still wasn’t responding to them.
None of them ever let the thought of what the Autobots would do to their brother consume them. That would never happen. They wouldn’t let it happen.
Each passing day, each passing hour only made them more desperate.
Glitching little fragger, Frenzy thought. Once you get back over here and Soundwave puts you right again, I am going to kick your sorry ass!
Inspecting one channel, Ratbat nearly ran into an all-too familiar frequency. Thankfully, Soundwave managed to pull him away before Blaster realized that he was being watched.
How strange. Even for a second-rate technopath, Blaster or his cassettes should still have sensed Ratbat there.
Which meant that they were all distracted by something…or someone.
Blaster was here, occupied and far away from the Autobot base where he usually hid.
And their brother was missing, and was in this general area.
They’d gouge out their own optics if it turned out to be a coincidence.
Just hang on, we’re coming.
~ Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 ~