"Just look at you." Rainbow sniffed, straightening some escue plating on Prowl's shoulders. "All grown up and moving on in life-" She interrupted herself to wipe covertly at her optics, hands trembling.
Prowl reach out, gently grasping her shoulders. "Carrier." He chided kindly. "It's not like I'm moving to a new city. The academy's in the center of Iacon-just two hours away-and I've promised to come home during breaks."
"I know." Rainbow sighed, hugging her youngest creation. "Your sisters and brother didn't leave so young."
"Mother," Prowl tilted her chin up to look at him. "I've legally been an adult for quite some time and my application was accepted. I really need to start building my own life."
Rainbow straightened up. Putting on a brave face, she patted his helm and stepped back, looking him over for anything out of place. "If only Rainshower could see you now. He'd be so pleased with you Prowl. Now, no reason to drag this out, so you just head on off to that accademy of your's and show them all what you can do."
They hugged one last time, then Prowl transformed and drove into the main street.
As he passed by the buildings he'd grown up around, Prowl couldn't help taking a trip down memory lane.
Over to his right was the alley his father first showed him how to transform in. It's graffitied walls and hole studded ground the same now as it had been so many years ago. There was the under cared for park where he and his sisters-his only brother had moved out before Prowl could really remember him-used to try catching the robopigeons. Those adventures almost always ended with one of them falling into the shallow pond or tripping and landing face-first in one of the prickly bushes.
Then there was that convenience store on the corner where Rainbow had taken him to after a ruff day at school and explained to him why it was that so many of the other students teased him and made fun of his chevron and door wings. That was the first day he'd really started to understand what it meant to be of Praxian heritage in Iacon. Prowl considered it a turning point in his life. Although he'd only been twelve, he'd started to realize just how loud his actions spoke of the city of Praxis-even though he'd never even been there-to the Iaconians. Perhaps that was why he'd wanted to be an enforcer. He wanted others to see that having door wings didn't make him any different than any other mech.
The neighborhood he grew up in slowly fell away as Prowl merged with a main road.
Up ahead was the school he'd attended since his family moved to this part of the city. He could see the main entrance was bolted shut, rust slowly eating away at the gate's hinges. Despite this, the complex still functioned as a school. The grounds around the main building were barer now, the walls covered in cheaper paint, the windows barred over. Looking back, he'd gone through a lot at that school: not much of it good.
The schooling complex passed away as Prowl entered a nicer part of the district.
On a sudden impulses, he signaled and left the main road for a side street. It took him a while to find what he was looking for: he hadn't spent much time up here since he was little and there'd been more than a little construction done in the area since then. The white and black mech was just about ready to give his search up as a hopeless endeavor when he found himself driving by the very house he was looking for. Prowl pulled to the side of the street, transformed and stepped over on the the walkway running around the block.
The home he stood before looked little like it did when Prowl had seen it as a child. Although the lawn was still carefully trimmed, it was now dotted with evidence of younglings: colored blocks lay in a pile in front of the gate, a ball was resting under a small bush, and a miniature dollhouse was set up near the porch. The walls had recently been painted over with a coating of blue to cover the exterior he remembered as being grey. It was obvious that the family living here now was not the one Prowl remembered.
Though he'd been young, not even in the double digits yet, Prowl could still recall how confused he'd been when he'd asked his parents if he could invite his close-and probably only-friend Red Alert to play at their house after school, only to get a sad look from his carrier and his father telling him to walk with him. As a mechling, he didn't get why Red Alert was gone, he hadn't seen what was happening.
"Sir?"
Prowl hadn't realized he'd zoned out. "What?"
A light blue femme stepped of the porch, strolling down the walk toward the door winged mech. "Can I help you? Are you looking for an address?" She leaned against the gate.
He wasn't really sure how to respond. "Ah, no."
The femme cast a scrutinizing optic over the mech. "You're lost aren't you. There's been a lot of construction 'round here lately and new families moving in. Just tell me where you need to go and I'll point you in the right direction." Her tone was no less friendly than when she'd first spoken, though Prowl couldn't help but sense she wanted him gone.
"I was just remembering someone who used to live here." Prowl took a step back. He really ought to be getting back on the road and going toward the academy.
"Oh. You related to that Praxian who lived here? Firestone or something like that?"
"No. I, ah, knew his son." Prowl continued stepping back.
"I didn't know that mech had a child." Her voice said she didn't think he should.
"He did." Prowl stepped back onto the road. "Good day." He transformed and sped off.
Prowl didn't change formes again until he reached the enforcer academy in the center of Iacon. He marched up the stairs and straight into the new cadet orientation assembly, finding a seat at the end of a row next to a tall, visored, mech. The meeting was mandatory for all the mechs, and some femmes, whose applications had been accepted, and afterward, they would all be assigned berths in the barracks then sent off for the night to get settled. Tomorrow, classes and training started at dawn. The presenters made it very clear that everyone seated in the room were about to go through five months of the pit. Anyone who wanted out had to leave now. At this, Prowl looked around, noting that a few mechs did indeed depart from the room.
He turned back to the mech on the stand before the cadets. He'd just agreed to go through the worst five months of his whole life. Prowl looked forward to every moment of it.