That battle alone took about five hundred lives on both sides. That was a thousand sparks that have reentered the Well of All Sparks; a thousand mechs or femmes that will never see the faces of their loved ones ever again.
Wheeljack sighed as he walked past the devastation, barely able to look at the bodies of the deceased, Autobot or Decepticon. Energon, the bright hue of pink, splattered and pooled all across the ground. Around the Autobot scientist were the once proud buildings of the Neutral Territory, decimated to nothing. The only few left standing were only about half of the mech's height. The sky above him was coated with a gray haze, hiding the Decepticon-red like sky.
Wheeljack paused in his steps as a ping on his comm. alerted him that someone was contacting him.
"Yes, Ultra Magnus, sir?" Wheeljack answered curtly. He averted his optics as he noticed a Decepticon front-liner's chassis, grotesquely mangled and twisted.
"-Wheeljack,-" the leader of the Autobots said. "-According to our scanners, there is a spark signal just seven hundred mechrnometers from your position." The scientist's spark leaped in its casing; it may have not been much but at least one spark could be saved from this devastation.
'And yet, be joining the War as soon as he or she reaches the final youngling stage,' he thought bitterly.
The Great War had been going on for more than two million years. Primus and the Thirteen alone could fathom how or even when the energon shed would end.
Wheeljack pushed those dark thoughts to the back of his processor; he had to get to the single spark in the middle of all this. He shifted into his vehicle mode and sped past the macabre that was to the front, left, and right of him.
Once Wheeljack neared the seven hundred mechronometer mark, he shifted back into his bi-pedal mode. His helm wings flashed a somber blue as he saw what was left of a small hut-like domicile right in front of him. All but one of the walls were blasted to pieces, scattered to the winds.
"By Primus . . ." Wheeljack murmured somberly as he took a step forward. The engineer immediately stopped as he heard a sound. A sound that he'd thought he'd never hear again.
The sound of a sparkling's cry.
Wheeljack ran to the sound, hoping to be able to save that fragile life.
"I really hope he makes it, the poor thing," Blades murmured as he watched through the glass. The youngest member of Rescue Force Sigma 17, a copter-bot, pressed his face very close to the glass.
"Blades." The orange and white mech felt his leader's heavy servo upon his shoulder. The copter looked up at Heatwave and then sighed.
"Sue me and my Carrier coding; Wheeljack was lucky to find the little guy," Blades ex-vented loudly. Seeing Heatwave's indifferent expression, the younger mech exclaimed, "I know, I'm overreacting about the whole thing. The little blue guy is gonna make it-but think about it! So many 'bots died in that battle! A record high!"
Heatwave nodded in understanding. He too gazed through the glass as the femme medic, Red Alert, tended to the burns the little blue sparkling endured.
The little one was very tiny, about as big as Blade's forearm. He couldn't be more than a few orbital cycles old. His optics were a vibrant blue, yet lonely and frightened of his new surroundings. In the medic's arms, the sparkling squirmed endlessly.
Wheeljack dangerously hovered by the femme medic. Her patience wore thinner and thinner by the nano-click. As he ventured too close to Red Alert again, the femme whipped around to yell something incomprehensible at the engineer.
"Here comes the-" Heatwave said and the Rescue Bots winced as the wrench-though not as infamous as Ratchet's own-collided into Wheeljack's helm, and they can hear the echo from the room.
THUD.
Blades got to the tip of his pedes to see the comatose engineer on the floor. Heatwave guffawed as he heard the little blue sparkling babble happily in Red Alert's arms. It was as if the little one almost laughed at Wheeljack's predicament.
"Well, at least he has some sense of humor," Heatwave chuckled quietly. Blades rolled his optics, but had a small smile as he gazed at the happily babbling sparkling on the other side of the glass.
Outside a remote Decepticon depot . . .
The building was the tallest and largest within the area. Smack in the middle of a Decepticon camp, the facility was gun-metal gray. It contrasted with the darker colors of the surrounding Decepticons and their shabby quarters.
The depot was busy with activity this cycle. Decepticons with a variety of reasons for being at the depot were fighting over supplies, ammunition, and fuel.
"Frag you! Hand it over!"
"Not in your life-cycle!"
"Hand it over!"
"Over my cold and offline chassis!"
"Done."
BANG!
A mech fell over, a gaping hole left in his helm. Two other mechs started to raid his belongings. One had an energon pistol in his servo; from the muzzle, smoke trickled out of it.
"Get the grenades and energon bits," the pistol-wilder rumbled.
Several mechrnometers away, a one-optic mech quickly left the scene. The blue and silver mech held a bundle in under his arm as his supplies were magnetized to his back-strut. And for good reason too.
A prime example of why just occurred right in front of him.
'Scrap' the orange-faced mech thought as he quickly pushed past several mechs. He felt a familiar cold feeling of paranoia as he noticed optics that followed him. The burly mech began to jog through the camp.
'I gotta get outta here'. He hustled away to his tiny claim at the edge of the camp through the in the mass of mechs.
"Hey Breakdown! What's the rush?!" a nearby comrade questioned the mech with the bundle.
Breakdown ignored the mech as he would usually do on a day-to-day basis. But today, the sole survivor of the Stunticons' demise had another reason he really wanted to be alone.
The bundle tucked under his left arm shifted slightly. Soon after, a small whimper reached Breakdown's audio receptors. The big bruiser swore under his breath as he quickly typed in his pass-code. In the meantime, Breakdown looked left and right frantically. He hoped and prayed that Primus would be forgiving right then.
As the entrance to his quarters slid open, the sound of the distressed whines got louder. As if on cue, the entrance to his quarters sealed once again and Breakdown was glad his room was sound-proof.
"Lights at seventy-five percent," the mech said aloud. The room's lights automatically adjusted to his request. Breakdown de-magnetized his supplies from his back and carefully set it down to the ground.
Breakdown winced as a spark-jerking cry emitted from the bundle in his arm. He carefully removed it from his original position. His left arm cradled the squirming thing as his right gently lifted the flap that covered what was inside the blanket.
"Primus forgive me," Breakdown whispered as he gazed at the sparkling in his arms.
A genuine sparkling. Not a Cybertronian that came out of the Well of All Sparks fully grown. A little, baby Cybertronian that wriggled in his hold.
The mech couldn't help it, but he stared at the wide, innocent amber optics the bitlet possessed. The little one scrunched up his face-plates and flailed his arms. He was obviously not happy in his current predicament, and the sparkling let out another sob. Lubricant began to cascade down his optics.
'Ah scrap . . . what am I going to do?' Breakdown wondered to himself. He didn't need to worry apparently, for the little bitlet finally gazed up at him. The sparkling let out an amused warble.
"Huh, that's a first," Breakdown murmured quietly. The little one let out a tiny coo, a complete one-eighty of how he was just seconds ago.
"I can still crush you under my foot you know . . ." Breakdown smirked. He carefully ran his digit over the orange and crème protoform's helm. The little one let out a soft chirp, almost sounding like a content sigh. To the Stunticon's surprise, the little bitlet reached up with his tiny servos and gripped Breakdown's large finger.
'What the frag am I doing?!' Breakdown berated himself mentally. He pulled his digit away from the sparkling's grip.
That bewildered the little sparkling in his arms. Why didn't the big mech want to play with him anymore? Was it something he did?
Breakdown saw the confused expression the sparkling had and sighed. Frankly, the 'Con didn't know what was going through his processor when he rescued the sparkling from the debris. The only standing structure within range to the tiny thing was the wall of a building, nearly a mile away.
And the cold and offline chassis next to the orange sparkling was most likely his Carrier. The blue Decepticon could see the pink drag marks of energon behind the body of the femme. The Carrier had valiantly dragged herself away from the chaos and destruction of her home to protect her offspring. Breakdown hadn't seen that kind of dedication in eons.
A knock on the doors behind him drew Breakdown from his thoughts. He remembered what he had in his arms right then, and tensed.
If he wasn't going to get scrapped for saving a Neutral bornling, it was the sparkling that was going to get crushed, literally. As his spark skipped a beat, Breakdown hushed the little sparkling as the little one started to fuss.
"Please, for the sake of your life and mine," Breakdown pleaded with the sparkling. The ex-Stunticon stared directly into those amber optics. "Stay quiet and close your optics."
He gently folded the little blanket over the bitlet's optics and magnetized his supplies to his back. Breakdown tucked the little one under his right arm. The mech swallowed nervously as he turned and kept his expression neutral as he transformed his left servo into his sledgehammer. One way or another, Breakdown had to get out of here.
The Decepticon camp was no place for a sparkling.
A/N: DUN-DUN-DUN! Hey every body! I know this came out sooner than expected, but I wanted to publish this instead of it collecting dust. Actually, it's a birthday present for myself and to you guys! :D
Thanks for coming to read my AU of TFA! Please read and review or leave a prediction to what'll happen to the little sparklings; the feedback really helps!