Seekers Come In Threes.
Summary: When Sam is injured and remodelled, he is not the only one to be changed.
Rating: M for violence and mention of bodily fluids.
Continuity: Movieverse.
Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro and Dreamworks/Paramount, not me (for which I imagine the TF's are eternally grateful!)
A/N: This idea was sparked by a comment by Anne Clothier. Thanks!
Seekers come in Threes.
Sam's first introduction to Skywarp occurred when he was in his back yard putting out the trash: the Seeker popped into existence above him, scooped him up in one metal hand and popped out of existence again even as Sam screamed. When Bumblebee, (who had begun transforming the moment he saw the Seeker's shadow fall over the house) got there, there was no Seeker, but most importantly, no Sam, just the trash bins, both on their sides, the contents spilling and being blown everywhere.
At about the time Bumblebee was looking about the yard, two kilometers away, Skywarp was stood at Starscream's door at the Decepticon Base, Sam clutched in one hand. As Starscream allowed the door to open, Skywarp strode in, and held out the fisted hand with Sam trapped in the middle towards Starscream triumphantly. Starscream looked at the fist, the feet sticking out of the bottom, the tops of Sam's shoulders and his pale, sweating, grimacing face and said "Skywarp! Loosen your grip a little before you crush him!"
As the other Seeker complied, Sam's face lost its pained look but didn't regain colour or lose the fearful look. Starscream stepped forwards and put his hands out; Skywarp obeyed the unspoken command, dropping Sam into them. Starscream drew the hands close to his face, studying the sprawled human lying in them intently.
"Good work, Skywarp, good initiative!" Starscream crowed. "We may be able to use this one, give him to Barricade to play with a little, but tell them he must be allowed to live and not be too badly damaged. We may have use of you, fleshling worm, but I will not deny my mechs their fun. Your life is dependant on my ploy succeeding, so you should pray it works, or Barricade may find he's permitted to deal with you any way he wishes."
"Oh shit." Sam said as Starscream closed his fingers gently about him and drew his hand back and down.
"At least I can have a bit of fun first." Starscream said. "Ever wondered what it's like to fly, human? Skywarp, catch!"
Sam shrieked as Starscream brought his arm forward again and opened his fingers, throwing Sam underhanded up and out, legs and arms pinwheeling madly.
He felt himself caught by Skywarp, the slap of his body against metal winded him and he groaned as pain in his chest made him suspect a snapped rib. Skywarp lifted him by one leg to optic level, Sam flailed upside down in a panic.
"Heh, time for groundling play time now, maybe we'll get another go with you afterwards." he said.
Still holding Sam upside-down, the Seeker turned and left Starscream's quarters.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
If Sam had thought things couldn't get any worse, he soon found out how wrong he was. When Skywarp took him to Barricade, the black and white Decepticon took great pleasure in calling in two playmates to help him torment Sam. One of them was purple and grey and called Payload, and had an extendable grab on an arm in the middle of his chest, the other was blue and silver and was called Dropkick. Both gave Sam a look he didn't like when Barricade held him up, and both gave evil smiles when Barricade explained he was theirs to play with as long as he wasn't seriously hurt.
After being thrown, squeezed, and flicked around for a bit, Sam passed out. Their answer to that was to half-drown him with a torrent of water. As he coughed and spluttered back to consciousness, he was thrown and caught again, dropped and then jerked to a halt inches from the ground, poked and shoved around by sharp metal fingers, prodded and poked so hard that sometimes blood was drawn.
Barricade seemed to enjoy tormenting Sam by throwing him in the air and catching him again, Payload seemed to delight in letting Sam try to run away and then grabbing him with his extensible arm, pulling the human back so sharply that Sam was sure he'd end up with whiplash injuries to his neck. Dropkick seemed to like grabbing him in his hand so tightly he could not even squirm, and sometimes was unable to breathe, and at times he felt as if he would die, but Dropkick always seemed to know to let go before he passed out from lack of air, but it still hurt.
It wasn't just his lungs either: Dropkick's squeezes had left Sam with a suspected broken arm on one side (both upper and lower), more cracked ribs (number unknown) and a throbbing searing pain in his upper leg on his other side that made him wonder if his upper leg was broken too.
He was beginning to wonder how far they would be permitted to go as Dropkick once again dropped him, wheezing for breath after a squeeze, to the ground. As he opened his eyes, a pair of feet, Seeker feet, stopped in front of him, and he heard a voice say "You were told not to damage him too severely! Permanent disablement or death is counterproductive to our plans!"
He felt Seeker hands pick him up with an odd tenderness, and Sam relished the gentle touch in spite of the fact that it was Starscream who was holding him, and he lay there curled up in Starscream's warm palm, regaining his breath, as the Decepticon leader looked at him.
"I think he's not too badly damaged, luckily for you, you should know not to get carried away. I shall put him in a cell with some fluids, he is not to be disturbed till the morning, maybe a sleep will do him good. I can contact the Autobots in the morning about exchanging him for some fuel."
Starscream thought nothing of the brief tingle that originated in his palm and briefly ran over his body, not associating the sensation with the curled-up squishy in his hand.
However, inside Sam Witwicky, something had begun to rouse.
oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Starscream considered putting Sam in the coldest and smallest cell of the Base, after all, apart from some superficial scratches and the broken parts of his endoskeleton, which the Internet told him could be immobilised by his own kind to self-repair over a few weeks, he appeared unharmed. However, he wanted to be sure that Sam would stay that way, so he put him in one of the bigger cells - a locked room which was at a temperature humans considered comfortable. He was confident that Sam would not be able to escape from the cell, the lock was designed to confound Autobots, a human should not be able to escape.
He put the small fleshling down carefully, and backed out. He didn't need to be chained or manacled, although those could be put on for effect tomorrow for when they contacted the Autobots. Barricade brought a water container the human could drink from if he needed, putting it beside him, and Skywarp and Barricade watched as Starscream entered the seventeen-digit combination to lock the door.
"In the morning we bring him to the communications hub and show him to the Autobots. We can promise them that no further harm will come to him provided that they accede to our demands. For tonight, we let him rest and recover, any bruising should be well coloured up by then, but we want no further harm to come to him."
As Starscream turned aside, he felt moistness on his palm, looking down, he saw a small blob of red and clear fluid. It must have leaked from the Witwicky fleshy. His head had been in that location, it must have come from his ear or his nose. Disgusted, he wiped it away and headed back for his room with Skywarp, as Barricade headed off to get more fuel from the Police pound.
OOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo oOo
Sam was mainly aware that he was lying on his side in a room, and that he was in a lot of pain. It was neither hot nor cold. His broken limbs ached, his chest ached and his stomach and head ached too. There was pain in his whiplashed neck, too, pain that had spread into his head, which was throbbing. His stomach felt oddly full, despite the fact that he had voided his stomach contents within five minutes of being handed to Barricade. His bladder felt uncomfortably full too, and a few minutes later his bladder opened, the contents thicker than standard urine and a cloudy red-orange colour. Sam was unaware of this, for his consciousness was fading rapidly. As he shifted his head, another drop of blood-tinged cerebrospinal fluid dripped from his ear.
The Essence within him detected the deterioration of his vital functions, and realised that action was necessary. It had a pattern for the boy, it had taken that from the Seeker who had carried him. However, Seekers always came in threes, were Sparked in triad, they came in pre-formed trines, it was how they learned to function in a flying wing. The boy would need trine-mates, and the pool available to the Essence was limited. They would need to have touched its old vessel at least once, for it to have a connection, a link to them, and preferably be known to him already, as he would not have a Sparklinghood to learn to interact with them. Of the first, there were roughly three hundred and fifty individuals. Of the second, there were only four, and fortunately, of those four, it found two compatibles.
The boy's transition would take longer, as it was not just reconfiguration but repair that was needed, but the other two should not take too long to change.
As Sam's body began to crackle with AllSpark energy, the Essence reached out to the two, sent energy down the link, and started to change them too.