Title: This Shining World
Author: Tiamat's Child
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Summary: The Protectobots battle epidemics, play word games, fall into ditches, do the tourist thing, and shock their elders, all in fifty sentences.
A/N: Technically speaking, this is not a claim for the LJ challenge comm 1sentence, despite the fact that I used their theme set Alpha, because they only allow you to actually claim pairings. But – I did borrow, so credit where credit's due.
This Shining World
01 Comfort
When Streetwise, having been forced to call upon a passerby for rescue from his own overheated engine, finally slunk into the garage at three in the morning, he found Hot Spot waiting up for him with a pile of a papers and a, "Don't worry about it – you'll get him tomorrow."
02 Kiss
When Silverbolt interrupted the story of how they'd got kicked out of a drive in to ask exactly why they'd spent the entirety of the featured film loudly protesting "Eeeew, no mushy stuff!" at every kissing scene, Hot Spot shrugged and answered, "Well, we're six – and everyone keeps saying 'Act your age'!"
03 Soft
When summer came and the gentle haze of a second crop spread across the fields, Groove traced his way up and down every inch of the terraced mountain, again and again, until he was too tired to go another foot and his joy had grown so great that he almost thought he could see it, hovering, bright and green.
04 Pain
First Aid refused to discuss his short outs after that first, terrifying incident, and no matter how much Groove coaxed and Streetwise poked and Blades complained and Hot Spot waited, on this point he never did bend: short outs hurt, they frightened him, they got in his way – what else was there to talk about?
05 Potatoes
"No, I won't 'have a nice day' – look, I know this isn't your fault, and you're not the one who lost the customs papers, but somebody screwed up somewhere, and I can't possibly leave without the whole list, there's no way I can do it, the staff up at the station need these supplies or they won't have a single, solitary flake of instant potato left to eat pretty soon, so you'd better find that paperwork and release my cargo!" Blades told the clerk, rapid fire, as he leaned on the sturdy desk between them just enough to make it creak.
06 Rain
"I'm going crazy," Streetwise announced on the third day of their washed-out -bridge induced sojourn in a tiny Peruvian village - "Stark raving," he added, but First Aid was out setting a broken arm and didn't hear.
07 Chocolate
"Well," Streetwise said, when his most recent perpetrator asked him how he'd ever managed to peg her as the culprit, "You've got stains all 'round your mouth, Shellie, and you said you've got a stomach ache, so it's pretty obvious where Ms. Jenkin's secret anti-stress medication went – ooop, don't worry, keep walking, you'll quit feeling yucky eventually."
08 Happiness
"Hot damn," Blades said on the day the Berlin wall began to come down, piece by piece, people with sledgehammers and people with ropes and people with nothing but their hands and determination, everyone covered in concrete dust and no one in charge, and for once Hot Spot didn't sigh at the profanity – instead he laughed and answered, "Yes!"
09 Telephone
By the time Streetwise left Omaha just about anyone could have told you that he could read your heartbeat, read your breath, knew when you were lying and what you really meant to say when you told the story right – by the time he came back, anyone could tell you that he heard things happen before they did, that he could see ghosts, that he didn't need a lab, he could track a killer by the subtle scent of their blood and the still subtler pulse of their brainwaves (none of this was true).
10 Ears
"Little pitchers?" Streetwise said to Blades as the doors of the storage room slid shut behind them ("Maybe," Blades said, "But why have a meeting in the closet?").
11 Name
Paperwork for human agencies drove Hot Spot up a wall - the blank spaces for the names never fit right, and 'gender' didn't match up to 'male' and 'female' no matter how many times people insisted it must, and then there were the ticky boxes for where your folk were from originally (but how many people in the world actually came from the Caucasus, that's what he'd like to know) which never had a check space for Cybertron, although at least when he was working on United States forms, he knew he was hardly alone in that he didn't have more than a ballpark notion either (though his ballpark was bigger than most).
12 Sensual
Groove loved the slide of the wind across and through his body, the give of his tires against the road, the full, bright heat of the desert rising off the valley like a banner, the strength of sage after a spring rain, the long grace of time enough to know these things, and savor them.
13 Death
There are so many different ways to perform a funeral: carry the person to the heights and leave her for the wind and the rain and the carrion birds, or burn him on hot wood until only soft ash and a few bones are left, scatter her ashes on the sky or bury them or shake them into the sea, don't burn him, but cut him apart, piece by piece, and cast the pieces into the river gorge to flow away to paradise, or dig a hole deep enough, and plant her there, wrapped in a shroud, encased in a simple box, or leave him in a tree, or sometimes – take a bulldozer, and cut away a hill, and gather the bodies so many no time and often no inclination to ensure their quiet rest and fling them in, pile them in, push the hill back over them – it was this last that needed undoing, and Streetwise spoke quietly to the anthropology team, discussing security.
14 Sex
"So," Groove asked First Aid, as they stood in front of the gingko tree, "Do you think it matters to her that there aren't any fellas on her street?"
15 Touch
"Come on," Hot Spot said to Silverbolt, "You didn't really expect me to take you up on that whole 'standing permission' thing?"
16 Weakness
"Well, there's your trouble," First Aid laughingly told Streetwise, "I'm afraid my diagnosis is that that you're physically incapable of passing up a puzzle – now, there are certain precautions you can take, but the condition is incurable – "
17 Tears
There wasn't anything to say, and all First Aid could do was let his new friend lean against him until the great heaving sobs of her breathing slowed, and her hands were steady enough to wipe the salt from her face.
18 Speed
The truth was, Blades had never minded being grounded –he liked the steady, slow pace of walking, and he liked feeling his body adjust his balance to catch him at every small fall, and most of all he liked being close to the rest of the world, touching the earth at each step, never far away.
19 Wind
The air could pick you up or throw you down, let you go on your way or dash you against the side of a cliff, some days it was something to move in, and some days it was more like a constantly moving wall ("Know your limits," Blades said, "That's all.")
20 Freedom
There was nothing, Hot Spot knew, more beautiful than this – hand to hand to hand, people working together in each others' service, building the new world in the shell of the old.
21 Life
"I believe you, Randall," Groove said evenly, his hands held out, "I know you'll jump if you have to – but I'd so much rather see you live, Randall, don't you think it's worth another try?"
22 Jealousy
"Lucky son of a – " Blades said the first time he saw Springer switch from helicopter to ground car in the middle of action, up above one minute, down with his partners the next.
23 Hands
First Aid could clean and bandage a young child's cut without causing any further hurt, he could shift fine wires without breaking them, he could put his large hands just so, and set a dislocated shoulder back into place with precisely enough force, no more than he needed, and no less.
24 Taste
"Well," said Groove, tilting his head, "I don't know, I mean, it's all right, as that sort of thing goes, you can't say the triangle pieces aren't pretty, but as long as we're in Sydney, we should really go look at the bridge."
25 Devotion
Hot Spot keeps up with filing and sorts out border crossings and talks to all kinds of people everywhere to find out who needs what when and where and why and how, and he makes it happen, makes it work, keeps his team busy and supplied and (usually) housed.
26 Forever
Groove found the notion of stepping off the wheel almost irresistibly interesting – living and dying over and over doing the same things constantly, waging the same struggles so many times, and then, one day, just going, finally finding the right spot, and walking away from both life and death forever.
27 Blood
"All I'm saying," First Aid said, "Is that you work with other people's possibly contaminated blood all day, and no matter what he says about how you ought to trust him, I think you've got a good argument for not really wanting him trusting every single sick or injured person you come in contact with – no, this is not sophism, it's perfectly reasonable and anyhow he ought to respect what makes you comfortable!"
28 Sickness
First Aid moved through the epidemic, offering what help he had to hand, dizzy with the thought that here was a danger that could never touch him, not directly, and yet seemed poised to sweep away everyone around him like an outgoing tide.
29 Melody
"You're off key," Tracks informed First Aid, trying not to laugh as the young doctor shrugged and kept right on singing to himself – With the poor people of this world I will cast my lot.
30 Star
"It's a barrier," Streetwise told Blades as they lay together on the banks of the Yellow River, "The milky way is a mighty stream flung up to keep a weaver from her lover – Oh, don't you even start with me, I know for a fact you've got poetry in your soul."
31 Home
Here I am, Defensor thought each time they brought him online beneath the airy vault of Earth's blue sky, Here I am - here where I began, here where I belong.
32 Confusion
"Sorry," Ultra Magnus said, as he followed Optimus Prime out into the corridor, "I think I misheard – did Prowl say that Hot Spot said that First Aid has been arrested?"
33 Fear
"I am not your moral compass," First Aid told Hot Spot fiercely as they walked away from exactly the opposite of this assertion, "I am not and don't you dare try to make me be – don't you dare!"
34 Lightning/Thunder
On the great plans of North America, those broad, low plains, carved by great walls of ice and streams of free flowing water, the vast storm clouds rolled and gathered and raced, all the force of a continent behind them, and Groove laughed as he dodged and darted and sought to out run the leading edge.
35 Bonds
They were, Hot Spot knew, built to be the seal on a treaty – on a score of treaties – and with each day of work they drew those ties tighter, firmer, binding their two peoples close.
36 Market
The countryside bloomed with pink radios, and Blades grinned at himself as he went on his rounds - I carried those, he thought, I carried those, and they're never for sale..
37 Technology
"Don't look at me," Groove said, "My people have always had this odd fondness for analogue…"
38 Gift
"…Where did you get that?" Blades asked Streetwise, as smeared with cheerful red and yellow as he was, as Streetwise produced an extra sparkler to make the lot even and settle which child should get how many.
39 Smile
"Oh," said Groove, and beamed up at the young woman behind the official looking camera, despite the fact that being upside down and half off a small wall was not the most comfortable position, "I think I'm going to have to get out of this one myself – but thank you!"
40 Innocence
Sometimes, Blades reflected as Ironhide gave him a very hard, searching look (to which he reacted, appropriately, by standing very straight and looking very young), there were advantages to having huge, wide eyes.
41 Completion
"Work is never really completed," Hot Spot said ("Don't I know it," Blades cut in), "There's always something to be done again tomorrow."
42 Clouds
"There's a rabbit, and there's a coyote, and there's an expedition of climbers heading up Mount Hood -" Streetwise said, lying on his back in the grass with Groove, who only murmured, and waited for them to be something else altogether.
43 Sky
I miss you terribly, First Aid wrote to Groove when duty sent them away from each other, But I take comfort in knowing we are working for the same things, under the same sky.
44 Heaven
"Look at that sun," Groove said, holding tight to Hot Spot's hand so he couldn't take off again, moving ridiculously fast even on a rare day off, "Just look at it – we're swinging around it, you know, millions of miles per a minute, fast enough even for you, I should think."
45 Hell
"That's not 'collateral damage', you asshole, they did that on purpose and you know they did, you're lying, don't lie about it, you -" Blades doubtless had more to say to the unfortunate and deeply intimidated news crew, but Streetwise seized his arm and hauled him about hard enough that he stopped and stormed away, only adding over his shoulder, "And my teammate was in there because he's a doctor and they did it on purpose - !"
46 Sun
"I'm pretty sure we'd all have fallen into your orbit anyway, gestalt or no gestalt," Groove told Hot Spot one day, idly, as they waited alongside a road, "Half the people we meet do, and besides, I always want to see what you'll do next."
47 Moon
"You and me and the moon," First Aid said, as he and Blades sat, watching the slow turn of the stars in the desert sky, "That's enough for a drinking party," ("But you don't drink," Blades pointed out).
48 Waves
You could get lost in the ocean, Groove knew, lost in the long rolling swell of it, in and out, ancient of days, until you could barely tell where the sky was, which way was the shore, which the water, and all your world was rhythm.
49 Hair
"Streetwise, you've got to stop letting cats sleep on you," Blades said, "I mean, look at that – you've got fur under your windshield wipers and you're covered in paw prints!"
50 Supernova
This is how it will end, they all know, in light that boils away the atmosphere, force that breaks open the heart of the planet and smashes aside whatever remains – but that is far away, and there are other matters to attend to.