On the Naming of Seekers
Summary: How did our favourite Seeker threesomes end up with their names? This is my take on how Thundercracker earned his name.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Transformers belongs to Hasbro and DreamWorks/Paramount, not me.
On the Naming of Seekers
Prologue
(A/N this is just the prologue, the actual Name-earning is next.)
Thundercracker came outside to look at the constellations, finally happy. He had finally earned his name.
No more did he have to endure his Sparkling-name, the name bestowed upon him by his parents, the name Skystreak.
At least, he reflected, he was lucky: His parental units, both flyers themselves, had seen fit both to allow him to grow up at his own rate, but also to gift him a flying body as soon as he left the Sparkling stage. To have a child body that was a flyer's body was rare-so many fliers went from a child groundling body to a flyer's body, because flyer's bodies were not cheap, and had to adjust. His parents had always intended him to be a flyer, so he had been given a flying-type Sparkling name, at least, and had actually learned how to fly in his child's body not long after he'd learned to toddle. At least he had not had to endure what Starscream had.
Starscream had originally called Straightahead. Starscream's Spark had been taken on and brought up by groundlings, and Starscream would have grown up as a groundling child, and become an adult groundling, had he not been involved in such a nasty accident that had his child-age Spark not been transferred into a spare adult flyer's body that had luckily been nearby and available at the time, Starscream would not be alive to tell the tale.
Thundercracker looked up at the constellations, picking out all those that he'd been taught as a child. There, lower left, was the Beast and Sparkling. If you looked closely you could discern, with imagination, a four-legged beastmech, and a wobble-legged Sparkling, who had just learned to stand, holding onto it for support.
Further up, appropriately enough, was the Falling Seeker, which, again with a dose of imagination, resembled a flyer falling (or diving, depending upon your interpretation) towards the horizon. Across from that, the Femme, a long constellation that was supposed to resemble a femme bot, some said the mother of the Sparkling, but even with squinting and imagination, Thundercracker had never been able to see it.
Then, in the highest point, a dense, circular collection of stars, called the Optic of Primus, and indeed it did resemble a watchful optic. On the right, up in the sky, the Mech, which again did resemble a stern but fair mech's face, and then, low on the horizon, the Arrowhead, a down-pointing arrow with the socket for the shaft at the top, the two prongs sticking up. Thundercracker had never heard if the two stars in the middle, that to Thundercracker resembled pinpoint optics, were part of the constellation or not.
He realised how late it was, and his lesson the next day was an early one: it would not do good to be half-asleep for his class, so he headed in, making a respectful gesture to the Optic to thank Primus that he had finally earned his own name.
As he lay on his rest pallet, he recalled how it had happened.