Arcee swam in tight circles, her owner tossing her spoiled Energon that she swam after and forced into her mouth. She surfaced and sprayed mist at him out of her mouth, and she purred when he stroked her helm.
"Lovely. So lovely." He smiled down at her and he tickled under her chin. She clutched at his servo, and let him reach into the water and pet her smoothe skin. She smiled and hugged his neck, letting him lift her up and carry her around.
He laid her in a cart of sorts, similiar to what femmes put their sparklings in, only she had a larger place to lay and a soft cushion to lay on. She was kept away from the sunlight so her skin wouldn't dry out and she was often stopped so people could visit with her.
Three out of five bots that stopped them thought she was beautiful. The other two would scream or demand to know what in the Pits of Kaon is that when they expected a sparkling. Her owner would growl at those two bots out of five, and he would shelter his beloved pet once again. Then they would go walking, and they would visit the Energon stand and the mech would buy her a sweet cube as a treat.
Their days were often spent like that, until one day, it was different.
Arcee swam in her tight circles, begging and purring for her spoiled Energon. But he was with another mech and didn't pay attention to her. She made a worried, confused sound as she surfaced, and when she sprayed mist at him, he patted her helm and pushed her away, tossing a small rubber ball for her to play with. It floated, forgotten, on the surface while a ladder was set up and the mech her owner was with climbed in with her.
The water wasn't deep. It was a nice level for her owner to stand up in since he couldn't swim, and there was enough water to keep Arcee interested and under the water. And it allowed the mech to retrieve her.
He wrapped her in a blanket, blinded her with a strip of cloth, and lifted her up. She was placed in a tank in a trailer and she pressed her servo to the glass, blinking sadly at her owner. She wailed for him, but he stood there, his servo on the glass over hers, and he looked away from her.
Credits were pressed into his other servo and Arcee was spark-broken. She was...sold. She wasn't special at all, not like how he had made her believe. She pulled her pink servo away and bared her denta at him.
He took several steps back, and then the trailer was moving, trailed behind her new owner's alt-mode as he took her away from her home. But was it really her home after all?
ooo
Arcee was placed in a very deep, very wide tank. She swam around it, confused. She didn't understand the purpose of this. She brought her fists against it, she beat her tail against it, and then something happened. There was an explosion of bubbles, and a silvery body pressed against hers.
Megatron was a breeder male, and he had learned what it took to get fed. He pressed the pink femme up against the wall, his servos roaming her body and pressing his digits into her slit. She struggled, and then stopped when she saw her audience, who were taking pictures, clapping, and, heard vaguely through the glass and water, cheering. Tears welled up in her optics and she was turned around, her body trembling while Megatron's spike struck home.
He was confused. The other femmes he had fragged for food were purring and giggling. They had come from other aquariums, other farms...where had this one come from? She bore no tag, no piercing. The only thing she had was a seal that was quickly broken.
And then his coding was inside her, and she was sinking to the bottom of the tank. She needed to surface every half hour due to her lack of gills, and Megatron had to keep moving forward due to his gills. So he swam back up to the owner and chirped, getting fed just as promised due to weeks of training and learning years ago. He swam into his sling and was transported back into his tank with Cyclonus and Tarn, both purple mechs tending to their own needs, be it swimming in circles near the surface as he wailed for his usual partner, or sulking in the corner in a hollow rock with his tentacles protruding from the entrance, curling and uncurling while young and old grounders pressed their faces against the glass until Cyclonus scared them back several feet for only a couple seconds.
Arcee was fed. The owner dropped several cubes into her tank, but they sank to the bottom, unwanted. A pile would grow, Megatron predicted as he pressed his servos against the glass. He could just see her from his tank, smashed between a black and white femme the owner affectionately called Dit, who had a sister named Dash before Dash was moved to a different aquarium across Cybertron, and three fast mechs called Star, Sky, and Thunder.
The owner had a visitor, and they were fussing over Arcee's environment.
"Doesn't she have a shelter? A partner? She should really be surrounded by her own kind. That would cheer her up."
"I can't just throw her into Dit's tank. Dit will devore her for a snack."
The femme in question, also lacking gills, surfaced and sprayed mist out of her nostrils, shedding water from her face and arms as she clung to the edge and pulled her midsection up far enough to lay it over the edge. She fanned her tail, waiting for a treat. What she got was a glare, and she dove back into the water.
The expert nodded slowly and touched Arcee's tank, spreading his digits out to encompass the most glass he could. Arcee raised her helm and blinked at the servo. She reached out slowly, and she placed her own webbed servo over the expert's.
The mech smiled and tapped the glass just above her, moving to the right towards the ladder. Arcee followed his servo, interested. She caught on, realizing that he was heading towards the platform over her tank. She surged upwards, leaping over it in a show of speed and ability. The mech reached out just in time to stroke her underbelly, where the armor there was softer and more delicate. She huffed at him when she surfaced again, and she let him pet her.
"Optimus?"
The mech stopped petting her and looked at the owner. "If I bring you a femme for this one and one for Dit, will you treat them like sentient beings? I have another pink femme, one of my favorites, one of my pets, but she is getting too large, and I cannot care for her." Tears started to form in his optics. Arcee could see them. She tipped her helm.
"That's what happened to this little one. She's an orphan, as what the staff here like to call the ones that are loved, but can't be cared for anymore," the owner said as he knelt, reaching out to stroke Arcee's helm. Had she been thinking straight and still mad at him, she would have snapped at his digits. But then she heard what he said. She was what? She had to be given up?
Optimus stood, and he and the owner walked down the ladder slowly as they spoke. Arcee swam to the bottom of the tank and touched the cubes. They were spoiled, just as she had always liked her Energon. She swallowed them quickly, and watched Optimus leave before she blinked at the owner's servo, digits spread, and pressed against the glass. She touched it.
"You'll be getting a tankmate in there pretty soon. And from all description, she looks like you."
She blinked and settled down, sighing a stream of bubbles as she watched the owner go. She blinked at the tank across from hers, smiled softly at the femme inside trying to care for her excited calf that swam everywhere but her waiting arms until they collided, tumbling over and over through the water until the femme was smiling down at the giggling little one. Arcee felt a pang of wanting and of jealousy, and she swam around her tank, conjuring an image of a pink femme mimicking her every move.
ooo
The next day, there was a lot of activity around Arcee's tank. She saw Optimus carrying a pink femme almost as large as him (the swimmers tended to get very big very fast) and he was wobbling up the ladder, some mechs helping, some mechs standing and watching. And then the femme was in the water, clinging to Optimus like Arcee had done to her previous owner. He dove into the water and swam with the femme, holding her face and stroking her helm while she whined and keened for him to stay.
Arcee frowned. Her owner hadn't done that to her, not once. She wanted to swim closer, to see what was happening, but she remained at the bottom.
Optimus eventually left the femme to help the others get a massive blue femme with large flukes and a long tail into Dit's tank, who was watching in fear. The femme was bigger and older than she.
Arcee swam to greet her mourning tankmate, who had a similiar tail and no gills. She was still grieving her owner, watching him leave the aquarium with his helm and shoulders down.
Arcee made the mistake of touching the femme's back. The larger femme had her servos around her neck and was driving the smaller one down to the bottom of the tank so fast, all the owner and the staff had time to do was gasp.
"Elita!"
Optimus was back, smashing his fist on the tank glass. It made the bigger femme look up and her blue optics stretched wide in horror before she swam to the opposite side of the tank and wailed.
Arcee swam to the platform, blinking at Optimus with wide eyes while he touched and stroked her neck. "I am sorry. I thought I had trained her to be gentle. She is a siren. I am sure you do not know what that means. She lures things to their deaths, and she can be unpredictable. I would not leave her here if I had another choice. I am sorry..."
She watched Optimus leave, crying for him to stay. She didn't want to be here, didn't want to be in this tank with that femme who glared at her every moment. But she had to. Her own owner didn't have a choice, either...
She laid on her back, her optics closed and her mouth open. She dreamed of her owner, who was fading and fading every time he came to visit with her, his smile sinking into a deep frown each time Arcee saw him. And then he was gone.
