Not Like You
"Get off me!!" Starscream shrieked and bucked, trying to dislodge the persistent red Lamborghini from his back.
Sideswipe simply cackled mischievously and clung on, looking over to see if his brother was still airborne. Instead he found Sunstreaker on the ground, standing and shooting at a fleeing Rumble and Frenzy, which told him that he'd be hearing the magic words at any moment now.
Sideswipe whooped in delight and pounded his fist on the Seeker's wing. "You lose again, Screamer ol' buddy. Time to go home."
"Thundercracker! Get this Autobot scum OFF ME!" Starscream yelled, infuriated.
The light blue jet sped towards them and Sideswipe instinctively brought his hands up to cover his audio sensors just seconds before the sonic boom went off. Feeling the grip on his wings ease off, Starscream barrel-rolled, flinging the red warrior off his back and sending him plummeting to the ground. Sideswipe tried to fire up his jet-pack, before remembering he had used up its fuel to get a hold of Starscream.
Oops, he thought.
There was a quick blur of yellow below him, just before Sideswipe crashed into something hard and… metallic? The red mech sat up, sore, but still in one piece. It was then that he realized there was someone underneath him. Quickly he staggered to his feet, then gaped in horror….
Seeing his brother in trouble, Sunstreaker had rushed to get beneath him to break his fall. He hadn't taken into account, however, the force of the impact, which had been strong enough to knock him out.
Or so Wheeljack assumed as he examined the yellow warrior's prone body, back at the Ark, for any other injuries. So far, so good, he noted. Sunstreaker's toughened polymer armor had saved him from any other damage, so all Wheeljack had to do was revive him and – hang on a micro-second.
The engineer peered closely at the scanner and at the little blinking light on it. He checked the monitor beside him, then looked back at the warrior. His head-fins flickered bright blue as he chuckled and unhooked the cables from the Lamborghini. This was going to be interesting.
He looked up when he heard Sideswipe approaching.
"How is he 'Jack?" the red mech asked.
"Oh he's gonna be just fine," Wheeljack replied. "He'll be coming round any moment now."
Sure enough, Sunstreaker stirred, optics flickering as he came back online again.
"You okay, bro?" Sideswipe asked, fully expecting to get a vicious verbal lashing on carelessness and messing up the yellow mech's pristine paint-job.
"Sideswipe? Oh, thank Primus you're alright. I was worried I wouldn't get to you in time. You ARE okay, right?" Sunstreaker replied, carefully sitting up and giving himself a once-over before shrugging.
Sideswipe did a double-take, then realized his brother had asked him a question. "Uh… yeah. I'm okay. Thanks for saving my hide back there."
"Could I have done anything else? You're my dear twin brother, it was my duty to save you."
"S-so you're not mad at me for knocking you out?"
"Unfortunate accident. I'm just relieved you're alright." He swung his legs off the table and stood up. "And thanks for your help Wheeljack, I'm much obliged."
"Anytime Sunny," Wheeljack replied. "You take care now."
Sunstreaker nodded and walked off. Sideswipe remained where he was, gaping.
"D-did you see that?" he asked. "Is he really okay?"
"Seemed fine to me," Wheeljack answered. "But you're his brother, so you'd know best."
Sideswipe was about to reply when an angry roar cut him off.
"Where the FRAG do you think you're going, mister?" asked one very irate Chief Medical Officer as he poked Sunstreaker in the chestplate.
"Now Ratchet, there's no need to shout, I can hear you just fine," Sunstreaker said calmly.
"This is my med-bay and I'll shout if I slagging well want to, and…" he stopped. "What did you say?"
"I said I was fine. Wheeljack already checked me out and said I was good to go, so you needn't worry so much. I'll report back to you if I feel anything odd."
Sunstreaker walked out, leaving a very dumb-founded Ratchet in his wake. The serenity was short-lived however, when the CMO turned a black glare on the engineer.
"Uh, Sides, you'd better go keep an optic on your brother," Wheeljack suggested as Ratchet stalked up to him, a fine storm brewing on his lip components.
"Good idea," Sideswipe said, and scurried out of the path of the medic, making it outside just as the doors closed on some very colorful words.
… Sunstreaker, meanwhile, headed down to the lounge, feeling hungry and so intent on getting there that he didn't notice Windcharger coming in the opposite direction with some spare parts in his hands, until the Minibot walked right into him.
"Watch where…" he began, then stopped when he saw just who he had bumped into. "I mean…"
"Its alright. Here, you dropped this." Sunstreaker bent, picked up a piece of scrap metal and handed it back to the Minibot.
Windcharger eyed him warily as he accepted the piece back, half-expecting him to lash out at any moment. "Uh… thanks, I think," he said, when nothing happened.
"No problem," Sunstreaker replied, and side-stepped to let the other mech pass, before continuing on his way.
… When Sideswipe entered the lounge later, he found his brother seated with Bluestreak and patiently explaining the finer points of melee fighting to the stunned young gunner, while stopping now and then to compliment Hound on his fine holo-photos. Sideswipe had barely taken more than three steps inside when he was pulled aside by Tracks and Bumblebee.
"Hey Sideswipe, is your brother okay? I mean after what happened today…" Bumblebee started to ask.
"The point, shortstuff, get to it," Sideswipe said, not really in the mood to be badgered with questions.
"Well, he complimented me for fighting well today," Bumblebee said.
"He also said I looked good," Tracks added. "Not that I don't always, but he's never said it before."
"There's nothing wrong with him," Sideswipe replied. "Wheeljack said he was fine and gave him the all-clear."
Both mechs did a double-take.
"No, I'm not joking," the red mech added. "Go and ask Wheeljack yourself if you don't believe me. Now if you'll excuse me." He pushed past them and continued on his way to reach his brother.
Then came a voice he really didn't want to hear.
"Hey Sunflower!" Cliffjumper hollered. "Heard ya landed on ya head and knocked yerself out today."
Sideswipe bristled and was about to respond when Sunstreaker beat him to it.
"I'm afraid you're mistaken," he replied. "I didn't land on my head, I was simply cushioning my brother's fall so he wouldn't get hurt, but thanks for your concern. And my brother's standing behind you, if you want to verify anything."
Cliffjumper gaped at the yellow warrior, then turned to see the red one frowning down at him.
"Beat it, runt," Sideswipe snapped. "Before I plant my foot up your aft." He gave the red Minibot a shove to help him on his way.
… Throughout the rest of the day, Sideswipe watched as Sunstreaker surprised more and more Autobots with his strange new behavior. Some were suspicious, some thought it was a change for the better, others didn't know what to think.
Sideswipe in particular hated every minute of it. It was like watching a stranger, and several times he had to fight the urge to grab Sunstreaker by the shoulders and yell, "Who are you and what have you done with my brother?!", thought it was getting harder and harder to contain himself.
"Its like looking at a stranger," he complained to Mirage. "I don't know who he is right now, but that's not Sunny."
Mirage put a sympathetic arm around Sideswipe. "Have you told him this?"
"Of course. He gave me a pat on the shoulder and told me that I'm over-reacting. I'm not fragging over-reacting!"
"Have you tried talking to Ratchet and Wheeljack?"
"I can't get into the med-bay. They said they're busy with something when I stopped by there."
"Y'know… most of the others say they like Sunstreaker like this. He's civil now."
"But I don't! He was not slagging built to be a slagging gentlemech. He's a slagging warrior for crying out loud! He's my brother and he doesn't seem to give a frag about that right now. He's too busy being nice to everyone else!"
Mirage pulled Sideswipe into a gentle hug and tried to soothe the distraught twin; and the red warrior let the spy hold him for a while as he tried to regain his composure.
"Y'know, there has been talk about you as well," Mirage said.
Sideswipe looked up. "Saying what?"
"You're becoming nastier. In a way you're becoming more like your brother used to be. Its like, the nicer he gets, the nastier you get."
"We're losing our own identities."
Mirage shrugged. "If you want to call it that. Either way, its not going to help if Sunstreaker's niceness extends to the battlefield and you have to keep running to save him. I don't think anyone's thought of that yet."
"We need the old Sunny back then, for everyone's sake, and especially mine."
The spy nodded. "But how are we going to get him back?"
Sideswipe stood. "You leave that to me." He placed a swift, cheeky kiss of thanks of Mirage's cheek. "Don't wait up."
Mirage smirked. "Do I ever?"
"Very funny." Sideswipe rushed out.
… Later that night, the med-bay doors hissed open to admit Sideswipe carrying an unconscious Sunstreaker in his arms. Ratchet and Wheeljack immediately lept to their feet.
"What the slag happened now?" Ratchet asked.
"Something that would not have happened if you two had fixed him properly in the first place," Sideswipe snapped as he laid his brother on a table.
"What. Happened?" Ratchet repeated.
"Collided with Sunny," Sideswipe replied curtly.
It wasn't all that far from the truth. The Twins had taken a walk outside, and once the Ark was no longer in sight, Sideswipe had tackled Sunstreaker, fired up his jet-pack and slammed him back into the closest hard surface available – which had been the ground. As he'd hoped, the impact was strong enough to knock Sunstreaker out.
"There was nothing I could do, Sides," Wheeljack said apologetically. "The fall this morning jarred his personality center. To have altered it manually to try and get it back to normal would have risked erasing everything."
"So you were just going to leave him the way he was?"
"It would have repaired itself on its own and he would have been back to normal in a couple of days."
"Yeah, and I'd have been a fragging monster."
"It affected you?" Wheeljack's head-fins flashed.
"Twins remember?" Ratchet said. "What affects one, affects the other and all that slag. The whole spark link thing."
Sideswipe fidgeted irritably. "Look, you two can debate the bond between twins all night long, I don't give a slag, but I'm tired, I need to rest and I want my brother back. So DO something!"
Ratchet checked the monitors. "Well there's no serious damage, just a few dents and scrapes which will work themselves out, and he's gonna whine like hell about the state of his paint-job when he wakes up."
"Wait, so you mean he's fixed? I fixed him?"
"See for yourself, he's coming round."
For the second time that day, Sunstreaker's optics flickered.
"What the slag happened this time?" he growled.
"Sunny!" Sideswipe leaned over the table and hugged his brother tight. "You're back! You're you!"
"The frag are you talking about?"
"You don't remember?"
"I remember saving you from becoming a stain on the landscape. Everything else between that and now's a bit hazy."
"Oh you'll remember soon enough," Wheeljack said.
"Yeah, for now get the frag out of my med-bay," Ratchet added. "I have other work to do besides play nurse to you two." He helped Sideswipe get Sunstreaker on his feet, then shooed them out.
When the doors had shut, he turned back to face Wheeljack and both mechs erupted into quiet peals of laughter.
"Oh Primus Wheeljack," Ratchet wheezed. "Don't you ever keep anything like that hidden from me again. I seriously thought Sunstreaker had blown a gasket or something."
Wheeljack chuckled. "The guys are gonna be talking about this for weeks though."
"Without a doubt, until of course one of them ends up in here after attempting to see if Sunstreaker's still a nice guy."
"Heh, glad he's not. It just ain't him y'know."
"Believe me 'Jack, I know. I like the Twins just as they are."
END.