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Missing the Point

So after you kicked me out of here and I got bored of buzzing Blackout (I swear the guy's no fun) I was wandering around the base. I was still bored as all slag and the ceilings round here are too low to fly properly. I mean, it's fun if you go fast enough so you're nearly slamming your nose into every wall that comes up, but you know the way Gunbarrel's got that acid pellet up his afterburner about not bugging the Decepticons. And I guess crashing into one at mach two might bug them a little. They're not a lot of fun either.

Even if they actually let us out sometimes now. I know, I know, it's better than the closet…

So I'm not going to ignore orders, and I was looking around for something to do. Being stuck inside like this makes me pretty twitchy, and between that and being bored, I was kind of- yeah, I guess I felt like having a good gripe at someone. Which is why you'd kicked me out in the first place.

Anyway, lucky for me I spotted Stormcloud hanging around with some crates – you know, one for a table and a bunch of others for chairs. He was on his own, though, and that suited me fine. His teammates are kind of weird. I wouldn't bother trying to talk to Oceanglide, but at least he's supposed to be sane. Waterlog's a real scary kind of crackcase…

I mean, Stormcloud's not much better, but I figured he wouldn't try anything with me. I'm plenty tougher than the runts he likes to pick on, and I've got a pretty strong team at my back. So I headed over and sat down across from him.

He kinda blinked at me, and then he sniggered. Like I said, I was feeling kinda twitchy, so that got on my wires. I gave him a funny look and asked, "What's the joke?"

Stormcloud shrugged at me. "Who're you?"

That caught me off-guard. I mean, he should have known who I was. We'd seen each other around before. He must have been a couple of circuits shorter than I thought. "Terradive. Air Military Team."

All he said to that was, "Oh." It was pretty obvious the guy was more interested in his energon than me. He didn't have a lot left, but I did notice he'd got a bigger ration than any of us.

I stretched out a bit and made myself comfortable. Yeah, Stormcloud wasn't turning out to be great company, but I wasn't in the mood to care. "I hate being stuck in here," I said. "Fliers aren't meant to be cooped up like this."

I pretty much expected he was gonna ignore me, but Stormcloud snorted. "Like any of us are? Believe me, flyboy, you don't want to know what I'd give to be out on the open sea right now."

I made a face at that. Surface-crawlers never get it, but I tried to explain anyway. "Yeah, but it's not such a big deal for you. I'm built for the sky and the open air. When you're used to that kind of freedom, it's way harder to sit around being boxed-in like this."

Stormcloud sort of chewed that over for a moment (not literally, of course, the guy's got no mouth). Then he said, all slowly and deliberately, "Bilgewater."

"Huh?" I just gave him a funny look, but I was annoyed. What the slag did he know?

"That's what you're spewing. Bilgewater." He sniggered. "Better out'n in, but don't ask me to take it."

"What do you mean?" I wanted to know. Stormcloud snorted again. He's like Gunbarrel: he's one of those guys who answer everything with a snort.

"You're talking slag, is what I mean. All that stuff about flying being the best way to get around is as rotten as Waterlog's processor. Moving's moving, doesn't matter how high up you are. I never get why people make a big deal out of it," he said.

I stared at him like I couldn't believe my audios, which was pretty much true. "Are you serious?"

Stormcloud just smirked at me while I tried to figure out how to explain. I'm not the best guy with words, but he'd just said 'what's so special about flying?' Flying! There was no way I could let that go.

"You can see…oh, everything," I said, waving my hands. I was getting really worked up there. "Everything else gets so small! The whole world just… opens up! You're not trapped any more, you're not stuck on the ground with one hill for a horizon and a couple of miles' range of vision. You're free to go wherever you want without having to go around every pile of rocks that gets in your way. I mean, who'd want to crawl around in the dirt all day instead of lifting off-"

He broke in on me, "So what you're saying is, it's almost as good as swimming?"

"Swimming?" I couldn't help sneering there, nasty insane boat-former or not. "No offence, but there's just no comparison."

"Yeah there is," he said.

I just stared at him and carried on. "Flying is like the ultimate freedom! You can go any direction, any speed, and… it's just awesome!"

Stormcloud shrugged and said, "Funny."

"What?" I asked.

Stormcloud looked at his energon, kind of thoughtful. I wouldn't expect to see him looking that way, but he did. "Ever noticed that fliers don't talk about the sky?"

I blinked at him. I had no freaking clue what that had to do with anything. "Uh… what?"

Stormcloud just stared and thought for a minute before he started talking. "People like my captain, they love the sea. They're always talking about how strong it is, or how big and cold it is… and don't ever get them started on how pretty it is." He leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. It wasn't a stretch: all the crates were the same size and we were almost too close for comfort. Stormcloud kept talking. "But you fliers, you don't talk about the sky like that. I never heard a jet talk about pyrocumulus the way Oceanglide talks about silt. Mud."

"What?" I shook my head. He was nuts after all. Or maybe Oceanglide was. (Seriously, getting emotional about mud? What's up with that? Maybe if it's on your wings…) "There's nothing we love better than flying!"

"Nah, that's different," said Stormcloud. "Liking flying isn't liking the sky. You guys… like what you can do with it, not what it is."

I bristled. He was really starting to get my back up. So what if I love flying more than my own tailfins? It just gives me a rush to be able to do it, you know? And what's wrong with that? "What's the difference? I like thermals and crosswinds and cloud cover's great for dropping out of. We love it."

"Yeah?" Stormcloud peered at me, frowning like he was having some trouble thinking this through. "But not… not the sky. Not as a… whaddyacallit, a concept.

"Look, when people talk about the sea, they give it personality. They talk to it and stuff. No-one does that with the sky," Stormcloud said. "Nauticons write poems about the sea, jets write poems about flying."

He was winding me up like the start of a punch now, and I was getting really tired of the conversation. All I wanted in the first place was a chance to complain a little. I'm not a philosophical kind of guy, and I didn't slagging care if he was right. I just like doing what I do. And he was sitting in front of me staring at enough energon to make up half my ration, and it was starting to make my fuel tanks ache.

Besides, I didn't believe a grunt like him was in any position to start talking like that. Since when did he know any more about this stuff than I would? So I said, "How would you know?"

Stormcloud shrugged again and looked into the dregs of his energon. I wished he'd just drink the stuff already. "'Cause I'm not an air-headed jet," he said.

And that's around when I got annoyed enough to hit him. 'Course, I took off. I wasn't gonna stick around and let him hit me back. He shot at me, obviously, but that's what I've got wings for. That's when I got this, too. Want some?

What?

…You're even worse than the rest of them.

I mean it, Thunderwing. Quit laughing.