Author's Notes: A Transformer's spark is whom they truly are, their experiences, choices made or taken regardless of the shell they wear. Hence the series title. This series is told from their point of view. One Transformer per chapter and no set pattern to whose spark will be revealed but I prefer to highlight some of the lesser-written bots. Researched on tf wiki, movies and G1 cartoon. Please review.
Breem is 8.3 minutes, Joor is 6.5 hours, Orn is 13 days and Vorn is 84 years earth time.
TR TR TR TR TR TR TR TR TR TRANSFORMERS
Essence of a Spark: Moonracer
The Autobot forces like to brag I am the best sharpshooter that has ever been. I doubt that. The targets never know you are there and your friends do not keep score. Some bots think what I do is cowardly. By not facing my enemies with a sword or weapon in my hands while putting me in reach of theirs. I say differently. I see my targets, know how and when they are going to move, what they are doing before I take my shot. I know they want to exist as bad as I do but my job is to provide long-range cover. It's hard to pull that trigger knowing once you do the result is final. I am not an executioner. I have never offlined a femme or even a civilian.
How did I choose what I do? Blame my first combat instructor. The room was full of large military grade mechs and there I was, newly recruited into the Autobot forces. The only femme present and I was in my green protoform shell with upgrades scheduled while they were all wearing flat black military grade armor. My hardest hit would not even scratch it. They were tossing each other around as though in the gladiator pits. "I'm too small and light to help or make a difference," I told him.
"A single shot is small and light but in the right place," the instructor gestured towards his spark. "It can offline, removing a dangerous raving threat. You were referred to me based on your target range scores. They were beyond anything recorded."
"Can't every bot shoot?" I asked, still not sure why my precision was unique.
"Here," he sent a data packet. I opened it, downloading the audio spectrum. "That is the entire range for our race, the section in green," he displayed a holographic image above his palm, showing what he meant. "Is what we communicate, sing to the Allspark and detect with all our installed sensors. Now take this area that is within your vocal frequencies and create me a song. Not any song, but a grand epic that tells of our existence from the opening of our optics the first time to the final fading to the matrix. Leave nothing out and make me feel it," he stated.
I shuttered my optics rapidly in disbelief. I could only stare at him and his insane request.
"Can't do it can you?" he grinned at me.
"You know I can't!" I vented. The mechs fighting ignored us both.
"Why? Every one of us has this range in one form or another."
"I wouldn't know where to begin, how to do that!" I exasperated.
"But a musician and a truly gifted artist can. Yet we all share the base vocal ability. How about designing a battle plan? Can you tell me the best use of the troops, areas of danger, the safe zone to flee to if it goes badly and how to counteract what the enemy will do?"
I shook my head numbly, feeling overwhelmed. He reached out a hand to rest it on my shoulder. "We all carry the same statistical data but only a gifted tactician can craft it into a good plan that saves sparks. Two examples, now apply them to you."
"What? That I'm not a tactician or a musician?" I mumbled, trying to work out the answer. Then it hit me. My targeting ability. "I can always hit what I aim for," I realized.
A smile slowly formed across his lip plates. "And she learns her talent. You will have other abilities Moonracer but yes. You take the same data we have and refine it in a way that cannot be duplicated, nor programmed or taught and hit the target consistently and precisely."
And I began training to be a sniper per official records. I prefer the term sharpshooter. Snipers by definition shoot at exposed individuals or enemies. Sharpshooters by definition are proficient marksman and a consistently accurate shooter. I have provided cover while never taking a spark, pinging shots close enough to keep the other side ducking. Even ricochet where I know they are and cannot see, cannot scan them but I know they are there, waiting to take out our forces. I joined the fight as an Autobot.
And the Autobots were losing. The Decepticons were winning battle after battle, forcing us to retreat across Cybertron. Then the stories began. A new Prime had risen. A Prime who could lead us to victory and give us hope. His name was Optimus Prime. And we began winning. If you call not losing ground a win. His strategies kept us online as he gathered all Autobots to his command. His decisions, however new and unqiue were law.
Like the requirement to cross train as our numbers dwindled. I will say this for Optimus, he lived up to his name. When I could not raise my optics to face another, his words gave us courage. And he never asked any femme to continue our race. The Allspark was hidden to keep it safe yet he never treated us anything but equals. His sparkmate, Elita One began gathering her team together. A fighting team of femmes. I wanted in and changed to the Iacon forces. They needed medics not sharpshooters so I began cross training. I still traveled to the battlefield to retrieve the injured or provide cover. The rest of my time was in the medical student dorms or the main med bay building, the higher levels for classes. The lower levels were for the experts. Medics have to be the most secretive group I have ever dealt with.
They come into a room, poke and prod your chassis, remove armor to view your protoform and run tests I cannot even pronounce to hand you instructions and tell you to stay up on the energon and recharge times. No real identification of who they are or the details of their art. Once I began learning I was amazed at the amount of information. Any bot can be upload the data packet for a crashing fuel pump but to diagnose one before it crashed, based on a single symptom, that took skill. The same way I loaded a cartridge into my rifle they loaded their skills, fired and continued their missions. Passing my skills test, I gained access to the middle levels for practical training.
Then I saw him. A tall mech with intense blue optics, throwing a wrench to separate two arguing warriors. What aim he had. I whistled in appreciation and decided to find out if he was unsparked. Only problem, no one in that hallway knew who he was. He displayed no rank or insignia other than the Autobot symbol and every medic there wore white with colored stripes. But I would find him again.
I am always aiming for more, even in my personal life.
Took nearly an orn before I found him again. He collided with me in the upper entrance hallway, rushing to triage. "Hey," I shoved him aside. "Watch your feet pads medic!" His optics narrowed as a silver wrench slid into his hand and I was ready. The instant he threw I threw mine. In my search to identify him I found only discarded wrenches, one embedded in the shoulder plating of a particularly stubborn mech. He had been grateful to have it removed and let me keep it. I figured on returning it to start a conversation not fight with it. Primus had a plan apparently.
Our thrown wrenches smashed into each other. He slid another out of his arm plates and I grabbed my second and last one. He flung his and I threw mine. They hit mid air and fell. "I can do this all day," I bluffed.
An incoming bot screamed as they carried him through the outer blast doors and we both spun, rushing to stop the energon pouring from his systems. The medic's fingers transformed into tools but we could not find the leak. "Wait," I yelled. "Let me find it," and my optics closed as I let my processors run free. That ability, to find the impossible, through shifting of data into perfect alignment triggered. And I knew where the leak was. The connection cord snapped out of my wrist and into the medic's wrist port before he could stop the connection. The data transmitted and I vented, snapping my optics open. The second we were connected his data nearly overwhelmed me. But I knew he was unsparked and I knew his name. "Ratchet."
Faster than I could recover, he closed and sealed the leak. The patient remained onlined. Ratchet grabbed me, pulling me to the next wounded fighter. "Where is the worst damage?" he demanded. His multi facet optics spun in ways I had never seen in any other bot.
Venting, I focused and knew the warrior's weak spot. The perfect place to fire and turn his injury into a fatal hole. "There," I pointed to the side wound, smaller than the two in his upper chest plates.
"Yes, but how? Your optics are basic," the medic snapped at me. His morphed hands were already welding and coating the smashed pump. I bristled.
"My skills are not basic. Or do your optics only see the weakness and wounded? Not strengths?" I countered. The urge to lose my energon threatened my balance. Too many cries of pain, too many wounds surrounded me. But I held as we continued our repairs. We finished the last patient and I stumbled, heading for the wash racks. I never made it before purging into the nearest waste receptacle. Shaking, my optics onlined to him holding me on the floor.
'Slag it,' I processed. 'Find the one bot I want and he's wrapped around me because I can't hold what a sparkling can.' I pushed free of his arms and stood, or rather tried. Next memory core record is lying on a recharge berth. Not mine either. Turns out he carried me to his quarters, once he remembered where they were. He rarely used them and the student quarters were too far away. The medical berths were overflowing with wounded. That left his recharge berth or so Ratchet explained later.
Sipping from the energon cube offered, I could have cared less where I onlined to. Purging is rare in our race. Energon mixes with our own fluids to be burned and processed. Our intake lines can accept the pure energon but the half-mixed version corrodes them in purging. Do it a couple of times and you are looking at a major line install.
"Feeling better?" Ratchet asked. I nodded, knowing those unique optics of his could probably see through my protoform for all I knew.
"My optics were designed and installed after I became a medic," he stated, spinning them down tight before widening them fully. "An experiment of Wheeljack's that worked."
I had no idea who Wheeljack was and I winced. Optics tie into our core processors and replacements are obnoxious at best and create system crashes at worse. I should know, having gone through two sets. First time was my own fault when a jammed cartridge kicked back. In my haste, I released it charged to fly up right into my faceplates as it primed and blew. Second time I try to never think about. Shrapnel from an exploding canister. Decepticon sniper triggered it long-range offlining two of my closest mech friends and costing me half my front shell and sensors. I offlined him and even now, a feral grin appears on my lip plates as I remember his final scream. 'What could I do with a set of those optics?' I processed silently.
"No, you may not have a set," he grumped, retrieving the drained cube from my armored hand.
"How did you know what I was processing?"
He grinned, more a sharkticon that has cornered its prey than cheerfulness. "Experience. A twitch of an optic ridge, the shift of your mass on a foot pad; the speed and force of your venting all communicate to me, even what you want."
"Really? Hmm, and what do I want?" I asked, filing that information for future reference. In my shooting I could hold everything still for an orn if necessary. Be useful around a frame reader.
"Not to purge again," he laid one hand on mine. "You are new and it was a normal reaction to the carnage."
"First time I lost it like that," I admitted, my optics focusing towards the floor.
"Nothing to be ashamed of. " He leaned closed and my venting hitched. Our optics met. "And?"
I leaned forward intending to touch my lip plates to his as a thank you in answer. The second our metal touched, it was like pure energy. My processor soared and my spark fluttered. He felt it too as his optics widened.
He smirked, reaching out to grab my arms. Using his weight, he slid me back on the berth then down flat on my back plates. Stretching out alongside me, he asked, "Are you sure about this?" I answered with another lip plate lock. Two joors later I fell into recharge, barely able to move and more content than I have ever felt. The old adage, a medic is rarely with you but the time in their arms makes up for an orn of being apart is not even close. He touched me in ways that still makes my engine purr. By day Ratchet and I were rarely together, only to diagnosis the worse cases. The few nights we ended up in the quarters at the same time were incredible. He never told me why he interfaced with me that first time. Neither of us have much experience in relationships or in the habit of picking partners. I wondered about our existence. I never told him how I became a medic student or that I waited to return to the battlefield when Elita's team moved out of Iacon. The war did factor in our conversations.
"I love your optics but armor paint needs an upgrade. It makes you a target on the battlefield," I said. Too many times, I had seen accidental or friendly fire take down a medic. My optics closed against the image of my beloved lying there, fingers morphed into tools, leg hatches open for supplies and a smoking hole where his spark was. I banished those dark lines of code from my processor to listen to him. "Why white?"
"By tradition, only medics and the Allspark guardians wear white. The red on us represents the red dwarf stars. They burn less and outlast the rest of the galaxy. The first designated medics wanted the other bots to realize why they were important and chose a color to remind them."
"You wear colors to remind that medics keep us online longer? Not the worse reason I suppose," I quipped. We were lying side by side, facing each other as usual. "The other white form?"
"The gold swirls for power of light on Guardians mean Allspark sensitive," his optics focused over my shoulder as he spoke.
"Why would they be on a battlefield?"
"They wouldn't," he corrected. "And it helps us. It displays all other colors. The blue of spilt energon, the black of char, the red of melted slagged metal, the silver of protoforms, and even," he turned mischievous rolling and grabbing me with both his arms, pressing our chest armor together. "The green armor of a femme assistant. The white of your spark."
My spark pulsed and I know his advanced systems detected it. He touched his lip plates softly to mine then rolled back releasing me. "I thought of going black or dull grey but like my green," I murmured, trying to hide how much his touch affected me. I swear his spark was the strongest I had ever felt but then I was not overly experienced with mechs. For all I knew they were that strong. And Primus forbid me going to ask him about it, that is what researching the medical logs were for.
Ratchet vented, the sound distinctly exasperated. "First chance I get on a new world, any alt mode I pick will not be white. I will gladly accept any other emergency color available. Some race out there has to have different than white for emergency. "
"What if it's worse than white? Some multi colored dotted splashed mix of colors?" I giggled, tracing a lazy pattern across his chest plates with my armored fingers.
"I'll take it! And no slagging bot is going to tell me otherwise," he half growled. His hands roamed down my chassis and colors were the last thing on my processor. It was only later during a break between shifts that I thought to research my other questions. An intricate report of optic replacements kept me intrigued even as its advanced details left me baffled. "Wonder if the mysterious Wheeljack I keep hearing about wrote this?" I murmured, scrolling to the coding index.
And there it was, the identity of the program writer. Chief Medical Officer Ratchet. "Oh pit," I swore as it all clicked into place. The strength of his spark, his knowledge of all things medical, his knowing the last living Prime and the others. He was the highest medical authority and me, I was a cross training sharpshooter. My job was to offline and I had been thinking of permanently spark mating with the bot designated to help and keep all of us online? I shuddered, not even realizing my optics shuttered as my helm rested in my hands.
"Pit take it, this isn't fair!" I wailed. "I loved him, wanted him and now this?" I remembered rushing from the medical library, heading for the recreation section of Iacon. First place serving refreshments had my credits.
"Four high grades," I ordered. The server mech immediately demanded my ID. I flashed my wrist across the sensor, thinking he wanted to verify the credits. His optics narrowed but he brought me my order. I gulped the first two, never even sensing the quality. The third I drank and the fourth I finished more normally. Then I ordered four more. He brought me one. "You finish that and I will bring you a platter of them," he stated, watching me intently. I remember grabbing it, lifting it towards my lip plates then darkness.
I woke up on the floor, a cream-colored ceiling above me. "How's the processor?" A cheerful femme voice whispered near my audios. I winced, even that sound seemed planet shattering. I leaned my head back to see Elita kneeling by me. Her pink armored hands held a medical scanner, a reminder of my pain. "Nothing too fried but the sludge in your system will have to be cleaned out. I assume there was a reason for this?" She asked softly.
"My existence," I mumbled, moving very slowly to sit up. High grade runs our systems on super charge. For our own protection, sensors and adjustments turn themselves off. Why run a gear at ninety times its speed if it does not have to? Unfortunately, the fuel we cannot burn stays in our systems, thickening in all areas, aka the sludge of the morning after. Valves move slowly, pumps work harder and self-repair detects nothing wrong. Fuel is fuel even if it is thick dark blue gunk. Internal compensators continually adjust so being drunk on high grade is a step up. Afterwards, the slowing is returning to normal even as optics, audios and memory cores struggle with the new settings.
"Any other bot ordering four high grades would have been turned over to the medical core for processor evaluation. Your ID flashed as medical. Server knew medics avoid high grade unless they want to forget or are overwhelmed. The fifth was laced to take you off your feet pads. He called me as your secondary status is on my femme team. Next time come here fist and we can talk over high grade," she advised cheerfully. Yet underneath her explanation was the pulse of an energy weapon. She earned her rank of femme commander and turned a simple sentence into a thorough chewing out. At least what I could handle at that point.
"Ratchet loves you," she said. I blinked at her in surprise. "Oh, don't give me that lost look. Optimus is a Prime but he was a bridge builder and I a common worker. No high family, no ancient clan history, no high training on my side and he fell in love with me. Made sure I stayed by his side. If you love Ratchet, don't let him go, duck his wrenches, put up with his temper tantrums and he will return your love."
And I did. Turns out Ratchet knew who I was since our first wrench throwing clash. He had talked to Prime to get his blessing on our relationship. He and I remained a couple as the war progressed, often physically apart in different battles on different teams but our times together made up for it. I returned to sharpshooting and he moved onto the battlefield with Prime's personal team.
Then word came that Optimus was taking a small command team and leaving Cybertron to pursue the Allspark and locate new sources of energon for our dying planet. I transferred with the other femmes to Quintessa. Cybertron was ravaged, entire generations lost, our forces split across the universe in search while I practiced guard duty for vorns. Then came the call to the stars from Optimus Prime. A new world held hope, a world called earth. That is where my beloved had gone and I would follow. Now I live on earth with him and hunt what remains of the Decepticons there. Cybertron has all but been abandoned to the Decepticons yet Optimus gives us hope. I hope for a sparkling or two with Ratchet but having him by my side is enough. Even if his yellow green paint job is hard on my optics.
Look around and you will not even see me but you are always in my sights. That is what a sharpshooter does. And I am the best there is.