Life
By Shadeless
"Blubb" speech
-Blubb- radio transmission
Blubb thoughts
"This," A wet sound indicated that the other mech pulled his foot free. "Is the most disgusting planet I have ever been to."
Scratch quelched the urge to sigh. Had someone else accopanied the nagging Decepticon behind him, they would have killed him orns ago. Even Megatron would have classified it as suicide, even if it had cost him a soldier.
As it was, the medic and scientist wasn't prone to temper fits. Lucky glitch. That didn't mean, though, that Shocker would get away unscathed. Just wait until we're back… You'll regret every astro-second of getting on my nerves.
Unsuspecting of the impending doom, the soldier bitched on. "This is so pointless! There's nothing here. Not even any inhabitants."
Scratch made a dissapointed sound upon the others ignorance. "There are plenty of inhabitants here." He made a wide gesture. "Just stop and take a LOOK for once."
Shocker did as told. After a moment he snorted in disgust. "Tell me you don't mean the non-sentient stuff."
As it is, I would bet my next ration that some of this stuff is more intelligent than you. Definitely more useful. Grudgingly, he wadded on through the nearly boiling swamp. If I gather another layer of mud on my joints before we are done here, maybe I'll consider offlining him just for the heck of it. It would be most satisfying. Especially after listening to rambles on the 'disgusting planet' he himself found so fascinating for nearly twenty orns. Non-stop, every waking moment. Time to get my processor back on the task.
They were on what Shocker deemed a wild-goose chase for a stray signal. It had appeared on Decepticon scanners an orn before they were sent out, indicating that on this organic planet Cybertronian lifeforms had crash landed. Life forms Megatron intended to claim for himself. Or destroy them.
Unfortunately the signal had died as soon as it had been recognized. So the two of them had started with the wonderfully detailed information of in which hemisphere they would find what they were searching for.
Arriving after two orns of travel they found an untouched paradise, in Scratchs optics. In Shockers it was a pithole consisting of environments in which you were either toasted or close to freezing over. Not that his observations were wrong, but that was beside the point.
The Decepticon medic noticed that he had left his companion behind. "Shocker, move it!"
"Gimme an astro-sec! I think here's someth-III-" His sentence was closed with a sliding sound and following splash. Scratch granted himself a low chuckle. Serves the fragger right.
His amusement, however, was short-lived as he thought of having to get what was supposed to be his escort out of trouble. Again. I should do us both a favour and put him out of his misery. His mood darkening, he stalked back to where the traces of Shockers latest encounter with this planets environment where slowly reclaimed by the swamp.
Looking over the edge of the bowl-like formation the fighter had overlooked, he saw said disturbance of his mind, cursing, sputtering and trying to stay afloat in the small lake the moistness of the ground had created upon finding an outlet.
An outlet which would have to be provided by something unnatural, he realised, his optics widening. Maybe Shocker had done something useful after all.
Ignoring the enraged outbursts of the swimming mech he scanned the water and, to his escorts horror, jumped in too. "Are you short a few chips?!"
Scratch dived. There.
At the bottom of the completely half-spheric formed lake was what they had been searching for. At the same time it was something he would have never expected.
It had taken joors to retrieve the object out of it's damaged and now no longer needed shell. It was a miracle that the content was still intact. He carried it carefully, not wanting to risk opening his subspace under water. Breaking through the surface, he was welcomed warmly by the soldier, who had by now climbed out. "I had hoped you had drowned down there by now." His red optics narrowing dangerously, he raged on. "What were you thinking?! That stuff could be contagious! Not to mention the damage it could do to our internals!" Is he worried about me? "Do you know how long it took me to get out without your help?!" I really shouldn't be surprised. And he wasn't. Not really. "If I gain so much as a rust flake, just one, I'll hold you responsible!"
Scratch cleared his intakes with a huff. "Shocker. Shut up and get me out of this."
They had, at long last, gotten out of the swamp-area and were heading fast towards their ship. It was not capable of transforming and not overly intelligent. A mere tool.
The medic was glad about that. It would make what he had to do so much easier.
"Will you tell me now what you found? It doesn't look like a Cybertronian. It doesn't even look like a spark-casing. Why is it so important? That's what we've been spending the last twenty orns on search for? Wasted time." Shocker had gone from nagging about the planet, to complaining about their mission. Not that the other Decepticon payed much attention to him. He had enough more important things on his CPU. The silver cog he had pulled out of the lake was clutched in his protective grip.
They saw the ship. Scratch slowed down and let Shocker take the lead.
The soldier turned his head in confusion, then stopped when the medic did the same. "What's wrong now?"
Taking another look at the device, he marvelled again how small it was. Not many would see how incredible, how fantastic it was. Shocker was not one of them.
"You can stare at that thing when we're on our way back. Can't wait to give it to the command and get cleaned up."
It didn't keep his escort from saying all the wrong things. Not that Scratch didn't know exactly what he had had to expect from the fighter, had he been more tactful. Or intelligent enough to know when he was signing his own death-warrant.
"You know Shocker… We have nown each other only shortly, but I would regret your loss. To some extent."
The other looked perplexed. "What the pit are you talking about? If you're trying to get me into your berth-" He choked. Uncomprehending optics stared at the energy blade in his chest.
They flickered offline as his spark died, the severed main energon line no longer supporting it.
Regarding the energon on his hand with cold optics, Scratch hesitated for a moment. Then he balled it to a fist, striding over to the ship.
He had taken his time reconfigering the ships memory banks. Nothing would be discovered. Activating the comm. unit he hailed their Cybertronian head-quarter. The sight of Shockwave greeted him.
"Define status of mission, medic."
"Mission: completed. Findings: none."
The commander looked angry. You learned to tell, working for an expressionless mech. "You were told not to return unless you had retrieved the signals origin."
Scratch nodded. "We found it. A burned out neutral ship, most likely crashed during to a collision with some kind of space junk. When we were retrieving the deactivated bots, however, it destabilised the whole thing. It collapsed. There was nothing to get anymore."
His commanding officers temper cooled. "I see."
"Shocker was trapped inside."
"He was deactivated?"
"Yes."
"How unfortunate. Report upon arrival, Cybertron out." The comm. unit went dark.
Scratch programmed the course into the computer and pulled something out of his subspace. He had cleaned all traces of energon and dirt of the cog. It now gleamed in it's silver glory. They will never get their hands on this. I'll make sure of it. He stroked the metal lightly. It seemed to vibrate in response.
He hadn't believed his optics when he had seen the device through the muddy green water. A stasis pod. Not an average one either.
He had read all the reports. There had been many experiments before it had been possible to create a gestalt like Devastator. He hadn't been supposed to be the first gestalt. One of the experiments had been succesfull. The merge of six newborn sparks into a gestalt team.
As soon as it had been confirmed that their bond was stable and not hostile to the individual sparks, as so many previous had been, the sparks had been put into a high-security stasis-pod and sent to Shockwave.
They had never arrived.
No one knew what had happened. The courier ship seemed to have disappeared. So, after interrogating a few mechs and torturing a few more, the Decepticon commander had given up on them and supervised the next experiment himself.
The medic touched the pod gently again. Newborn sparks. With the ability to form a gestalt. The war will tear them apart. Narrowing his optics angrily he put the sleeping sparks back into his subspace. He would have to find a better place to hide them.
Not if I can prevent it.