Title: With a Rapid Dip of Wing
Author: akisawana
Genre: Fifty sentence challenge. Theme set Epsilon.
Warnings: So who thought this would be one massive orgy? Just me? This is as G-rated as I get . Positively Disney.
Notes: Broke my USB key. Decided to try something other than retail therapy.
Summary: Fifty sentences for the Aerialbots.
#01 – Motion
They never stopped moving, partly because to stop in the air was to fall, partly because there was simply too much to do, too much to see.
#02 – Cool
"Don't listen to him," Air Raid said, dragging Slingshot away from Blades by the scruff of his neck, "we all know you're cool."
#03 – Young
They weren't even a sidereal cycle in their armor, so Ratchet gave them visitation rights he gave no-one else, not even the twins.
#04 – Last
Slingshot may have been the slowest, but Fireflight was generally the last to arrive anywhere; distracted by the beauty around him and then lost when his brothers were no longer in sight.
#05 – Wrong
Skydive had thought it would work perfectly, thought he had worked it out right in his head and on paper and in countless computer simulations; but he had been wrong somewhere and now Air Raid was going down in a plume of oily smoke.
#06 – Gentle
Whenever something was wrong with one of his brothers –physically, mentally, emotionally- Fireflight would come to him, seek him out, and make it right with gentle words and gentle hands.
#07 – One
The others thought that Superion was a fusion of all five Aerialbots, five parts held together by electromagnetism and love, only the Protectbots knew differently, knew that a gestalt is one mech in five bodies.
#08 – Thousand
Silverbolt pointed his nosecone to the heavens and climbed and prayed, his altimeter ticking his height, one hundred two hundred three hundred, higher and higher; he broke a thousand and his brothers cheered!
#09 – King
Other teams may be a democracy, but the Aerialbots were a kingdom: Silverbolt's orders were not to be questioned, the position his by right of birth; he spent as much time as he could manage with his team until he knew them inside and out, and the rest of the day negotiating with other team leaders on their
behalf or studying anything that might be helpful – there was no replacing him, he was the only option, and that meant he had to be the best one.
#10 – Learn
It was rare to find Skydive without his nose buried in a book or a data pad; the only times he stopped reading of his own volition was to teach what he had learned to his brothers.
#11 – Blur
Air Raid was nothing more than a black blur as he flew towards the distress signal, Skydive behind him a blue streak.
#12 – Wait
Ratchet may have given them more privileges than anyone else in the Ark, but he still had to draw the line somewhere; just outside the medbay four Aerialbots sat shoulder to shoulder and waited.
#13 – Change
The regime change bothered the Aerialbots not at all –for them, it was all about the death of their creator.
#14 – Command
After being in charge of his Aerialbots for so long, no command was too difficult for Silverbolt –even if his ground troops included Sunstreaker and a centuries-old secret.
#15 – Hold
In public, Slingshot hated displays of affection, calling them "mushy" but at night, he was more than happy to hold a brother after a nightmare.
#16 – Need
"Prime, you don't understand; if they don't fly soon, they'll go mad."
#17 – Vision
There was nothing wrong with Fireflight's optics; they were the sharpest of all his brothers, and that was the problem.
#18 – Attention
"It's not his fault really," Slingshot said as he and Air Raid carried Fireflight past Prime towards the medbay, "His creator gave him the attention span of a gnat."
#19 – Soul
Others wondered how the Aerialbots could stand combining, knowing everything about each other, every secret, every lie of omission, a few knew it was because they were a single spark in five parts, a few knew it was because they shared all the contents of their souls; the Aerialbots themselves were too busy living to share the truth.
#20 – Picture
Fireflight's accidental trip to Australia and the day they spent tracking him down and bringing him home was time well spent, they all agreed, when he showed them the pictures he had taken of the whales he had followed across the ocean and the panoramas of the outback.
#21 – Fool
Air Raid was many things but a fool was not one of them, despite what Ratchet claimed.
#22 – Mad
Few people could get Prowl well and truly angry; that Slingshot was one of them surprised no-one –the shock was in how Optimus Prime tolerated everything the little jet said.
#23 – Child
Skyfire watched the Aerialbots recharging in a Chinese rice paddy; they were so young, too young for war and death, and he mourned silently for the childhood they would never have.
#24 – Now
It wasn't for wounds or grudges millions of years old the Aerialbots fought, it was for how the Decepticons tried to kill them now.
#25 – Shadow
It made the older mechs smile, to watch the Aerialbots fight with no shadows around them, laugh with no bitterness, play with no regrets.
#26 – Goodbye
"Guys, guys," Silverbolt said from the bottom of the pile, "I'm only going to be gone overnight!"
#27 – Hide
As soon as Ratchet closed and locked the isolation ward's door, Fireflight climbed out of a rolling bin of spare parts, Skydive tumbled out of a cabinet, and Slingshot jumped out of the air vent; Air Raid and Silverbolt, with heroic effort, managed smiles.
#28 – Fortune
"How'd I get lucky enough to have a brother like you?" Fireflight whispered to Slingshot, cradling the Harrier against his chest and trying desperately to stop the leaking from the shot meant for him.
#29 – Safe
Fireflight burrowed against Silverbolt's shoulder as the Air Commander lifted him right off the ground, they'd been looking for him for days, imagining all sorts of disasters, some of which had happened by the looks of his wings, but none of that mattered anymore.
#30 – Ghost
They were the only ones on the Ark with no ghosts; some of the more bitter mechs hated them for it.
#31 – Book
It wasn't that Slingshot thought books weren't worth reading; he just didn't like seeing the words as much as hearing Skydive read them to him.
#32 – Eye
"It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye," was all Silverbolt said as he walked in the medbay leading a blinded Air Raid by the hand –Ratchet just didn't want to know.
#33 – Never
Never was a strong word, but they'd never lose just one of the jets without losing them all; on the other hand, it made them that much more likely to pull through against impossible odds.
#34 – Sing
Air Raid didn't mind masturbating Slingshot's ego per se, but there was a definite time factor: "Let's just say you can do anything but sing and leave it at that, bro."
#35 – Sudden
Blades got no warning, not even the sound of footsteps, when Air Raid jumped him as he taunted Slingshot.
#36 – Stop
It had taken a long time for Fireflight to learn how to stop on his own, rather than by crashing into the nearest large, sturdy object.
#37 – Time
Perhaps it was because they were so young, but time seemed to move quicker for them; a two-and-a-half-day duty shift seemed unthinkably long!
#38 – Wash
Because of their wings, the Aerialbots always showered in pairs at least; there was a metaphor in there somewhere, but none of them had enough of a poet's soul to put it in words –and why would they even try, when it was so obvious?
#39 – Torn
All of them, at one time or another, had lain awake at night wondering what to do if two of his brothers were in danger at once (except Air Raid.)
#40 – History
It wasn't that they didn't think they could learn from history, Skydive just explained everything so much better –and recreations of famous dogfights were fun!
#41 – Power
"Fireflight, just how in the name of all that is sacred, did you manage to knock out the power to the entire state?"
#42 – Bother
Silverbolt often was found in Hot Spot's room, cursing whoever decided his brothers should be equipped with supersonic capabilities and wondering why he even bothered trying to civilize the little savages.
#43 – God
Fireflight was the only one of them who cared if there was a God and he believed; how else was the sunrise always different and always beautiful?
#44 – Wall
After what Cliffjumper said, no-one was really surprised when Slingshot took a page out of Sunstreaker's book and threw him into the wall –what was surprising was that Skydive helped.
#45 – Naked
Privacy was even more a foreign concept to them than regular mechs without even thoughts unshared –sometimes Slingshot wished his brothers' thoughts didn't flit across his mind so he could hate them properly.
#46 – Drive
Prime's trailer with its precious cargo, in Silverbolt's opinion, was simply not fast enough, and with the way he had to go around mountains rather than over them, how could anyone find this acceptable?
#47 – Harm
"Never meant to hurt you," Slingshot said softly, awkwardly as he knelt next to his brother who had already forgave him.
#48 – Precious
They were all equally precious to Silverbolt; sometimes he found himself standing in doorways and watching them recharge just to reassure himself they were alright.
#49 – Hunger
Silverbolt negotiated their own energon dispenser as soon as he discovered one of his brothers would rather go hungry, those first few weeks, than go into the rec room by himself.
#50 – Believe
"Have a little faith in me, whydoncha?" Air Raid asked; the only faith Slingshot had in him involved a lot of cleaning duty suddenly in his schedule.
End notes:
#3: Sidereal cycle – a year as measured by the position of the stars. Sorry, you say solar cycle and I think 24 hours.
#14: See Magnificent Six. Reads like bad fanfiction, so maybe you should just take my word for it. I'll give you the best line, even: "Sunstreaker had evidently been paying more attention to Prime's words than the rest of them, thought Prowl. Or perhaps years of listening and simultaneously admiring his gleaming bodywork in any available reflective surface had given him the ability to have his mind in two places at once."
#37: A joor is idiomatically as long as an hour. It's six and a half hours long; an eight-joor duty rotation (which was retrieved directly from my ass) therefore is 2.6 days long.
#49: Which one do you think?