Thundercracker stared at the datapad in his servos as he strode down the halls of the Academy behind his friend.
"Failed."
"Failed!" Skywarp wailed. "And they're makin' me get a tutor. A tutor, TC!" Their shoulders slumped as they looked down at the smaller seeker. "If you can't teach me, no one can."
"Maybe they'll find the right method for you?" Thundercracker offered. "My method clearly wasn't it."
"But it was!" protested Skywarp. "I just, when I got the test it was different than what I'd studied. The layout was all different and the page was so crowded." The blue mech nodded in understanding; Primus knew the formatting was as important as the context for them.
"You could ask the professor to let you retake a more spaced out version," Thundercracker suggested.
Skywarp raised an optic ridge.
"I could ask the professor," the younger amended. The addition was met with a shrug.
"I know all the teachers probably love you, TC, but I really, really doubt any of them would do that," Skywarp laughed bitterly. "I'll just go along with the mentoring thing and get screeched at for not learning right like everyone else." They stopped suddenly in front of a door; Thundercracker, still half-focused on his datapad, nearly ran into their back. Frowning worriedly and venting, Skywarp keyed open the door before entering. Their comrade followed, not knowing what to expect.
The room was small by Academy standards, empty save for a few chairs around a modest table and a large screen on one wall. Skywarp promptly slumped down in one of the seats and tossed their helm back in defeat.
"You have any classes for the next hour?" they asked hopefully, glancing at the other.
"Well, no, but-" Thundercracker made the mistake of looking back at the expectant expression and vented. "You'll be fine, Warp." He half-smiled as he took a seat. "But yeah, sure I'll stay."
Skywarp flashed a grin too pleased to stay annoyed at. "Owe you one."
It was over ten kliks later that the door slid open and in strode a diminutive, rather unpleased seeker wearing a scowl that could pierce a spark chamber; Thundercracker feared she actually might when she noticed the two and deepened her frown. A servo clutched desperately at his under the table.
"So," the newcomer sneered shrilly as she waltzed in, "which one of you is the hopeless flunkee I have the pleasure of wasting my precious time on, and which one is going to get the slag out of this room before I pick out my next lab rat?"
Skywarp gaped at Thundercracker like a mech about to die.
The blue jet vented- Primus help him- and tried not to let his annoyance show.
"Skywarp's here for tutoring," he began evenly. "I'm Thundercracker. I'm here for… moral support." He added, after a moment, "Warp asked me to stay."
"Lovely," the stranger remarked sarcastically. "And I am telling you to leave."
"Wait!" Skywarp protested. "He won't say anything or disrupt. Just let him stay."
"Ugh," scoffed the tutor. "Fine. Your little date can stay and protect you."
"Date?" they repeated in disbelief.
"Please. Like I can't see you gripping his servo for dear life under the table."
"Moral support!" Skywarp repeated even as they frantically withdrew their limb to their side. "It's a thing friends do, Starscream."
"Yes, well, I suppose I wouldn't know-"
"You know her?" Thundercracker questioned, raising an optic ridge.
"Well, of her, yeah," Skywarp answered with distaste. "Everyone does."
"Never heard of her." He shrugged.
This was apparently the wrong thing to say, because Starscream promptly managed to look even more enraged. Skywarp stiffened.
"He doesn't really know who anyone is, he's kind of a loner- Starscream's the honor student-"
"So what's the honor student doing mentoring?" Thundercracker asked, unimpressed. His tone was neutral, torn between trying to appeal to his friend's tutor and trying not to let her annoy him.
"If you must know," she replied with some hesitation, "I may have been wrongly blamed for a small explosion in the science wing and unjustly sentenced to community service."
[This is the third time she's wrecked an entire lab,] Skywarp added over their comms.
Starscream hissed through her vents. "Now, if we're all done getting buddy-buddy, are we going to get this experiment in futility over with?" Thundercracker raised his servos in surrender and moved his chair to the corner of the room, promptly returning to his abandoned datapad as Starscream glared. "Now, shall I assume you know nothing of chemistry, or may I skip to a part that requires a fundamental knowledge of anything at all?"
Thundercracker lowered the volume on his audio receptors.
It was two breems later that he decided he couldn't put up with any more of Starscreams lectures. Returning his audio receptor volume to normal, he rose from his seat noisily and leered as he approached the table. "Starscream."
"Please tell me you're leaving," she groaned. "Otherwise, I give you full permission to shut the slag up."
"You're not going to get anywhere just telling Warp that these things happen," the larger mech continued anyway. "I tried. Don't you have any hands-on demonstrations?"
"I would, perhaps, if I hadn't been wrongly forbidden to deal with any of the more… corrosive chemicals." She sounded almost genuinely disappointed. "But this is how I learned, once it became clear I was no longer welcome in the labs. This method works."
"Really. Insulting a student when they don't know something you haven't properly demonstrated? That's how you learned?" Explains something about your personality, he added to himself.
"TC, it's fine," Skywarp interjected, standing up as well. "I can defend myself-"
"It's called criticism," Starscream continued, cutting off the other, "and perhaps some of us just aren't programmed for the Academy life-" The jet was cut off when a servo wrapped around her neck, closing around cables and hindering the flows within; the grip forced her to look up, and Thundercracker cruelly hoped that there was some genuine surprise and fear hidden behind her defiant scowl.
"Do not insult Skywarp like that," the larger seeker growled, his voice lowering to a deep baritone. "You may be brilliant, Starscream, but you are not better than them. I feel sorry for your friends if you're always such an insufferable aft."
With a harsh vent, he released his grip and had no more to say. All was silent for a moment before Thundercracker suddenly stiffened and jolted his head to the side; Skywarp was staring, shocked for a moment, then confused, then—angry?
"I can defend myself," they repeated.
Of course.
What had he done?
"I-" he stuttered weakly, all the fierceness and anger leaving him, "sorry-"
He backed away from the smaller seeker as if she was holding a knife—with her expression she might as well have been—and bolted for the door. It briefly occurred to him that there were rules about running in the hallway, but for once he couldn't bring himself to care.
Maybe he could transfer to Iacon where no one knew him—no, too many grounders—or switch classes- sure, it would be hard to avoid the two of them until graduation, but he was good at what he did, and what he did was run away from his problems. It had worked so far.
Granted, he hadn't quite managed to run away from the whole "being constantly aware that you're justifiably hated by everyone who ever trusted you" thing, but who knew? Processor manipulation seemed to be getting more and more advanced, and he'd heard plenty of reviews say that Froid would willingly take anyone to test new procedures—
But as he ran to the Academy's exit and flew, he knew he wouldn't. Couldn't. No matter how many times he thought about it, after Cloudhopper, after Skystorm. It was an overreaction, he knew, and he knew he should have stayed calm and simply apologized—shouldn't have been so aggressive in the first place, really, but making amends was better than nothing. But he'd crushed that opportunity himself.
He didn't want to think about what he had done, or what he would do. And so he didn't, and kept flying.
Back in a small Academy room, two seekers were very confused.
