Hi guys! I'm sorry it took me so long but the school is killing me. I just don't have the mood for writing thanks to it. Thankfully we had two days of holidays so wrote this chappie.
I've found my Beta-Francesca Zatnik-thank you verymuch again!
Characters: Starscream, TC, Skywarp, Rumble
Disclaimer: TF's not mine.
"TeeCee! Wake up!"
This was not what Thundercracker had expected to wake up to. Actually, judging by his last memory file he hadn't expected to wake up at all or, to wake up to a world of pain. Surprisingly he felt no pain; in fact he felt really good, as if he was fully recharged and that hadn't happened in eons. It made no sense. The last thing he remembered was a laser beam being fired at him and the burning pain in his torso. Maybe it was just a dream. Maybe Skywarp had poured some hallucinogenic substance in his energon again. The last time he had done that he had seen Megatron singing and shooting rainbows out of his fusion cannon. That had been freaky…
"TC, answer me! I know you can hear meeee." Speaking of Skywarp, the mech was starting to give him a helmache.
"Shut up, slagger…"
"Gee. You can be such a pain sometimes. I just wanted to make sure they didn't offline you permanently." So it wasn't a dream.
Thundercracker slowly sat up and onlined his optics to take a look at his surroundings. He had to push Skywarp away from his faceplates to do that first. What he saw confused him to say the least. They were surrounded by metal bars, the spaces between which were filled with some kind of transparent material, creating a circular wall. When he looked up he saw that the walls were tapered, coming to a point. The thing they were in had a shape of a cone. It was also divided into three levels, which he could see because the floors were transparent too. Each floor had a circular hole in the center to enable movement between the levels. They were trapped - and he didn't like that. (1)
He looked through the translucent material and saw that the "cage" they were in was situated in some kind of room. Even though the glass was distorting his vision he found he could make out some similarities to living quarters in the room. There were various objects resembling furniture, and a circular desk on the other side of the room, sticking out of the wall. Around it there were globular objects probably functioning as chairs. Also there were circular holes in the walls through which he could see into other rooms. Even the room itself had a shape of a sphere. The creatures sure liked things rounded. Everything he saw was made of the black metal he had seen in the tunnel, and dimly lit by the same lights he had seen there too. In spite of this the room didn't look hostile, but in fact reminded him of the houses the squishies lived in, as weird as it was.
"Where are we, 'Warp?"
"I dunno." the purple seeker shrugged. "But Screamer says it's some kind of prison. He claims we were taken down some tunnel."
"I don't claim, I only assume." said jet made his way over to them with Rumble by his side. "But there is no way out. That is certain."
"Did you try to break the glass…or whatever it is?"
"Unsuccessfully." The air commander sighed, "We tried to break it with Rumble's pile-drivers, melt it with our thrusters. None of us can access our weapon systems, though, so we couldn't shoot our way through."
"They blocked our weapons? But that means…they know our anatomy."
"I've arrived to that conclusion, too. They even repaired the damage done by their attack."
"And my broken shoulder joint!" at that everyone looked at the teleporter.
"There was nothing wrong with your shoulder joint." Starscream uttered after a moment of silence.
"Oh but there was! But I've never told you 'cause you would make me to go to Hook. And he doesn't like me." He said, making Thundercracker facepalm and Starscream roll his optics.
"Nobody likes you, Skywarp, and they have good reasons not to.(2)" the commander dismissed the subject while slapping Skywarp up the helm for a good measure. This apparently amused Rumble, judging by the snort he released.
"So what's the plan, oh great commander?" the cassette asked. Starscream pretended not to hear the sarcasm in Rumbles voice, much to the little robot's annoyance.
"We wait, we can't do much more." He said and sat down next to the others. "We'll try to negotiate with our captors as soon as they show themselves. Assuming they can talk and their language is in our database."
"Astrotrain got away, right?" Thundercracker asked. Seeing the others nod in agreement he elaborated. "Think Megatron will send a rescue for us?"
"I am pretty sure he would be glad to leave me rust in here and he definitely wouldn't waste the energon for you, either" that didn't sound very promising. "But Soundwave wouldn't leave his precious brat here."
"So I am actually important for ya?" Rumble grinned up at the others.
"…Theoretically." Starscream slowly and reluctantly admitted.
"Cool! Now ya should start worshiping me or something!"Rumble crossed his arms, looking very proud of himself.
"In your dreams, midget." Skywarp growled and the two of them began to throw insults at each other. Thundercracker noticed the others' behavior was pretty normal considering they were being held as prisoners by alien creatures on alien planet. (3)
"Thundercracker," he turned from the bantering mechs to regard his commander, who had spoken. "You saw them. What did they look like?"
The blue jet replayed the memory in his processor. The first thing he felt when he saw the creature was disgust. "It was definitely organic and it was not pretty. It was huge but you already know that. It had multiple arms, claws, black skin, and huge yellow optics…erm eyes." He shrugged in discomfort. "Why you wanna know? I'm sure you're gonna see for yourself."
"I'm searching my memory banks for anything corresponding with your description. I hoped to have some information on them from my years as an explorer, or my studies." He said while shaking his head. "But I don't recall anything similar."
Starscream was trying to stay calm just for the sake of keeping up the moral. He didn't want the others to start freaking out like he was inside. His seeker senses were tingling-they were trapped somewhere underground with no way out, too far from the open sky for his likings. Primus knew how long they would be trapped. Even though he said the rescue was coming, he really doubted it. He feared even Soundwave wouldn't be convincing enough to persuade Megatron to waste the energon on them. Greedy slagger. For now it was the only hope they had and he could only to latch onto it, at least until he was able to conceive a plan of his own.
"Are you alright?" Starscream glared at Thundercracker for the offensive question. "You're shaking." Thundercracker defended himself. The commander looked down at his servos and forced himself to stop the trembling.
"Pfft! I'm fine, of course I'm fine, just peachy…" he crossed his arms over his chest and looked away with a scowl on his face. I just don't want to die here…
"Rumble! Stop gnawing Skywarp's foot!" Thundercracker roared. Starscream turned to see the cassette giving his wingmate a rude hand gesture.
"TC! Shut up!" Skywarp screeched much to everyone's surprise. Thundercracker gawked.
"Whaa? I'm defending your feet, you slagger-"
"Shush! I mean it!"he froze with his hands in the air and blank look on his faceplates intently listening to something. "Can't you hear that?"
The others turned up their audios and ceased their movements, not hearing anything at first. After a moment they heard a soft clicking noise. They glanced around trying to determine from where the noise was coming, only for it to stop. There was a moment of silence before a loud swoosh was heard and the lights in room lit up suddenly.
"They're coming to get us!" Rumble screamed and clutched onto Skywarp's leg, hugging it tightly. The jet was rubbing his hands together nervously, his optics wide and wings twitching. He got up, ignoring the additional weight on his leg and ran to hide behind his commander.
"Don't let them eat me, Screamer!" he whispered. The red jet gulped and gathered the little courage he had left to stand up, Thundercracker doing the same. They regarded the circular hole in the wall from which weird noises could be heard, backing away a little as the noises increased in volume.
Three creatures emerged from the hole. One of them was considerably smaller than the other two but otherwise it was the same. As Thundercracker had said, they were organics. They had long bodies, similar to Earth's snakes in the fact that they lacked any form of lower limbs enabling them movement, but differed from the reptiles in their multiple arms, four to be exact, and an upright torso. Their black to gray skin was covered in scales and there were several spikes on their backs. Their heads were elongated to the front with huge yellow eyes. The creatures were huge, in the same way that Cybertronians compared to a human.
The smallest one fixed its eyes on them, opened its mouth and released a squeak. It then slithered its way to them, followed by the other two, extended one claw and tapped on the glass. It regarded them with its ridiculously big eyes and released a sequence of squeaks, clicks and hisses in what was apparently their language at the four frozen Decepticons.
Rumble peaked around Skywarp's leg to take a look. "They're ugly." He muttered."And creepy."
"They are not that scary..." the teleporter whispered. He nudged his air commander behind which he was still hiding. "Didn't you wanna negotiate with them?"
"I can't" the red jet gulped. "Their language isn't registered in my databanks. They wouldn't understand a word."
"I might help you with that…"
"What?" he turned to regard his purple wingmate with a quizzical look. "You? How?"
"Just let me talk to them." Stasrcream regarded him with "are you serious" glare but in the end gave in.
"Whatever. Just don't make them mad or something." He shrugged and stepped aside to give his subordinate room. Said subordinate got up from his kneeling position, Rumble letting go and attaching himself on Starscream's leg instead. The purple jet made his way to the front of the cage. He cleared his vocals to gather his bravery, spread his arms dramatically and spoke loudly and clearly.
"Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong!"
Skywarp stood there with his arms spread out waiting for a response. The only response he got were surprised stares from both his fellow Decepticons and the creatures. In the end the smallest creature tilted its head sideways looking very confused. It then looked up to its companions and squeaked something at them. The others answered and engaged themselves in a conversation. Starscream chose this moment to hiss at his subordinate.
"What the frag was that supposed to be, Skywarp?"
"What? You've never heard of the universal greeting?(4)" he turned around to give his commander an innocent look.
"There is no slag like that! There can't be with the amount of life forms and languages in the universe! It is scientifically impossible." He stomped over to the purple seeker, Rumble still attached to his leg, and whacked him up the helm.
"Ouch! What was that for?"
"For your IDIOCY!" the red seeker screeched waving his arms around and making the creatures stop their conversation and look at them again.
One of the bigger beings let out something similar to a snort, pointed at the red seeker and muttered something making the other two burst out into a variety of squeaky noises.
"Heh" Thundercracker chuckled, "they are laughing at you, Scream."
"No, they're not!" said jet crossed his arms defiantly and pouted.
When the beings ceased their "laughter" the smallest one asked the others something with questioning shriek. When they gave it a positive answer he turned to regard the Decepticons and pointed at each one of them while letting out different sounds for each Decepticon. One of the bigger ones than patted its head and then they all left for one of the holes. The lights shut down.
"What was that about?" Skywarp asked.
"Ah think it just said in which order it wants to eat us. I'm the first! Ah don't wanna get eaten!" Rumble squeaked while hugging Starscream's leg tighter. The jet looked down at him.
"Mech up, will you?" he shook his leg. "And get off me." The little cassette reluctantly did so, but still stayed close.
"I think it named us." Thundercracker muttered. Everyone looked at him oddly.
"What?" Starscream asked with a raised optic ridge.
"I said it gave us names-"
"I heard that, my audios aren't broken. I want you to justify your hypothesis."
"I think they consider us their pets." At Starscream's incredulous look he elaborated."Look, I know I may sound crazy but they really remind me of humans. They have similar living quarters and appear to live in family structures. Humans keep their pets in cages" he gestured around himself, "and this is a cage. They also weren't hostile, made no attempt at communicating with us, and didn't appear as if they'd wanted to let us go anytime soon."
The three Decepticons were looking at him with open mouths.
"Sooo" Skywarp put on a thoughtful expression. "My name is Bleuughree?"
Starscream facepalmed. "This is ridiculous." He sat down and rubbed his optics.
"What's the plan now?" Thundercracker asked. "The one with negotiating obviously didn't work."
"There is no plan.(5)" The red jet growled. "We'll just sit here and hope Megatron will be generous enough to spare a few cubes on us. Or we could live as good pets for the rest of our eternity!"
"Slag no!" Rumble stomped. "Ah don't wanna be anybody's pet!"
"You don't have choice!" the commander shrieked completely losing his cool. "Oh, wait maybe you do! I could spare you the disgrace by tearing your spark out! WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?"
"Starscream, calm down-"
"I AM CALM! Absolutely calm!" he continued shrieking, his optics glowing with rage. "We're going to spend the rest of our lives as some monsters' toys(6), of course I'm calm! Ugh! If you two followed my orders and retreated when I told you to, we wouldn't be in this mess!"
"Hey! Don't blame this on us!" Rumble opposed. "You were the one who told us this planet was uninhabited! We couldn't have expected this! Did you fail to read your reports correctly?"
"The reports were from Golden Age! That's a long time ago! Millions of life forms could have evolved since then! It's not my fault!"
"It is nobody's fault! So stop this fight, it won't solve anything." Thundercracker interjected. "I think we all just need a recharge. We can discuss this later."
"Fine…"Starscream grumbled. "Go and recharge. I'll keep the watch…for safety." He bent his legs and hugged them, resting his chin on his knees. He heard the others walk away in silence. Except for one.
"What do you want, Thundercracker?"
"You blame yourself for this, don't you?" He did. And it was hard for him to confess it. For the first time in his life he felt like it was all his fault. This was his mission, so he was responsible for it, and for the others. He knew somewhere Megatron was laughing at his failure. "You couldn't have expected this."
"I could have been more cautious." He sighed. "You said you needed a recharge so go and get it…"
"I woke up as last so I'm pretty fresh. I'm gonna keep watch with you." He sat down next to the air commander.
"Hmph."
"They will come for us, you know…"
"Thought you were the pessimist." He mocked to lighten up the mood. "A Decepticon who can't take care of himself is not valuable for the cause. We don't even come back for the injured on the battlefield. They will not come back for us…"
Thundercracker had no answer to that.
Hope you liked it! Please let me know what you think!
Author's comments:
1 - I don't know if the seeker claustrophobia was ever mentioned in any series, but it seems canon in the fandom so...yeah.
2- The pranks, 'Warp, the pranks...
3- TC is the only one with common sense
4- Skywarp is the only one worthy of knowing it
5- insert the score from DOTM of the same name for epicness
6- you're a toy in real life. So chill out, Scream.
Next time teaser:
"Creeper?"
"If they can name us, I can name them."