Chapter 16

"Yeah, I know guns. Barrel goes the other way. See?"

"Today we'll be working with various combat-protocol configurations," Contrail declared. He marched around the firing yard, stepping around the smoking craters where the previous class... had themselves some fun, Hawkmoon decided. Like she was about to. "Nothing capable of offlining, mind you. Not now. This is merely to explore your own intrinsic combat-programming and get a feel for how you move - and then we'll work from there."

"Why?" a Seeker by the name of Velocity asked. A frown was affixed to his faceplates. "With all due respect, sir, why do we need to learn how to fight at all?"

Contrail stopped pacing, turned about and clasped his servos behind his back as his optics roved over the assembled initiates. "You are aware of this very building's history, are you not? That this very Institution was a Quintesson estate?"

"Yes-" Velocity started to say.

"Then you are aware that the Quintesson war ended with the Quintessons being driven off Cybertron, to the edge of known space, hunted by Seekers and revolutionaries as far as our ancestors could - but no farther. It stands to reason that pockets of Quintesson-spawned lifeforms survived. What do you think they'd do if they found a lowly Seeker trine in wild space? Hm?"

"Kill us," Velocity realized, voice small. "They'd kill us."

"And," Contrail went on, "the Quintesson war had taught us one very important lesson, had it not? We are not alone in this universe."

"We know that, sir, but most alien-"

"'Most' alien life is less than sapient, and even those that are are vastly behind ourselves in terms of technological advancement and military power, indeed. Inferior, in other words. But - there only needs to be one alien species capable of killing you to actually do the deed. And those," Contrail looked them each in the optics, his own shining brightly, "are unfortunately a very real threat out beyond Cybertron."

Hawkmoon kept her chin high and her optics level; she didn't need to be reminded about that.

"Is everything clear?" Contrail inquired. "Do you understand the necessity of this exercise?"

Velocity ducked his helm and averted his optics. "Yes sir."

"Good. Now - who wants to go first?"

They started with the Cybertronian equivalent of tasers - and phenomenally weak ones at that. The weapons configuration was implemented into each of their systems via a wired data-injection. It wasn't entirely alien; Exos used to do the same - or rather, mortal non-Risen Exos did, usually to recover fragments of certain prized memories after a reset. Not her, though. Or... probably not. Lennox-2 had only ever been reset once, and all that was lost to death and Light. Most of it.

She hated the parts, the fragments of her previous selves, that stuck around, that rattled around her brain as she slept - or as she died. Or rather just the former now, Hawkmoon bitterly mused. No more easy death for her; there was nothing keeping her from dying for good what with... Gecko...

"Focus," Contrail snapped.

Hawkmoon sharpened her gaze on what lay before her - a firing range, of sorts. Her optics relayed the info to her processor, and it went to some efforts to analyze the distance and depth of all she was faced with in a way the human eye never could. A few measly targets, spread out across a number of distances both close and semi-far.

Honestly. Were they actually trying to give her a challenge? Ah well.

Hawkmoon transformed her servo into a taser (which felt and looked plain weird), brandished it like a revolver on instinct, dragging it up to align with the targets like an impromptu Golden Gun - her foreign body falling all too easily into the familiar motions, switching out the trigger pull for the a simple psychological command.

Fire.

Her taser burst out with a half-dozen weak, sparking darts of electricity, snapping back the heads of the partially-disassembled Frame-like drones with brutal accuracy.

"Very good," Contrail murmured. He sounded surprised. "Very good."

Hawkmoon resisted the urge to spin her handcannon, simply because she didn't actually have one. A pity, that. She missed the weight of a proper gun. Or a knife - hoooo, yeah, a knife would have been nice. Not like she needed it, with claws like hers, but still - it was symbolic. The gun too. A Gunslinger needed their trade tools.

"You wield it well," Contrail observed. "A natural."

"Feels natural," Hawkmoon agreed. "Should I..." she waggled the digits of her un-transformed servo, "spark some more?"

Contrail flashed a tight smile. "... No. No, I don't think we have anything else to gain from this. You'll do well in this module, I think."

Throughout the orn Contrail tested her further, making her swap configurations sometimes on the fly, while most of the rest of the class were stuck with tasers and some pathetic forms of weak solid projectile weapons. Like the wooden rifles and pea-shooters the children of the Last City ran through the streets playing with, just built into the gathered Cybertronians' arms.

Hawkmoon found some precision weapons more to her liking, and Contrail - after noticing her interest - offered to show her more after the orn's session was over. "But you can't leave with these," he warned her. "Under no circumstances can you leave unsanctioned with any Institute weaponry. You have to check out for a data-erasure, I'm afraid. Do you understand?"

"Yep," she cheerfully replied, and meant it - but then... "Oh, I-"

"Yes?"

"I've got something... to..." Hawkmoon trailed off, cursing under her imaginary breath.

Contrail waited, and with no answer forthcoming, said, "The symbiote?"

Hawkmoon's helm shot up. "How'd you-"

"Minerva called me," he explained, his tone decidedly neutral. Not good or bad - it just was.

"And...?" Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "It's... okay?"

"I don't care," Contrail retorted. "As long as it doesn't keep you from your studies. Which, I might add, it appears to be doing right now."

"I can't leave-"

"Ask one of your new friends to fetch it a cube. They have the time." Contrail pointedly glanced over in the direction of Nacelle and Cyberwarp. Hawkmoon winced; neither of them were doing poorly, per se, but... they weren't like her. Not even close. But that was to be expected when one student had walked the Way of the Sharpshooter, wasn't it? A tad of an unfair advantage, that - though not one she'd been looking for. Hawkmoon would've been entirely content remaining in her old body, all her new Cybertronian frame's many fantastic functions be damned. Ignorance, as they said, was bliss. But there wasn't any use-

"Work on them," Contrail told her, interrupting her train of thought. "They don't have your edge, but you can pull them after you all the same."

"Yeah, of course."

"And get your trine set up, as soon as you can. It can take mecha time to acclimate themselves with the... peculiarities of a bond, faux or no."

Hawkmoon grimaced. "Not entirely keen on the idea."

"Do you trust them?"

"... To a degree. I haven't known them that long."

"You've already bonded well," Contrail observed. "A trine like yours could rise to the top, with ease. And they look to you - as, it seems, they should."

"What if they learn-"

"Make sure they don't." With that said, Contrail marched away to oversee the next Seeker in line - who was struggling desperately to work with her taser's barely noticeable recoil.

Eventually, as Cybertron's searing sun set over the horizon, the class filtered away. Hawkmoon sent a request by private comms Cyberwarp's way. ::Contrail wants to work with me some more, get me used to the real things. I'm really sorry, but can you shove a cube the symbiote's way? He doesn't bite so long as you have fuel handy.::

Cyberwarp's reply was almost instantaneous. ::Sure! By Primus, that thing is intimidating. How do you even recharge in the same room?::

::I put on my mean face.::

::That really works?::

::Oh yes. I can be very scary when I want to be.::

Cyberwarp's next response was tinged with laughter. ::I believe you. Anyways, yeah, I'll feed it, him, straight away when I get back. Nacelle's heading to the shopping district again, by the way. Want anything?::

Hawkmoon thought it over. ::A manual on handling symbiotes, please. I'm out of my league.::

::You're doing fine.::

::My wings ache. By the Pit, I'm so stressed. Pets are... they're something.::

Cyberwarp hummed. ::Sounds like you need to de-stress.::

::Pretty sure that's what I'm just about to do. See you soon.::

::Bye.::

Hawkmoon turned back to the waiting Contrail and nodded. "So what're we doing?"

"Live fire," he brusquely replied.

She raised an optical ridge. "Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Won't this get you in trouble? It's my first orn attending this module. Isn't there some rule against that?"

"No."

"Shouldn't there be?"

Contrail tilted his head. "I've been a member of the Vosian Exploratory Institution for seventy-seven vorns," he informed her. "I've taught for sixteen of those. The directory board trusts me to teach. I'm flattered, Hawkmoon, that you're so concerned with my career, but what I'm teaching you in this module is supposed to save your life. I've judged you reasonable and responsible. Was that a mistake?"

"So... don't disappoint you?" Hawkmoon reasoned.

"Exactly."

"Oookay. Okay."

"Do you not want to fire a shoulder-mounted cannon?" The corners of Contrail's mouth tilted up.

Hawkmoon groaned. "Now that's taking it a little far."

"Then stop trying to squirm your way out."

"Just trying to be my responsible self, is all." Hawkmoon withheld a scathing curse. "Yes. Yes, I want to shoot a shoulder-mounted cannon. Please."

The Cybertronian body - and more accurately, it's ability to transform both completely and partially - was a strange, intuitive, spectacularly wonderful thing. People could transform into cars and planes and so much more, they could turn their hands into tools, and, as Hawkmoon was presently discovering, they could turn themselves into walking-talking mobile weapons platforms. She had a cannon - on her shoulder, linked up to her central processor like another optic and limb in one, complete with its own targeting matrix and a loaded clip of deadly-looking rounds.

"Nucleon-charge cannon," Contrail explained. "Long-range, single-fire, anti-armour; a sharpshooter's favoured configuration."

Hawkmoon fired. It was... almost disconcertingly easy. The drone-target lost its head in a burst of sizzling shrapnel, glowing metal fragments raining down all over the floor below. The recoil was there, but it was dampened by a number of inbuilt shock-absorbers coupled with the choice placement at her shoulder - where her frame was most rigid and reinforced, keeping both cannon and herself steady.

Hawkmoon glanced at the gun with a newfound fondness. Oh death machine extraordinaire, where have you been all my life?

She returned to her dorm feeling like her every pressure-sensor - her nerves - were on fire, and it was incredible. Something not unlike adrenaline rushed through her system, thrummed within her spark and throughout her energon-lines, coursing through her entire frame and leaving her primed for action. Hawkmoon loved it; loved the high of gunsmoke and burning synthetic muscles, and even without the ability to pick up on either, simply the chance to hear, to feel... That was enough.

In short: she was a sucker for guns, guns, guns.

That was her North-American Imperial ancestry speaking right there. Some Martian behaviourisms too; the red deserts were a great place to let loose, to set oneself free in the emptiness of the murderous wilds of a dead world. Hawkmoon didn't need any memories to know that - because it had gone that exact way when she'd woken up a Lightbearer, rediscovering Mars and her love for battle, for the risk, for life itself.

Traveler above, she'd needed that. The crack of the cannon, the staccato burst of splinter-shards tearing out of a semi-auto servo-become-carbine, the hissing twang of slung energy bolts from a mechanized wrist-mounted plasma-ballista. She pitied the janitorial drone sent in to clean up after her; each target she'd sighted had been quickly and systematically dismantled, torn apart at the seams.

Hawkmoon had loved every moment of it.

She keyed in the door's access codes, stepped inside, and found, to her surprise, Nacelle, Cyberwarp and even the damn symbiote on the bare steel couch, watching what appeared to be a robot soap opera on a new, massive wall-mounted screen in companionable silence. The bird was splayed across Cyberwarp's lap, optics offlined and its engines purring as she massaged its back and wings with the utmost delicacy.

"I bought a monitor," Nacelle declared, turning his helm just as she entered, and he raised a fist into the air.

Hawkmoon saluted him. "Praise be, brother."

"They'll never know what hit 'em."

"And we'll steal their paint-polish while we're at it."

Cyberwarp glanced between them, a smile playing on her lips. "What in the Pit are you two on about?"

Nacelle made a face and pointedly looked back at the screen. "You wouldn't get it."

Hawkmoon walked over, motioned for Cyberwarp to scooch over, and she finally sat down, sighing as her wings neatly fell into grooved slots lining the couch's back. The sensation was nice against her overly-sensitive sensor panels and... yeah, Seeker-designed furniture was always great to have.

"Someone's due for a preening," Cyberwarp murmured, tilting her head Hawkmoon's way. She, for her part, just shrugged; she had no idea what the other femme meant, and she was a touch too tiredly overcharged to bother asking. "What'd you get up to?"

"Found my configurations," Hawkmoon replied. "Splinter carbine, neutron-charge cannon and bolt sling. Contrail ran me through some physical combat procedures as well. Had me test out some wrist-blades too. I love this module."

"Take an easy night," Nacelle advised her. "Recharge well. We're having a high-alt flight run tomorrow."

"Joy." Hawkmoon looked down, at the symbiote. "How'd you get him so well-behaved?"

Cyberwarp made a face. "Because I'm so nice and likeable and charming. What else?"

"Bought some energon treats," Nacelle whispered. Cyberwarp dug an elbow into his side. "Hey!"

"So... splinter carbine?" Cyberwarp inquired.

Hawkmoon eagerly nodded. "Yup."

"What's that?"

"Okay, look, so... it's this design that sucks in everything, particles in the air and the like, and then it traps it all inside this airtight capsule and crushes it - and I mean crush, so powerfully that it all becomes flakes of jagged glass and diamond. Then the carbine shoots out these splinters of crystal using the same force, pure vacuum, and tears through whatever's in its way. It's awesome. I love it."

Nacelle shivered. "That's... wow."

"It's beautiful," Hawkmoon whispered, smiling. "Ammo-efficient and deadly. I mean... what's not to love?"

"You like weapons?" Cyberwarp ventured.

"Oh, you have no idea. I like... things in general, but weapons... weapons are the best. Love a well-built gun or carefully-groomed blade. It's art."

Cyberwarp nudged her. "You can be the brawn, then. Nacelle's the diplomat, and I'm..."

"Stealer of symbiotes," Hawkmoon snorted. "How's that? Give me back my bird."

"No, he's mine.

"'Warp..."

"Fine." Cyberwarp gently slid a hand under the avian's belly, shushed its squawking complaint and... dropped it on Nacelle's lap, much to the mech's surprise.

"What-?" he started to ask.

"Oh, right, was I supposed to hand him the other way?" Cyberwarp asked with feigned innocence. "Oh dear, silly me. Now, Hawk - your wings."

Hawkmoon frowned, asked a "What?", and slid her wings out the couch's slots on automatic. "What're you-... Oh."

Cyberwarp's digits flashed over the panels of her wings, softly and with purpose, almost... kneading out the accumulated stress that had built up over the many decaorns she'd spent on Cybertron. It was nice - no, more than that, it was great. What had Cyberwarp said earlier? 'Preening'? Like a... like a pidgeon, or those other weird feathery things that sometimes hopped about the city? No, not the crows, she liked the crows, it was the white ones Arcite 99-40 had kidnapped from the mountains running outside the city. Doves, that was it. Preening like a dove?

If this was another aspect of Seeker culture she was only just experiencing, then this was something Hawkmoon was totally on board with.

"Thanks," Hawkmoon murmured, subdued.

Cyberwarp paused. "You're welcome," she responded, and went right back at it.

One action-thriller set during the Quintesson war later, they all collectively retired to their rooms. Just before vanishing into her own, though, Hawkmoon turned to Cyberwarp and said, "I'll join your trine, if you'll have me."

Cyberwarp beamed. "Of course."

Then, suddenly, her helm leaned forward and brushed against Hawkmoon's own - their 'fields' briefly intermingling. There was nervousness there, fondness, appreciation, wonder, curiosity, and so much more. A moment passed and, maybe realizing what she'd done, Cyberwarp leaned back, her expression abashed, and shot Hawkmoon a hesitant, warm smile before delving into her own quarters.

"Huh," Hawkmoon said, to absolutely no one.

"You're... being attacked?"

"Hit on," Hawkmoon corrected between sips of mid-grade energon. "Flirted with. And I'm not exactly sure if… if that's even true. She's not... great at it."

Minerva rolled her optics and went back to checking the symbiote over. "That's... that's fascinating," she drawled. "I'm so happy for you."

"No you aren't."

"Yes, exactly, I'm really not. Why are you telling me?"

"Because it's late and I've stayed away as long as I've can and when I get back it's going to be weird and awkward, and and and-"

Minerva sighed. "What do you want?"

"Just give me some pointers. What's it like having a trine?"

"Noisy."

Hawkmoon made a face. "Yikes."

"Starscream never knows when to shut up..." Minerva grumbled. "He's... he's the smaller one."

"No, yeah, I got that."

"Political sciences. He's noble by creation. Has aspirations to become the next Prince of Vos."

"What about Thundercracker?"

"Oh, he's the opposite. Doesn't talk enough. And when he does..."

"Intense."

"Yep." Minerva stepped back. "Alright, you're fine."

The symbiote shook out its wings, ruffling its feathers. It gave her a wary look.

"Do you have a designation?" Minerva asked.

Nothing.

"Bob your helm if yes."

No bobbing. Hawkmoon was a little disappointed. "Ever have any trouble with your guys?"

"Not like you do, apparently."

"Dammit."

"I'm sure you'll survive," Minerva deadpanned.

Hawkmoon shrugged; I know I will. "Oh, and I've decided: the little guy's name is Rook."

"Rook?" Minerva echoed. Hawkmoon nodded. "I suppose that fits. Well, Rook - you're almost finished with the cast. Give it a few more orns and you can leave us all be."

Rook glanced Hawkmoon's way. His optics narrowed.

"I'm not keeping you against your will!" she blurted, raising her hands in surrender. "You can leave when you're all good, alright?"

Rook shook his helm.

"Wait, you want to... Oh, frag."

"Your problems just keep on piling, don't they?" Minerva mused.

Hawkmoon sighed. "You have no idea."

"How was your flight today?"

"Pretty, when looking down. Not much else to say sights-wise." Hawkmoon looked off into space wistfully. "We were almost out of the atmosphere. I felt so free..."

"How's your frame?" Minerva asked, nodding to her chassis. "Take the change in pressure well? The fluctuating temperatures? Radiation-shielding holding up?"

"More than. No trouble at all, actually. Smooth sailing all around."

"You say weird things."

Hawkmoon shrugged. "That's just because I'm cool."

Minerva groaned. "Yeah, yeah. Can I go now?"

"Got a few more questions."

"Isn't that a pity?" Minerva ushered Rook towards Hawkmoon. "Ask as we move, or get locked in."

"Right, right." Hawkmoon waited until Rook had climbed up her arm to perch on her shoulder, then followed Minerva out. "Anything against relationships in the rulebooks?"

"Nope."

"Alright. How about... will it... mess with the trine?"

"Have you bonded yet?"

"No." Hawkmoon shook her helm. "Not yet. Soon, though."

"Well, you're not head over heels just yet, seems like," Minerva said, sounding halfway disinterested - so better than usual. "And attraction's just that, if this is anything like what I'm hearing from you - physical appeal and personal appreciation. Little embarrassment, maybe, when you get around to forging the trine proper. Just the two of you, right?"

"What are you-... Oh. I... guess? Nacelle's... well, I don't float that way."

Minerva hummed thoughtfully. "Make sure you're not causing any friction with your third if you do want to do anything about... you know, whatever's your problem."

"Will do. Thanks."

Minerva waved her off. "Just stop bothering me, you weirdo."

Hawkmoon laughed.

Cyberwarp was watching something on the big screen when she got back. Nacelle was probably out, somewhere; if he was in the dorm, then he would've been on the couch too. Mech loved his television.

"Hey," Hawkmoon greeted, somewhat warily.

"Hi," Cyberwarp glanced at her, then averted her optics. "Look, I'm..."

"It's cool." Hawkmoon grabbed two cubes of stored high-grade (thanks Nacelle, you the man) and plopped down beside her, almost dislodging a grumpy Rook from his roost. She passed a cube over. "What're we watching?"

AN: [Insert gratitude towards best editor boi Nomad Blue]

Goodness, but is this domestic. Feels a little dicey in terms of lil' timeskips, I know, and I apologize, but I swear I'm at my wits' end with how slow this thing is going. I started this fic because I wanted... you'll see. It's coming soon. Because I'm making it come soon. No more long pauses between short, lacking uploads. Hopefully.

Also, Seekers are birds. They act like birds. No one can convince me otherwise.