T ransformers Generation One: A Seeker's Triangle By Fang Wolfsbane

Screaming. Pain. Cold. Heaviness.

Those were the first memories that surfaced the moment her optics onlined. At first everything seemed like a blur that cleared within a few nano seconds. The space above her was dark, a beautiful midnight blue that she hadn't seen since before the Decepticons boarded the Autobots ship, the Ark.

Something lapped at her frame. Something cold. In a way it was strangely comforting. At least she knew now that some senses were still functional. Shifting her optics, she took in more of her surroundings. A night sky on some distant planet, probably. An organic planet from the feel of it.

In the distance a couple of buildings stood tall. Strange, they all seemed like they were only tall enough for a bot to go into, but barely move. Perhaps her perspective vision was malfunctioning. She'd have to ask Shockwave to take a look at it when she got back to Cybertron.

Turning her optics a bit further, she saw him; something she could only describe as an organic, for lack of better vocabulary. His helm was a similar black to her own. His optics however, she had never seen the colour as an optical variation before. Optics were usually either blue or red, sometimes green, yellow, and orange, even purple if you were lucky enough to come across a bot with those coloured optics, but brown? She would have marvelled at the sight if the organic didn't yelp and scramble back in surprise after registering that she had onlined.

One moment it had been standing upright, the next it fell back in the fluid she was laying in. She would have found it funny if it weren't for the splitting processor ache she currently had. Groaning from the discomfort, Starlit Meadow moved her arms, bending them at the elbow joints to push herself upright. She must have crashed and gone into stasis lock the moment they entered the planet's atmosphere. Looking at the rest of her surroundings, she frowned. Where were the rest of the bots? The Ark? The Nemesis? Surely the ships couldn't have crashed too far away, could they?

"Where… where am I?' she asked, her optics drifting behind the visor she never removed from her helm, not unless Shockwave asked – well, more like ordered – her to when he had her do one of his tests that required looking at her optical sensors.

"At the beach," the strange organic piped up. Starlit Meadow blinked, her attention snapping to the strange creature. From the low depth of what her auditory sensors picked up, she would have classified the creature as a mech, but considering that it didn't seem Cybertronian, or technological in any form, she held off on her data analysis.

From what she could see, the creature did have some similar mode to it. It had what seemed like peds, legs, a torso, a surprisingly flat chassis, arms, a neck and a helm, the latter of which seemed to have moveable strands. She would have called it fascinating if it didn't seem so easy to… squish.

"The… beach?" she repeated, finding the most surprising part that this creature was capable of speech, even more so a language native to Cybertronians. Granted the language she currently spoke was the secondary one on her home planet, yet most found it easier to communicate in the language, and thus Cybertronian as a language had drifted off into more of an ancient language, one only the old and rusted really communicated in.

The creature nodded, cupping its servos in the fluid, and holding it up towards her, some of it dripping back down through any gap it could find between the creature's digits. "Yeah."

Not really understanding what it meant, Starlit Meadow looked to the fluid and copied the creature's action, watching another organic swimming about like a sharkticon within the fluid. The organic within the blue-ish fluid seemed far more worried about being held by her than it did about her worrying if it might try to tear her apart. Lowering her servos back in, she watched it swim off. Out of the two organics she had met so far, the far smaller one seemed to be the smarter, or at least less curiouser of the two.

"Beach," she said once more, committing the word to her memory banks as she focused her attention back on the creature, "tell me organic, which planet am I on?"

This time it was the creature's turn to repeat her words with an oddly shaped optic ridge. "Organic? I'm not wheat you know."

"Wheat?" Starlit Meadow frowned. She had heard of planets with pretty ridiculous names before, but this one took the high grade energon right off the shelf. "What a strange name."

The creature shook its helm. "No, no. You… ah, you're on a planet called 'Earth'. And my name isn't 'Organic' either. It's Zett. Zett Oakwell."

Under different circumstances she would have questioned the creature's need for a name but considering how similar it was to her in terms of frame building, she supposed it wasn't really all that surprising. Where the rest of its appendages were though, she didn't know. She wasn't going to ask either in case it – in case Zett – became offended by her misinterpretation of its frame like she had done with its planet.

Earth. Zett had pronounced it to sound like 'erf', but the name seemed to be easy enough to remember. Zett didn't take its optics off her, save to temporarily shield its optics behind a layer of whatever metal its protoform was covered in. She hated it whenever Shockwave probed and prodded at her, so she spared Zett her curiosity in trying to feel the texture of his protoform, the little she could see of it. The armour Zett wore didn't seem all that strong either, but if Zett wore it, then it must probably provide some form of protection, shock absorption at the least.

"Hey, what's your name?" Zett asked, sitting itself up by crossing its legs beneath it. A sitting position she herself was familiar and quite comfortable with. She copied it, her movements sending a small wave of 'beach' crashing into his chassis.

"Starlit Meadow."

"Heh," Zett smiled, revealing a set of dentals that seemed divided with small lines in between, unlike the straight line of metal that Cybertronian dentals consisted of. "Your name is kinda funny."

Despite the lack of some of her vocabulary, she knew enough to know what the word 'funny' meant. Her frown seemed to be enough to encourage Zett to be wary of their obvious size difference.

"Ah, sorry. Sorry. I just thought you'd, you know, have a cooler name or something like the rest of the Autobots."

That caught her attention.

"What did you say?"

Zett's optics rolled on their white canvas-background. "Yeah, I know, I'm not supposed to make fun of other people's – or robots –"

"No, not that. What did you say about the Autobots?"

"Uh, that they have cool names?" Zett said, not sounding as certain of itself as it eyed her before something seemed to dawn on it. "That's what you are, isn't it? An Autobot, right?"

Naturally her first thought was to protest the very thought but if Zett knew about the Autobots then that meant that it possibly knew more than she thought. Was this Earth some kind of remote Autobot planet that she didn't know about? The energon in her fuel lines went cold at the thought. If the Autobots had claimed the planet, then what did that mean for the Decepticons? Were any of them even still online? How long had she been in stasis?

Perhaps if she went along with Zett's assumption, she could try and find out more about just what the Autobots were up to. If she were lucky, she could stay under their radar until she could plan her next move.

As much as it pained her, Starlit Meadow nodded. "Yes. I'm… an old friend, that got lost on the way here."

That seemed to be enough to convince Zett of her story. Zett nodded as well and got onto its peds, the fluid they were both sitting in clinging to its armour, absorbing into it. "I'd offer to take you to them, but I don't know where their base is. I could ask Carly though…"

She had to stop Zett. "No! No. I… I'd rather not have my… comrades see me in this state."

"Why?' Zett questioned, arching that strange optic ridge once more. "They could help… repair you, can't they?"

Well Zett wasn't as ignorant as she originally thought. She couldn't reveal too much in case Zett struggled to keep information private. She'd only give the basics, enough to get information of her own.

She sighed. "Technically, yes, but you see my… components are slightly different to theirs. I just need somewhere until I can collect my thoughts. If the Decepticons find out about me, then my mission would be compromised."

"Mission?" Zett's optics temporarily covered themselves with their strange, elastic protoform stretching over their optics. She tried not to flinch at the sight. "You mean like a secret agent?"

Perhaps Zett was as ignorant as she originally thought. "Yes."

"I guess that makes sense. Alright, but we'll have to get you out of here first. Someone might see you out here. Do you think you can transform?"

She would have questioned how Zett knew about her ability to transform, but then again, the Autobots were apparently something this Zett and Carly seemed to know something about. Pushing herself up to her full height, Starlit Meadow took some pride in how Zett gawked at her height. Usually she was one of the shorter bots when comparing herself to her real comrades, so to have somebot – someone – looking to her as if she were as big as Primus himself, well, she'd be lying if she said that she didn't feel somewhat happy about that.

"Give me some space," she said, and once Zett was out of the fluid, she looked around for something on the planet to try and scan. She would have gone with the last form she could remember scanning, but she needed to stay stealthy. In the distance she watched a four-wheeler racing past on a distant road. Concentrating, her optics memorised the vehicle's form, her processor putting the image to the rest of her frame.

Another groan escaped from between her lips as the stiffness in her frame worked on transforming for the first time in who knew how long. Within a matter of nanoclicks she was driving out of the fluid and onto the strange, crunchy surface beneath her, the metal that used to serve as her wheels now some strange, squishy substance, but enough like the metal she was used to in order to try and keep control of. With her optics connected to the headlights at the front of her new form, Starlit Meadow looked to where Zett was standing, mouth agape. She didn't like the look she was getting.

"What?"

"You can turn into a Porsche? That is so cool!"

She supposed Porsche was simply the form of the vehicle she had scanned. She only hoped that the Autobot she had scanned hadn't been aware of what she had done. It could also have been the name of the Autobot she copied. Why Zett referred to them as an object, she didn't know. Perhaps Zett didn't know that Cybertronians had subsections within their species.

"Lead the way."

Zett's optics did that temporary protoform shuttering once more. "Aren't you going to let me in?"

Those words were enough to cause her to worry. She had been inside other Decepticons before when they transformed into their alternative modes before, but they had all been bigger than her. She, on the other servo, had never had another bot within her, sitting or standing.

"I have to let you inside me?"

"Uh, yes."

" Ugh."

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