Summary: A look at the Transformers universe... from a lower than usual viewpoint.
Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, however much I might wish I did. I do, however, own Noo.
Author's notes: This is an exercise in total freakin' obscurity, dashed off in the space of half an hour because I couldn't get the random weird idea to leave me alone. Definitely one for the completists only!
By way of explanatory background: who remembers that infamous little Skuxxoid mercenary from G1 Season 3, the one who worked first for the Quints and then for Galvatron? He never actually got killed, but he got threatened, humiliated, tricked, beaten on by both sides and was clearly meant to be just a throwaway character. The thing that grabbed me about him, though, was his constant complaint was that he was only doing this for the money because he had a wife and kids to look after. And since the universe is a big place and all throwaway references have to lead somewhere, Noo the baby Skuxxoid popped into my head late one night and demanded that the world be told how he felt about his father being the comic-relief bounty hunter in a kids TV show. The result was this. No, I'm not sure why either.
Also, the title is something of a placeholder and there's a virtual cookie in it for anyone who can suggest a better one.
Told by the Fireside
It's getting late. It's freezing dark outside and the rain is so cold it's setting solid and is going click on the windows. The fire is going out, and Ma is crying again. She's trying not to show it, her muzzle hidden in her sewing and her mouth pressed shut, but I can see her shoulders moving and the tips of her ears twitching. I know she's crying.
I get up from my corner and go over to her, sitting by her hindfeet and putting my head on her knee. Da is late home again. Three whole days late, this time, and he hasn't sent a message. Ma is worried.
Me too.
He has to come home. He has to. I say so to Ma, and she nods and scritches my ears gently. "Course he will, Noo."
Noo is my name. It's not much of one, but I'll get a proper one in another year or so when my claws have finished coming in. I can't wait, cos when I get my claws and my proper name I'll be a Grown, like my Ma and Da, and then I can do anything I want to.
Only I don't want to be like my Da. Da is a Merk, which is short for a very long word that I can't say properly but means someone who takes money to do things that need doing. It's a very dangerous job and Da is very brave to do it, but it means he spends lots of time away and we never know what's happening to him. Which is why Ma gets so upset when he's late back.
I miss him, too. So do my sisters, even though they're only little and don't really understand. I pat Ma's forefoot where it rests on my head. "It's okay, Ma." I don't know what else to say, but that always seems to help a bit.
"Come here, Noo," she says. "Come here and give your old Ma a hug." She picks me up onto her knee, dropping her sewing out of the way. Her arms go around me, and I put mine as far around her neck as they'll reach and bury my muzzle against her warm chest. She smells of sweet spice and greyfern oil and just generally of Ma, and it makes me feel better in a babyish sort of way that I'd never admit to out loud. She rocks me, patting my back and crooning to me, and I croon back, and it helps.
And then her head snaps up and her ears prick. "Listen!" A moment later I hear it too - the sound of shuttleship engines, high and noisy over the wind outside. Da's shuttle, the Spikey Thing, has big old engines that make a noise like a strangling dragon, and I'd recognise them anywhere. Da's home! My insides do a happy flipflop and my heart bounces around with relief. Ma gives a little gasp and squeezes me tight. "Oh, thanks be!"
I listen, counting off the noises. The sudden roar and thump is Da firing the retro rockets to bring the shuttle down safely, and the loud squeeching noise is the sticky gears on the docking bay as the clamps lock the Spikey Thing into her berth. Then there's a silence of exactly thirteen heartbeats which is Da walking from the bay to the den, and then bang goes the door and in comes Da, shaking his head and flapping at the rain on his coat.
Ma shouts "D'vekan!" and I shout "Da!" at the same moment and both of us jump up to hug him at once. He catches me in one arm and puts the other around Ma, and I lean on his shoulder while she nuzzles at the soft place under his chin. He smiles and nuzzles her and pats me, and everything's okay. And hugging Da is cold and squishy, cos he's been out in the rain and now he's all dripping and there's chilly steam coming off him, but I don't mind cos he's my Da and I love him and I missed him like anything. "Da! 'Lo, Da!"
"'Lo, Noo," he says, then: "Hello, Amyrr," to Ma. Ma smiles a shaky happy sort of smile and grabs me into her arms, untangling me from my grip on Da. "Let your Da sit down, Noo. You can sit with him in a minute."
Da sits down in his own chair, the big one closest to the fire. He stirs a flame up with the poker and then holds out his forefeet to warm them. Poor Da, he looks ever so tired. His handsome Merk clothes are all tattered and singed at the edges, and his skin is pale and not very shiny. And the holster where his laser pistol usually lives is empty. I don't think Da has had a very good trip this time.
Poor Da. I wriggle til Ma puts me down, then run over to sit by his hindfeet. He smiles down at me. "'Lo, son. You look after your Ma and Sisses while I was gone?"
"Course I did, Da." When Da leaves, he always tells me to look after Ma and Sis One and Sis Two, and I always say I will. And when he gets back, he always asks me if I did, and I always say I have. I'm not quite sure what I'd do if anything ever did happen while Da was gone. I guess I'd just have to do my best, and Da knows I would, cos it would be my duty. It's a very solemn thing, being an eldest son.
Only now Da is back, so I don't have to be solemn any more, cos now it's Da's job to do the looking after and I'm his little Noo again. "Where you been, Da? Tell me? Tell me?" I wouldn't want Da's job, but he does tell some wonderful stories about it.
Especially when, like this time, he's been working for the 'Cepticons. I don't know a whole lot about 'Cepticons, and I'm not sure Da knows the half of it either. But they're very old and very big and very very terrible, great warriors with eyes like red flames and skins of polished shining steel, and they can change their shapes to become huge war machines and flying ships and who knows what else. Da says they're living machines. I don't know how that can be, but if Da says it, I believe it.
This time, Da was hunting after a 'Cepticon called Octane who had done something that his people thought was too awful to be forgiven. Da says he doesn't know what this Octane did, cos Merks don't ask things like that, but whatever it was it must have been dreadful. Cos Da says it made the 'Cepticons' Lord Commander towering mad.
The 'Cepticon Lord Commander is just about the most scary creature in the whole universe. Every time Da talks about him his voice goes all high with awe. His name - ssh, Da says: whisper it, case he hears you! - is Galvatron. Da says he's taller than the clouds and only a little bit shorter than the sky, and he carries a great gun that's a part of him like a claw or a fang. His eyes are flarelight red and too terribly bright to look at, and his voice is like engine noise and white thunder. When he turns his head the stars get caught and pulled down by the spiked crown he wears, and they fall like dust around his feet. In battle he burns inside like living fire and can blast you away to nothing at all with a single shot or a blow of his fist. Even the other 'Cepticons are afraid of him. Da says they think he's crazy.
"So is he crazy, Da?" I asked once. And I've never known Da to Not Say Anything quite that loudly, not even when Ma mentions Great Auntie Lonenn, so I think that probably means yes. The only one of the 'Cepticons who isn't afraid of Galvatron, Da says, is the one called Cyclonus; he's the second in command, and he sticks to Galvatron like a big black shadow. He's cold and cruel and he doesn't care about anyone or anything, and Da is nearly as scared of him as of Galvatron himself.
Cos, well, the 'Cepticons pay Da to do their work for them, but they don't like having to. Da once told me, very quietly and where Ma couldn't hear, that one day he might not come back from doing jobs for 'Cepticons. That they hate everyone and everything that isn't them, and if any of them ever got mad enough about something, he might just get caught in the middle and not get out. I didn't understand that, the first time Da tried to tell me about it. But now I think I do.
I don't like it. I don't like it when my Da comes home late and tired and hurt and scared cos of someone whose side he's supposed to be on. And all right so I'm scared too, cos if Lord Commander Galvatron turned up on the doorstep I know I'd just run and Da wouldn't tell me not to either. But it didn't ought to be like that... did it? Just cos they're bigger than us and have steel for bones and wires in their veins, just cos they can fight and fly and think they rule the universe, doesn't make people like me or Da into nobody.
I said so to Da, once, and he shushed me. He said even if I was right it didn't matter, because how did I expect to argue with someone like Galvatron about it? And then he scratched my ears and told me to forget about it and not worry, because there were always ways for people like us to get by. We're very little compared to a lot of what's out there, I remember he said. We slip through the spaces, and that's the safest way.
Only for once, I don't think I agree with Da. Which is why I don't want to be like him when I'm Grown. When I grow up, I'm not going to do it the way everyone else on Skuxx does. I'm going to do it different. I'm going to grow up bigger and stronger than any Skuxxoid ever, and I'm going to learn to fly a battleship and fight with a gun and a shockblade like our warriors do. And then I'm going to take a ship and I'm going to go out and show everyone. Even the ones as big and scary as the 'Cepticons...
"You're quiet, Noo," Da says, and I jump as I open my eyes cos I hadn't realised I'd shut them. "You thinking down there?"
I look up and he smiles at me even though I can tell he's so tired it's hard work, and I'm so very hurtingly glad he's there when I know he could just as easily not be. And that makes me so mad with the 'Cepticons and everyone like them that it's a lump in my throat and I have to swallow before I can answer. "Nope, Da," is all I say out loud, though, cos I know he'd laugh if I told him what I'm really thinking.
Cos, well, I'm only little. And for now I'm going to curl up against my Da's knee and go to sleep. But some morning, I'm going to wake up and I won't be little any more. And then I'm going to go out there and make things different.
Just you watch me.
Fin