It was a near thing that first night, but Fireflight was actually sitting up and talking within a few days - though he'd stay in the medbay a while yet. It was what he deserved. He'd crashed into some trees earlier that evening due to simple negligence, severing a wing and his comm in the process, and barely managed to crawl back to camp before collapsing. Which explained why he looked like he went through a shredder.
They were still finding twigs in his armor.
As for Perceptor, while he was definitely relieved Fireflight was okay, he was secretly even more relieved that his aliens had nothing to do with it. He'd feared the worst, and couldn't in good conscience continue the game of musical cameras if they had.
As it was, Ironhide found camera #46 stuffed inside his cannon. He'd briefly left the weapon outside and unattended.
His mistake.
Perceptor had just laughed. The fact that the creatures hung out around the camp didn't even phase him anymore. He'd recalculated the situation after the night of the party, and figured the invisible aliens - whatever they were - must be friendly. Likely the only reason they attacked that first time was because he'd been about to shoot one. Since then, he'd been operating under the assumption that they were dangerous.
But what if it was the other way around? Of course the things would stay hidden if they were afraid of him. He needed a new strategy. A way to show it was okay. They'd already communicated with him once - surely that wasn't a one way street.
That was why, the next morning, he found himself on his hands and knees scribbling in the dirt. Not the most dignified way to start his day. He'd picked the place camera #46 used to be, just outside of camp. Hopefully, the creatures would visit it again if they weren't already here, watching him do this. For all he knew they followed him around.
He'd start with simple math. After all, it was the universal language. Careful to make it obvious, he used dots to represent the numbers, since there was no way an alien would inherently understand glyphs.
Basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. A sparkling could do it.
When he later returned, the scene that greeted him confirmed what he'd feared and hoped. The creatures had come. Gone were his equations; in their place danced numbers of their own.
The first thirty digits of pi.
He'd made First Contact.
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