Chapter Three: The Change
When did you become so unfamiliar to me, because I find myself waking up and realizing I only knew who you used to be –unknown
Starlander paced the floor of the complex anxiously. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe sat on the floor, innocently playing with connectors.
Oh to be as naïve as a sparkling again. Starlander longed for their ignorance. She hadn't felt calm since Cable's side of the bond fell silent.
Then, he hadn't come home for hours. It was well beyond curfew, so he wasn't allowed to be working even if his glitch of a boss tried to make him.
She'd called the Kaon enforcers, but enforcers didn't care about missing miner class bots. Miners went missing every day and everyone turned a blind optic.
But not her Cable, she wasn't going to allow him to become one of the many victims of this sparkless city.
"Mechs," she said, and the twins looked at her with wide optics.
"I'm going out to get Sire okay?" She said softly.
"Where is Sire?" Sunstreaker realized, and Sideswipe looked up too as if finally noticing the absence of Cable.
"He's just late coming home from work," Starlander lied. In truth she had no clue where her Sparkmate was.
Sideswipe seemed to accept this answer, but Sunstreaker's optics clouded and Starlander could tell he knew something was wrong.
"Are you leaving us here all by ourselves?" Sideswipe asked.
"I won't be gone long sweetspark," she promised, having no idea if it were true.
Not being able to face Sunstreaker's intense stare or Sideswipes curious one, she made for the front entrance.
Starlander threw the door open to be met by the large dark silhouette of a mech.
Feeling flooded her bond and she gasped.
"Cable? What happened to you?" She asked, grabbing his servo and pulling him inside.
"Sire!" The twins chirped from behind them.
"I'm fine, fine," Cable waved off Starlander's concern. This was the first indication that something was off. Cable always made sure to calm her worry, but he never brushed it off.
"What happened?" She demanded a little firmer.
"Nothing, I got assigned an odd job. Took longer than the mech thought it would," Cable explained.
"What odd job?" Starlander questioned.
"Pit if I know, they put me in stasis for it," he muttered. Both twins looked up in surprise at the sound of a curse word.
This was the second indication that something was off. Cable never cursed in front of his little mechs.
Starlander's optics narrowed in worry.
"Well, why don't you get some recharge. You look like you need it," she told him.
"Yeah, alright," he said quietly, and trudged off towards their berth room. Starlander watched him go anxiously.
"Sire felt weird," Sunstreaker said quietly, and she turned to see him rubbing a servo over his spark.
Starlander hadn't noticed before, since she was too focused on the sudden arrival of Cable's presence, but now that Sunstreaker mentioned it, his side of the bond did feel weird.
It felt, muted.
"Sire just needs to recharge, just like you two. Its way past your recharge-time," she scolded. Sideswipe complained immediately.
Sunstreaker looked rather upset at this fact too, the pair of them were just having a ball playing with connectors into the late hours of the night.
Starlander could feel their disappointment over the bond, but she scooped up her twins and began to head towards their own berth rooms.
She sent one last wave of worry towards her Sparkmate, but it was met with unnerving silence.
Surely, Cable would be fine after a night of recharge.
When the twins woke the next morning, the absence of their Sire was the first thing they noticed.
"He left already," Sideswipe complained.
"He's doing important stuff," Sunstreaker reminded his twin. Although he couldn't keep his disappointment over the bond hidden in the slightest. Not yet anyway.
Every day, Sideswipe noticed that Sunstreaker's side of the bond became harder and harder to read.
He pushed on the strange wall that was setting into place in his spark.
"Don't do that," Sideswipe complained out loud. Everything from Sunstreaker's side of the bond was still very easy to read, but this new wall made him frustrated.
"Do what?" Sunstreaker asked innocently. Sideswipe glared at him. He didn't know what his twin was doing, but he knew his twin knew what he was doing.
"That!" He exclaimed, putting a servo to his chest.
"I don't want you poking around in my spark," Sunstreaker stated simply.
"Well why not?" Sideswipe demanded.
"I don't know," Sunstreaker said defensively.
"You do too,"
"No I don't," he repeated.
"C'mon Sunny, that's no fair. I don't have a weird wall thing!" Sideswipe complained. His twin was silent for a minute, and then,
"I don't want you to worry," Sunstreaker admitted.
"About Sire?" Sideswipe asked. His brother nodded. "I'm already worried about Sire though," Sideswipe pointed out.
Sunstreaker vented in frustration, but Sideswipe felt the weird wall that was steadily building crumble.
Sideswipe took his twin's servo in his own.
"He's okay," Sideswipe assured him. Sunstreaker looked up at him hesitantly.
"Okay," he agreed. Before long, the pair of them got up so their Carrier could take them to their education center.
Cable felt his servo twitch again as he drilled away at energon. He hadn't wanted to be late again, so he'd left before the rest of his family had woken up.
His processor was still fuzzy from the day's prior events, and he could only scarcely recall an ominous purple mech, and coming home after curfew.
Cable shook his helm to try and focus himself on his work. He felt strange. The bonds in his spark that he usually clung to were bland.
Oddly, Cable himself didn't feel anything towards the matter. His spark thrummed numbly, and he mined energon because the movements of mining energon were engraved in his neuro-net.
Hours into his drilling, an alert went off in his head signaling an energon break.
Cable didn't want a break though. His processor had fallen in a calm state with his mining. Every time he had to stop, to switch a drill or move onto a new patch of energon, he felt something eat away in his processor.
The calmness that was resident within him felt like it was crumbling away when he stopped and his servo began twitching erratically.
He did not want a break.
:Are you glitched?: The sharp voice of Chainpull barked in his audio receptor.
:No: was his short reply.
:It's time for a break slaghead, I don't want my workers breaking down so get your aft up here: Chainpull demanded.
Cable growled to himself, and then stopped. He knew mechs that growled, but he had never fallen into that category.
The voice boxes in Cybertronians were fitted for both speaking, and making noises akin to some of their native animals, including growling.
Biologists on Cybertron said that it was because they descended from Predacons, but nowadays growling was seen as an impolite practice.
Cable didn't have much time to ponder on the matter before Chainpull screamed over the com again.
Muttering to himself, he left his drill and walked towards the exit of the mines.
The brightness of the outside irritated him, and his servos began that strange new twitching.
A small cube of low grade energon was shoved into his servos, just like they did every morning. Cable found himself sending a death glare at the mech who handed it to him.
It was a drone, so it met his glare blankly with a red visor. Cable muttered to himself again and walked over to drink his energon in peace.
He felt Starlander sent her regular soothing feelings over the bond, she usually did so when he was stressed in the minds.
Part of him wanted to lean into the feeling, but that strange feeling of corrosion in his processors made him ignore her spark.
"Everything okay?" He finally heard Starlander's voice. From the distance she was at, communicating through the bond must have been extremely difficult.
"I'm fine," he snapped, and before he could blink, a wall was thrown up between their bond.
Cable was confused momentarily. Had he done that? He'd never shut Starlander out before. Never except for one time, after the memorial service for his own Carrier.
Even then, he had let her in eventually.
Cable looked up with a rotten look on his faceplates. He still couldn't seem to figure out where his terrible mood had come from, nor could he bring himself to really care.
He glowered to see Chainpull marching towards him with anger in his optics.
Cable felt a low rumble in his tanks. The very last thing on Cybertron that he wanted right now was to deal with his pit-spawned boss.
"What on Cybertron is wrong with you today fragger?!" Chainpull shouted as he marched straight up to invade Cable's personal space.
Before he could think, the edges of Cable's vision turned a deep violet.
Starlander hadn't stopped worrying since Cable left early that morning. The bond still had not returned to normal since the previous night.
But now, she was feeling more than just worry. She was hurt, and afraid. Cable had yelled at her. On top of that, he cut her off.
It stung like a slap to the faceplates. Starlander felt coolant building up in her optics, and she had excused herself from her classroom.
She sat curled next to the energon dispenser at school, trying to contain her emotions.
"Primus femme," a voice said. Her helm snapped up. An old mech was standing in front of her, no doubt a fellow educator.
"Oh, pardon me," she said, standing and making her way back to her classroom. Embarrassment flooded her as she felt his optics on her back.
"Take your medication before you come," the mech called after her. The energon in her systems heated up.
A lot of times on Cybertron, femmes were commonly seen as too in touch with their sparks. A lot of bots tended to get annoyed when a femme would show too much emotion.
Because of this, doctors had invented medication for femmes that numbed their connection to their sparks.
Starlander had never taken this medication herself, she was very in control of how she acted in public. She also hated the idea of the medication.
During her studies of sparklings, she'd learned that the reason femmes were more in touch with their sparks was so that they could be alerted if maturing sparks within them were in distress or unhealthy.
However, she bit her tongue this time. This mech clearly wasn't worth her time. Despite how much she hated supporters of femme medication, she knew she had to pick and choose her battles.
Turning around to tell off some random mech wouldn't help her in the slightest. It wouldn't make an impact, and would probably only strengthen his already poorly formed opinions.
However, it didn't stop her from glaring daggers at the floor as she made her way back to her classroom.
The younglings she taught were extremely well behaved, and she smiled as she re-entered the classroom. It seemed they had worked silently in her absence.
A tap on her leg strut made her look down. A youngling named Wheeljack was standing in front of her timidly.
Wheeljack was several vorns older than her own twins, but she loved this youngling dearly. He had a great passion for science already, and she could tell his bright mind would take him places.
"Can Perceptor and I use the energon conductor?" He asked, pointing towards the back of the classroom where the science equipment was.
"As long as Perceptor is the one to use it," Starlander agreed. Perceptor was a dark red youngling with a good helm on his shoulders. He and Wheeljack had hit it off on the first day of class.
Wheeljack nodded eagerly and rushed off. Starlander smiled. The youngling tended to get a bit carried away with his projects and had a tendency to sometimes cause their science equipment to explode.
Starlander wasn't sure how he did it, since none of the tools were even remotely dangerous, but where there was Energon, Wheeljack found a way.
She smiled softly as she watched the too younglings begin to eagerly work, the sight distracting her from the pain of Cable's anger.
She let out a quiet vent. Cable would have to wait. She had a classroom full of younglings to teach. Nothing was more important than the future of their planet.
Okay so currently i'm just cranking out work lol. Hope you like this chapter. Fair warning, things go downhill pretty quick. Also the story is going to be pretty focused on just the twins by like chapter five, so sorry if you guys are bored with Cable and Starlander. Anyways, R&R!
Keep Writing Keep Reading Nova out ;)