Title: Origins 3 - Praise

Author: Kit SummerIsle

Rating: T

Continuity: G1-ish AU, pre-Earth

Warnings: mentioning of abuse, mind-wipe, violence (not detailed)

Summary: Each bot in the Autobot army has his story of how he became what he is. Some stories are secrets from most, some even from the mechs themselves.

Praise

Desperate

"Too small. Too young. Worthless." – the voice that delivered the verdict was bored, careless and more than a bit disdaining.

"I can fly! I can fight! Take me on please!" – the voice that answered was young, shaking with desperate emotions and trying its best to sound more adult, in order to be taken seriously.

"Go away. The Decepticon army is not a care-center. You are useless. Out."

"But I wanna fight!" – Spitfire didn't particularly want to fight, but he really had no choice. At this point it was either the Decepticon army or starving on the streets; these orns a young orphaned flier didn't get many choices in Kaon. He couldn't even sell his body with his interface systems not showing any sign of coming online either; that too was partly because he was starving, he knew. Many of his systems failed to online so far, more important ones too than his spike. The energon he could gather from abandoned machinery was almost worse than slag mixed with acid, but that was all he could get. No stealing for a flier who couldn't hide and be inconspicuous. He was, as many told him: useless.

"Get lost, brat before I throw you out." – the Decepticon officer was not interested in starving street rats, as the recruiting was open for mechs worth their upkeep in energon and useful in the war. It would be his fault and punished accordingly, if he showed compassion and took the mechling on and he proved to be worthless. For a nanoklik he contemplated the brat being able to train to as spy, but dismissed the idea immediately as his glance fell onto the small wings on his back. Flier. Autobots were soft-sparked but definitely not idiots.

"Suck slag then!" – Spitfire murmured quietly as slinked out of the building, hungrily watching the well-fed mechs who got enlisted that joor, milling around in a restricted area of the huge chamber. If only he could leave the town… but no use to whine about something he couldn't change. He was caught in a vicious circle of circumstances; he couldn't get enough energon to grow and strengthen, therefore he couldn't fly and because of that he couldn't leave to have opportunities to acquire more energon… Kaon was hard enough life for mechs but even more so for youngsters alone and without any caretaker or a group. He knew several of those gangs that pillaged the abandoned factories and neighborhoods, some even dared to steal and rob mechs that they could overpower collectively.

But he was alone as far as he could remember – which admittedly wasn't that long. His memory seemed to be blank when he tried to remember how he got to the city and how he functioned in it before. It was like he didn't exist a vorn ago. Since then, he tried to scrape enough energon to remain functional in a city totally uncaring for his efforts and uninterested in his struggle for survival. Where did he get the idea that being in another city would be better for him? While he still had enough energy to think of such things he decided that in Vos he would be if not cared for then at least never going hungry, that his kind would not let him deactivate.

The little flier, cut off from any kind of information sources didn't know that the city he yearned for didn't exist any more – only the silent ruins smoked in the place of the high and proud towers. He had very little knowledge about the war itself, only the hazy notion that Decepticons were supposed to fight for the lower castes and the poorer mechs. He heard that when someone big held a rousing public speech in a big square. And was he not a low caste and poor, unable to even sustain himself? But apparently it didn't matter. Spitfire hid beneath some rusting plates to be safe from both the gangs and the inevitable acid rain and tried to forget his aching tanks that complained loudly of being empty of anything useful but poisoned by the slag that was the energon he sometimes found in old machinery.

The next orn he had to run. One of the gangs discovered him hiding and he was fortunate to get away with just a slight dent and a scratch to his left wing – but then they started to hunt and chase him all across the ruined quarters of the city. He had no delusions as to what they wanted – his energon that was still in his lines and his parts to sell. The place was full of abandoned, half-collapsed buildings that used to be busy factories and storehouses but were left to slowly crumble into slag vorns ago, at the first of the energon-famines, when many businesses gone bankrupt, to make the big ones at the top that much richer. These orns it gave home to desperately craving empties, some weaker gangs that got hounded out from the still livable inner parts of the town and other, slowly dying mechs of no particular description.

It takes a long time for a mech to finally deactivate from starvation, a painfully long suffering and pain as the systems go to standby mode one by one, then offline and atrophy, until not enough remains to sustain the dying spark. The last part of the slow process that could take groons was when even the processors and memory chips started to fail, pushing the starving mechs into a dazed stupor that few woke up from. The whole thing is even slower and more painful if the mech could get a little energon, usually a dirty, impure one, barely enough to sustain the core systems, but not the rest.

Spitfire was somewhere halfway to become a real Empty; still fighting claw and denta to scrape some energon to sustain him, but unable to get enough to grow and become a mech, able to find a job or at least a regular source of sustenance. He knew that he was close to the time and if not for the lack of energon and upgrade he'd be adult already. But instead he remained in this half-living, half-dying stage – and every time he got chased by a gang, his meager reserves got used up frightfully fast, denying him the chance to grow up yet again. Still, he'd rather not get torn apart for the energon in his lines thank you very much.

He knew how the hunt was going and he had his routes that would lead him to safer places – if not for the fact that apparently he got caught between two separate gangs and forced to bolt without a plan and knowing where he'd end up. Running full out on the exposed street he jumped high to climb the wall at the end of it, desperation giving him an incentive to be able to squirm up to the top, ignoring the alarm's wailing that started up around him. It was probably just a leftover from the building's heydays, he thought as he disappeared on the other side. He should have been suspicious that none of the gang-members followed him, but at that point he was just glad for it.

Hoping

Without sparing any attention to his surroundings, Spitfire scrambled into the first doorway he saw open and didn't stop there to marvel at the more or less standing building where there shouldn't have been any such. Finding a small room that looked long undisturbed by the amount of debris and dust in it he stayed there unmoving behind a scrap heap, listening for any footsteps or engine noises to signal approaching danger. Only when none came for joors did he dare to move again and start to discover the place where his wild run landed him.

Aside from the few rooms at the back, where he hid, the building was suspiciously intact and looked like to be in use occasionally. By whom, he couldn't tell, at least not until he saw a mech, a grounder coming in and he recognized the insignia on his chest-plates before he leaned over some kind of a machinery. He managed to get into a Decepticon place somehow – from the look of it newly established here. He twitched nervously and immediately regretted it as the mech, fast as a viper straightened up and pointed a nasty looking blaster towards him.

"Whoever is there come out or I'll shoot!" – the voice was rough and tense but not cruel. Spitfire froze, but he saw no way out so he slowly moved out from behind the parts heap to face him – and his blaster. He felt closer to deactivation than ever before.

"Please don't shoot! I didn't know where I was running!"

"You are a youngling…?" – the mech sounded almost shocked. But surely he knew how bad things were outside the armies…?

"Y-yes…"

"Don't you have someplace to stay…?"

"N-no…"

"Hey, don't be afraid, I won't do anything to you."

Spitfire didn't trust him at all, despite of his words. He's seen far too much to trust any mech, even the most innocent-looking one; and the Decepticon was quite far from what could be called harmless. Decepticons were said to be ruthless and cruel to anyone not in their army, and some said that they behaved the same even within that. But he couldn't run any more, the low energy warnings turned from yellow to red, shutting down even more of his systems.

"What's your designation?"

"S-spitfire…" – he could hardly speak by now.

"What's wrong with you?" – the mech stared at him uncomprehending and Spitfire knew that the mech probably never ever had to miss even one refueling, much less be familiar with the signs of last stage starvation.

"Gonna shut down…" – he groaned with his last ergs. The mech might or might not give him energon, but nobody else would. – "hungry…"

"Ohh… I see. Can't have a youngling be deactivated on me…" – the mech murmured, somewhat ashamed not to recognize the youngster's condition. He pulled out a cube from his subspace, an actual, real, full cube of energon, Spitfire marveled with hazy optics, and brought it to his lip-plates, slowly pouring it into his mouth. It was beyond marvelous how it felt as the energon, real, clean energon slid down his scratched intakes, warmed his empty, aching tanks and washed through his clogged fuel pump. In itself the cube was probably more than he had in the last half-vorn and he felt his systems stutter and restart in the presence of so much fuel. In that klik, Spitfire knew that trust or no trust he'd do anything this mech ever asked him to do. Just for this cube. Calling it lifesaving didn't even come close to what it meant to him.

"Need more?"

He nodded weakly, hardly able to believe his luck. Amazingly, the mech gave him another cube, silently shaking his helm at his thirst, but not in any disapproving way; he looked concerned. Why, Spitfire couldn't fathom; as far as he remembered, he never met a mech actually caring for a complete stranger, and a completely worthless one, like himself. Every mech he knew had so far told him bluntly, often cruelly that he was simply not worth to be given energon. To meet one at what seemed to be his last orns of his existence who was different – it was quite a miracle in the young flier's optics.

"Thank you." – he croaked, his vocalizer just as shocked by the sudden influx of energy as the rest of him.

"You can stay here." – he said – "Practically no mech comes here beside me. I'm Mismatch by the way."

"Thank you…" – he couldn't say anything else, but stupidly repeating himself. He was not used to kindness, care or such things, therefore he wasn't sure how he should react. But the mech didn't seem to mind it as he went about his task, leaving the youngling to hide back to the place he found and felt safe. Now, that he could think clearly, he started to worry what he should do. Leaving the Decepticon camp was dangerous, probably far more dangerous than the way in was and even then he'd be no better off than before. Here at least Mismatch allowed him to stay safe and he hoped that in time he could sink out of the building to steal some energon from somewhere.

But he didn't have to; the next cycle Mismatch brought him a cube again, and he did so more or less regularly every other orn from then on. They talked a bit too, Mismatch telling him that he was a minor mechanic, a tinkerer rather and how he got forcefully 'recruited' along with his little workshop when someone in the Decepticon army realized that they did need some more qualified mechs as well, beside the miners and gladiators. He had no problems with what they were fighting for, albeit he wasn't a fighter himself, only with the means they often used. Like his own case, he said sadly, and Spitfire was secretly ashamed to be glad that he was there for him.

At first he was afraid what the mech would want from him, in exchange for the energon and the place to stay. Even though those in the army never lacked for energon, it was still rationed and Mismatch always gave him as much as he needed. He was, as many said worthless and the only pay he could imagine a mech wanting from him was his frame. Spitfire knew that if the mech asked him that, he would comply. He would be deactivated by this time if not for the brown mech and it meant a huge debt; he wouldn't do it for love or even lust, but to repay that debt. But as time went and Mismatch never made any moves towards his panel, he started to believe that the mech really helped him altruistically.

"You will have to be upgraded soon, I can see."

"Yes… but I cannot." – it was another hurdle, an insurmountable one as he had no credits, no means of getting hold of an adult frame of whatever description, much less a flier one.

"I've thought of it… I can't buy you a frame; I don't have that many credits, never mind that Seeker frames are impossible to come by these orns. But there is a way…" – his hesitant manner told Spitfire that he wouldn't like the way. But how not, when he had none at all?

"What is it?"

"This facility caters for young fliers brought here and with accelerated growth, upgraded to adulthood. I think I can sneak you in among those batch Seekers they bring and you'd be upgraded with them. But the downside of it is that once you are registered as a Decepticon Seeker, you can't just disappear."

Spitfire almost laughed it was so ironic – "I was trying to get enlisted before, only to be thrown out as too small and useless."

"So you wouldn't mind it?"

"Of course not. I get to be upgraded and regular fuel and even a chance to actually do something instead of hiding from gangs among garbage and starve into deactivation? I'd take it any orn."

"That's it then. They'll have a batch coming in within two orns. Be ready. And never tell anyone about your life before."

The next night cycle Mismatch came in with a shell of a big machine, ostensibly for fixing it. When he took it back to the main building, where the holding rooms were, it was considerably heavier – but no mech noticed that. Once in, it was easy to find a mechling whose spark guttered out from the forced upgrades and put the stasis locked Spitfire into his place; the other, grayed out frame he took with him to depose of. The next orn he kept his audials open to hear whether there were any disturbances in the laboratories, but he heard none; and the orn after that he saw an unfamiliar black and green Seeker watch him long and meaningfully from the formation in which they stood in the compound's central square; the thanks that he couldn't tell shining in those red optics. He never saw Spitfire after that, as the upgraded Seekers were stationed in different bases afterwards, while his task kept him there; and it would have been most unwise to enquire about a Seeker he shouldn't have known at all to begin with.

Proud

It wasn't as hard to hide among the batch Seekers as he'd previously thought. They were docile, uneducated like himself, obedient to their officers and neither of them dared to question anything. Truth to be told it was mostly boring; Spitfire discovered that with enough energon to supply his processor and frame, he wanted more than just mindless drills and in their free time getting overcharged on various substances that they had available instead of real and much coveted high grade. Only, he couldn't get to do anything else. Batch Seekers were not expected, in fact frowned upon to try and do anything outside their approved circle of activities.

The battles, once they were pronounced ready and ordered to the frontlines weren't bad though; for the first time in his life, Spitfire was better than those around him and nobody told him how useless he was, not worthy for the energon he consumed. In fact he heard a number of officers grudgingly complimenting him on actions well done. He luxuriated in that feeling, recompensed at last for vorns of lacking, hiding and begging on the streets. He was easily the best of the group and for some time it worried him – but nobody got suspicious of a batch Seeker to be actually good in the air. Until one orn their wing had some visitors…

"I heard that you have a moderately good flier, Wing Commander. I came to see if he is as good as you purport him to be."

"Of course Air Commander, at once! We are honored to have you…"

'Spare me the platitudes. I didn't come to listen to you, I have better things to do with my time." – Starscream has never been much for mincing words or caring anyone's feelings and being sent to evaluate a promising flier was quite frankly a punishment for him. Quite literally – Megatron wanted to get rid of him for a while and sent him to these demeaning tasks to anger him.

"At once, Lord Starscream!" – The wing commander ordered Spitfire to report at the base command at once, not wanting to get to the worse side of the infamous Air Commander. It was of course a true honour to have him visiting there and to have a Seeker on his wing that caught even the Elite Seekers' optics; he was of course jealous not to be the one who managed it.

Spitfire was nervous to be ordered to the commander in his free time; such things never meant any good. But he didn't do anything illegal or out of turn, so he had no idea why he was singled out. Once arriving to the command center, he was shocked to see a famous, tricoloured frame that all Seekers recognized from any angle. The fabled Air Commander who looked… small. Spitfire was surprised by that; the stories that circulated about Starscream never mentioned it, in fact they mostly alluded him to be better, faster, smarter than any other flier – certainly hinting nothing about being almost femme-like smallness. But he didn't betray any of those thoughts - or so he hoped - when the Seeker turned towards him and with a sneer on his faceplates that looked permanently carved in and snarled at him.

"Are you the one called Spitfire?"

"Yes Air Commander."

"I heard you are the best flier hereabouts."

"I… uhh… I try my best, Air Commander."

"Try for real. I'm not interested in bragging." – he actually made it sound like it was Spitfire boasting his abilities before raising the infamous null-rays at him and shot a warning salvo at his pedes, singeing his thrusters. The younger Seeker jumped slightly at the unexpected attack before he heard the Seeker's screech – "What are you waiting for, you dolt? Fly or I'll have your wings taken and reformat you a cleaning drone!"

Oh, so it was a test… Spitfire stopped thinking and transforming, he shot in the air, the Air Commander hot on his thrusters. Slag. He had a nice top speed, he was fortunate in the purely random frame he got, as it was agile and maneuverable – but of course he could never match the elder Seeker's abilities that no other flier could. Still he did his best, squeezed out every ounce of speed and every trick that he learned so far and didn't care a whit where the mad chase took them in a scant few breems. Starscream wasn't giving him an easy time that was for sure; Spitfire's sensors registered the discharge of the null-rays a couple of times, just like a slightly scorched and tingling wingtip. They tore and weaved around the still standing structures at top speeds, doing almost impossible maneuvers that more than once threatened them to crash, to collide or just fall short of their abilities and lose it…

But it wasn't a null-ray that ended the flight, nor was it Starscream grounding him in the manner of the ages old traditions of the Trine ranking fights. He saw the tricoloured frame flashing by his left wing, doing a truly impossible tight turn to avoid something he couldn't see – and a sudden weight settled painfully on his back instead, strong servos grabbing his wings and tearing into the plating. He couldn't keep the altitude with such an extra weight settling on him so suddenly and turned downwards, nosecone pointing alarmingly towards the ground. Spitfire struggled to regain balance and thrust while the unknown mech proceeded to ravage his back and foul up his wiring and it didn't help him one single whit.

Nor did a shot of the null-ray's beam help that he felt flashing just above him, but missing his attacker. He continued to lose altitude and no matter the maneuvers and acrobatics he tried, he couldn't shake the menace off his back. One klik, as he went down he saw the tricoloured frame glinting in the setting sun's rays, drawing away, leaving him to the mercy of his attacker… his radio crackled, Starscream's scratchy voice talking to him before he crashed into the fast approaching ground, the weight leaving his backside at the very last klik:

"You did fly well."

Angry

Snatches of visions, flashes of memories, licks of flame and pain… he groaned, or rather wanted to, but couldn't find the strength – and a vocalizer - for it. Where, who, why and how swirled brokenly in his damaged processor but for the love of Primus he couldn't make sense of them. He felt the maelstrom closer and closer as the jumbled memory bits and scrapped coding vied for a klik, a breem more to exist. He cling to life with all he had, but that wasn't a lot any more. A head-on crash from that height does that for the processor and no matter how the spark wanted to survive, there wasn't much to continue to support it. His fading, broken consciousness never even registered the mechs who rushed to his side.

"Hold still! We're gonna lose him."

"No, just hook his spark chamber to this and we gain a little time."

"It is fluctuating. Do we need him that much?"

"He flew with Starscream, even though he is not in that glitch-head's Trine. Must be good. I want him on the team."

"Fine. Going to give him a good frame then?"

"Of course."

-o-o-o-

From the second they were awakened and flew for the first time together, he was inexplicably irked about the failings of his brothers. It hardly got any easier in time to see Silverbolt freeze in terror when he got too high, to watch Fireflight crash into anything the least shiny, to feel Slingshot struggle with his shortcomings and desperately try to make up for them; or to know that Skydive preferred flying in theory rather than in the air. He was the best of them, that much he knew but was it truly an accomplishment in a wing like this? He wanted, no, he needed real Seekers to test himself against them, to be better than them and to be praised for flying well. He wasn't sure what he was yearning for and why he craved so much for every single hard-won praise, but he did.

In every consequent battle, Air Raid unconsciously sought to finish that last fatal, but glorious flight with Starscream, to regain that praise he'd been given but never remembered.

Note: Spitfire is young, but not underage; his systems are not developed because he is starving and he is not upgraded. Once he got enough fuel he could be upgraded as he was past the time for that.