Chapter 42
"Beast"
Her quarters were... not as sparse as those she'd been given aboard the Axalon, but a whole lot less luxurious than her imperial suite on Tai Prime. But then - she wasn't in the esteemed company of an Emperor anymore, was she? No. Just a clan of Cybertronian deviants. Not Úthaessel's kind of crowd, that was for certain.
Not anymore.
Hawkmoon found herself actually... missing her. Sure, most dragon-related things were a big no-no as far as she was concerned, but Úthaessel hadn't been all bad. Certainly a sympathetic critter. Kindly. Friendly. Generous. An easy companion to keep. And she'd promised-
...-to find a way to keep Hawkmoon from resetting.
Well, that managed to leave a bad taste in her mouth.
"What is it?" Augur inquired. Maybe she'd grimaced or something, it didn't matter; the fox was too perceptive for his own good and she wasn't digging it.
"Just thinking," Hawkmoon coolly replied. "Mostly about our, ah... 'situation'."
"An opportunity," he reminded her.
"Not what I meant."
"Elaborate."
"Mmm, no, don't think I will." Hawkmoon frowned and looked to him. He'd made himself a makeshift den by the corner of the room, pulling one of the small, dusty old rugs from the wardrobe over to where a cabinet met the wall and pressing it in. Hawkmoon made a sound somewhat reminiscent of a throat being cleared - since the real thing was very much beyond her. "Before anything else, we gotta talk about us. Set some ground rules."
"Find the measure of one another?" Augur guessed. He turned around, stalked into the middle of the room and sat there. He innocently tilted his head. "Continue."
"Sure, yeah," Hawkmoon mumbled. She rolled her optics and sat on the edge of her berth, elbows on her knees and servos clasped together. "First rule: if I'm having a moment, shut the frag up. Okay?"
"And what, Seeker, would you define as a 'moment'?"
"Emotional. Now I'll admit, I don't much like people helping me that way, not unless I explicitly trust them, and you're... well, you're an unwanted tagalong. A stowaway. I don't like you - so I'd appreciate it if you kept your trap shut when I'm... I don't know, moody."
"All I have seen from you thus far is violence and emotion," Augur quipped. "Should I only speak when you are engaged in the former?"
"I mean, you could say nothing at all ever again, so..."
"We'll see."
"That's the biggest 'yeah, sure, no' I've ever heard," Hawkmoon deadpanned. She shook her helm. "Look, just... don't poke me when I'm already down. Alright?"
Augur, very slightly, dipped his head.
"Thank you," Hawkmoon exhaled - or tried to. It caught in her chest, system jarring. It took her a moment to get her bearings, remind herself oxygen was no longer a necessity but a nostalgic luxury. "Speaking of, ah... fighting-"
"You want to know what tactical worth I pose," Augur finished. "Predictable. You are a soldier. You think only of the battle."
Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "You all but hamstrung Torca. Like... what can you do? How far does this... semi-corporeal thing you've got going actually go?"
"It takes effort," Augur explained. "It takes some degree of willpower and vigour to intercede as I did."
"So-"
"I cannot fight as you can. I can only offer..." Augur paused, "circumstantial aid."
Hawkmoon made a face. "Suppose that's better than nothing," she muttered. "Right, ground rule number two: if someone's trying to kill me, a little help would be sublime. If I'm your ship, your ride - never call me that in any way, shape or form ever again, by the way - then consider this... upkeep. Me not dying equals you having a person to talk to in the real world." She paused. "Wait, uh, are you actually here? In realspace or-"
Augur smiled.
"So - no straight answer?"
"It matters little."
"Ah, got it." Hawkmoon nodded. "You're going to stay annoying, right, right. Okay. We cool on that, though? You helping out when scrap hits the..." she frowned, "the... fan? No, that's not right..."
"I will attempt to offer what assistance I can," Augur said, "if the situation merits my involvement."
Hawkmoon rolled her optics. "Sweet Traveler, how hard is it to-"
Her door bleeped. Someone was outside.
"Two," Augur supplied, staring at the door. His eyes shone with a silver light. "One horned, one maned. Beast-kin."
Hawkmoon straightened, walked over and opened it. She had a fair idea as to who it was.
"Hey!" Longhorn exclaimed the very moment he caught sight of her, arms outstretched. Strada ducked back to avoid a nasty rap over the helm, shooting the mech a death glare. Longhorn ignored her. "Bird!"
"What?" Hawkmoon demanded, a tad sharper than she intended. She leaned out and looked left and right down the hall; no one else was about.
Longhorn took it in stride. The horned mech was grinning from ear to ear - or he would have been, if he had ears. Audials, then. Audial to audial. "You're back! I knew you'd be-"
"'Horn," Strada grunted and tugged him back, taking his place. She spared Hawkmoon a look that was some parts suspicion, some parts sympathetic. "We, ah... heard. About-"
"About my trine," Hawkmoon finished, voice cool. Even. Steady. A mask. She was getting good at it. At pretending. At their core, every Exomind was an actor - and she was no different in that respect. "About my formation."
Strada winced. "Yeah. That."
"That's great. That's super." Hawkmoon offered them a stiff nod. "Glad we got that cleared. Now - what the frag do you want?"
Longhorn opened his mouth.
"No," Strada snapped at him. "You shut up. Don't talk. Don't. Leave-" She sighed. Glanced back at Hawkmoon. "We, uh,... have a custom here. Unofficial, sorta. We lose someone, we honour them. Take the time to live-"
"What, because they can't?"
Strada shrugged. "Pretty much. There's energon waiting for you, if you want it. High-grade. And things, too. Probably none of that fancy stuff you have in Vos, but-"
Drinking. At a wake. Like home.
"It'll do." Hawkmoon glanced behind, into her room. Augur winked back.
"Go on," he said. "Enjoy yourself."
She offlined her optics and heaved a sigh. "Fragger."
Strada frowned. "Excuse me?"
"Not you." Hawkmoon pressed the pad by the door, closing it behind her. She folded her arms, steeled her resolve and schooled her faceplates. "Lead on."
The Krensha Holdfast was a whole lot more lively than she'd originally envisioned. Longhorn and Strada awkwardly guided her into the bustling heart of the space-station - where the habitation wings all intersected to create a busy little commercial and cultural centre, complete with market places and temples in equal abundance. There were other leisure facilities too, the kind Hawkmoon would have only ever expected to find in places like the Last City or Cybertron's many sub-polity capitals: paint parlours, frame-modders, plate-molders and virtual-simulation lounges. There were other establishments, too, of more... questionable tastes, with some bordering on blatantly hedonistic - like red-energon vapour-dens and symbiote fight-pits.
She was going to try them all.
But it was the parlour she hit first.
Hawkmoon strolled in, planted down on the first empty chair she saw and waited. Longhorn and Strada trailed after her, confused, and gave the approaching paint-mech a blank look.
"Can I, ah, help you?" he asked. His frame was strange; not the Cybertronian norm, but Hawkmoon couldn't figure if it was because he was a beastformer or something else.
"Do you take shanix?" Hawkmoon asked.
"Uh... we can, I think. We'll have to convert-"
"I'll pay whatever."
The paint-mech nodded. Slowly. With a frown. "What do you want?"
"Digi-paint." Hawkmoon paused. "I have my own materials too. Can you code?"
"... Uh, no, but I can get someone on it."
"Great. I've got dataweave to burn." Bought on Khidai-Viis. On Tai Prime. Along with some other knick-knacks - most of which Cyberwarp had picked out. "It's... alien-made, if that matters." Hawkmoon forced that uncomfortable feeling in her spark down, before it could overtake her.
"Stitch-Up!" the paint-mech called. Another worker walked over. "The bird here wants dataweave-work. She's got the mats too, but they're alien-built."
"O...kay?" Stitch-Up replied. Glanced at Hawkmoon. "I mean, we can try. Can't be that hard. How do you want it, Seeker?"
They handed her a mirror when all was said and down. Hawkmoon stared at herself - at the faceplates she'd begun to see as her own, at the frame that had fallen into that strange territory of closely familiar and exotically strange. The parlour-work pushed it into the territory of the latter, but - she found that she liked it.
Liked what it represented.
The dataweave had been applied to her faceplates and wings. In the case of the former it took the shape of animated eyes, two of them, in that space between her optics and her temples - like a Taishibethi. They were electronically wired into her system, so they looked where she looked and thinned to a pinched line when she offlined her optics. As close to natural as she could get. The dataweave on her wings flickered like flames near the edges, as the Sun-worshipping Tai had been wont to wear, alongside a couple of streaming wing-ribbons she'd asked Stitch-Up to rewrap all around. The rest of her paint had been touched up, be it teal plating, silver wings, black under-armour, the works. Hawkmoon had been adamant on getting the top-rate paints too, so moisture-, wind-, heat-, even acid-resistant. Cost just about half her savings after the conversion rate took its due, but it was worth it.
Strada raised an optical ridge when all was said and done, unimpressed. Longhorn had wandered outside in search of entertainmet, but the maned femme had waited for her. "What's all this?" she asked.
Hawkmoon shrugged. "My way of remembering, I suppose."
"Remembering... what, exactly?"
"... It doesn't matter." Hawkmoon lifted her servo, flexing her claws - each talon glittering like a knife she'd only just whetted and cleaned. She loved the look of it, the feel of it. The kindly parlour folk had thrown in a buff'n'polish job to boot. Probably to wipe away all the soot so they could apply the paints in the first place, but still - it was a bonus she hadn't been about to turn away.
She turned her servo about. There, on the back of it, slithered a deep navy serpent around a pair of joined lightning bolts, its forked tongue flicking out. The Hunter's mark - snake and sigil. And, on the other servo: a motionless gecko, cast in scales of iridescent gold and jungle green.
"I think," Hawkmoon said softly, "I could go for that high-grade now."
Her mind was on parole, buying what time it had left before her full reset sentence swung in - but her frame, her flesh, could keep her memories alive where her mismatched processor couldn't.
So long as she carved those memories in.
"So what's Thunderhowl's deal?"
Longhorn snorted. Strada shot her a wary look.
"Why do you want to know?" the femme barked. A challenge, maybe.
Hawkmoon shrugged. "Seems like he's taken an interest in keeping me here. Just wanted to see if there was anything worth noting."
"He's old," Longhorn said.
"Well, yeah, I got that. Knight of Cybertron, right? So-"
"Quintesson wars."
Hawkmoon nodded, glancing away from the bar. "Yep. Definitely had that vibe. What I meant was: is there anything odd to look out for?"
"Odd?" Longhorn echoed. The mech was full-on grinning. "We're all oddballs here. That's how beastformer clans get started."
"You going to add to that?"
"Our clans formed from the detritus of Cybertronian society," Strada reluctantly explained. "Outcasts and misfits and wanderers, all turning to Onyx Prime for an alternative path to walk. Worship gave way to tradition, tradition to alliance, alliance to kinship and so on - until our forebears cemented the founding of the clans in simple ritual and political neutrality. Some of us are descended from those mecha. Others come to us, from all corners of the empire's former domains - homeworld included."
"So is that what I am? Cybertronian detritus?" Hawkmoon frowned and looked down at her clasped servos. "I imagine you don't get many Seekers."
"No," Strada agreed. "Your people are too stringent. Uptight. Most would consider the act of operating alongside the likes of us... degrading."
"Probably would, yeah."
"Do you?"
Hawkmoon glanced at her. "Honey, I've never been afraid of fieldwork - doesn't matter how dirty it gets. Been scraping filth most of my life; whatever you're gonna have me do now can't be any worse."
Longhorn rapped his servo against her pauldron, almost pushing her off her stool. "That's the spirit."
Hawkmoon spared him a humourless sneer, then refocused on Strada. "What about you? Descendant or outcast?"
Strada smiled coldly. "I'm from Velocitron, but no outcast. I just sought a different vocation. This?" She gestured to her frame, to the faux-organic plating and the red mane of synth-fur running down her helm and neck. "This suits. For me, at least. Not everyone takes to it well."
"You think I won't?"
"Do you want to?"
Hawkmoon grimaced. "Don't care for it, in truth. But then - I feel like I don't give a scrap about much of anything right now."
"Low place."
"You could say that."
"But where does that really leave you?"
Hawkmoon shrugged.
"With us?" Longhorn questioned. Hopefully too. Hawkmoon regarded him with a perplexed frown. "It would be good for you," he explained, quieter than usual.
"I already gave Thunderhowl my answer," Hawkmoon clarified. "Not like I have anywhere else to go. I'm staying for the present."
"Great! We can show you the sights. Strada?"
"Sure," the other femme muttered. She finished off her energon cube and stood up. "Seeker?"
"Gimme a moment." Hawkmoon offlined her optics, took a final sip of her cube and tipped her helm back. Focused on the feeling. On the sensation of the moment. Her lungs, nonexistent, screamed for air. Her audials craned to hear a heartbeat, a pulse, but all it picked up on was the thrum of a spark and the clanking of internal systems. Hawkmoon came to only a few seconds later, blinking. "Yeah," she said raggedly, "yeah I'm ready."
When she returned to her quarters Hawkmoon didn't mince words with Augur or anything - just trudged over to her berth and flopped over onto it, drained of the will to fight, fight, fight. She rested on her front, forehead resting on the back of her knuckles, and she heaved a heavy sigh, vents a-hissing. It was in the quiet of that descending off-cycle that it all flashed through her processor again and again, like it had the decaorn prior.
Tai Prime.
Savathûn.
Úthaessel.
Oryx.
Nacelle. Nacelle.
...
Cyberwarp.
Her talons carved grooves in the surface of the berth, drawing deep dark lines down the sheet metal. A part of her was nervous that she could fall so far as to turn those claws on herself.
The rest of her simply didn't give a scrap.
Hawkmoon gritted her denta. Her spark radiated pain. Fury. A black anger, as all-consuming as the Void, as hot as Solar, as erratic as Arc. She wanted to hurt something. Hurt something bad. That was what she was good for, inflicting suffering. Death. That was the entire purpose of war - hurting someone else until they couldn't hurt you.
She'd killed them. In their thousands. Hive. Tens of thousands overall, throughout her lifetime. She'd killed them. She'd killed their Warpriest twice over, their Daughter of Xivu Arath, their Celebrant, their Knights and Wizards and Ogres and Thrall.
She'd killed... one of their prophets, their muses, a dark arrowhead blotting out the light of Tai Prime's holy Sun. She'd carved it in half. She'd broken it through. Shattered the inevitable, the unassailable, the unknowable. It was that tiny nugget of satisfaction that kept her from burning up, kept her from sinking below the surface of gloom and doom and a whole lot of despair.
She'd lived, too. She'd survived.
To a species, an army, a force dedicated to the worship of might-makes-right, of survival-of-the-strongest, that must have been a terrible insult.
Hawkmoon smiled to herself. It was that thought that carried her into a peaceful recharge.
She awoke early. The next orn hadn't even begun when Hawkmoon staggered out of her room. She sought out the washracks, quickly showered herself down, and then took to idly wandering the local habitation level. Strada had sent her a digital copy of the station's map the day prior, but Hawkmoon considered herself to be a little old-fashioned; she preferred to get a feel for the land she was to range first. Working blind off a secondhand map was a recipe for disaster in any life-or-death scenario. The Krensha Holdfast may have been on the other side of an interstellar no man's land, but-
The Hive had so helpfully shown her that nowhere was out of their reach, out of their influence. She wasn't going to leave anything up to luck. Not again.
She walked and walked and walked, strolling at a leisurely pace and committing everything she saw to memory, but it wasn't until she chanced upon a viewport built into the side of a wide, if abandoned, corridor that she paused to stop looking and actually see. Hawkmoon caught a glimpse of the towers rising from the summit of the station to the far right, but beyond... nothing to glean other than the shine of distant stars and crystal-shimmer of some sort of installation-wide shield system. There were no planets nearby, no comets, no asteroids or moons or anything worth mentioning. The Krensha Holdfast was quite literally smack-bang in the middle of nowhere.
Hawkmoon had to take a moment to process that. Someone had come out this way, to the middle of open space, and decided to build their new home here. Or maybe they built it elsewhere and flew it; she wasn't sure what the station's business was. Was it a vessel? Or just an installation drifting on currents of chance?
"Lonely," Augur remarked. He padded by her pedes, whisper-quiet. "This place was conceived under the pressure of solidarity - and a hope for an end to that sentence."
Hawkmoon folded her arms.
"The Deep is empty. Reality emulates that. One only needs to look outside," Augur intoned, happily marching on. "There is not enough matter to fill creation to the brim. And with every fall of the axe, every swing of the blade, that grand total is reduced. What you see is a future, all but assured. This is the universe they crave."
"Could we not?" Hawkmoon groaned. "I'm just looking out a fragging window. There's no need to level all this... existential scrap."
"You know it's-"
"True, yeah yeah, just stop." She vented a sigh. "This is a moment. Let me have it."
"As you wish," Augur murmured, oh so sly.
Hawkmoon imagined it would have been very easy to hate him. The urge was there. She didn't like him, didn't like his company, didn't like how he'd all but annihilated her privacy.
Didn't like how he'd been there to see her fall apart.
"Get scrapped," she muttered.
There was a snort from behind. Hawkmoon glanced around; a mech was coming out of one of the rooms on the other side of the hall. Taller than her, with great bat-like wings and a helm topped with a pair of ox-like horns. With a start, she realized she recognized him. From the first time she'd come through the station.
"Noctorro," Hawkmoon said. Or guessed.
He gave her a look of distinct distaste. "Seeker. Practising an argument?"
"... Yeah." Hawkmoon shrugged. "Let's say that."
"Are you winning?"
"Not really."
"At least you can cede defeat. That's more than most of your kind are capable of."
"Wouldn't go that far."
"'Course not. Seekers and their damn pride," Noctorro scoffed. He rolled his massive shoulders. "This is my stretch, bird. Move along."
Hawkmoon considered flipping him the bird but thought better of it. He wouldn't have understood the gesture anyways. She looked down at Augur, found him staring back, and stiffly continued her patrol - ignoring Noctorro's derisive snort. She had better things to do.
"I'm not going to be liked around here, am I?"
Thunderhowl looked up at her. The mech was cleaning down the grisliest-looking axe Hawkmoon had ever seen - and that was saying something, because the armoury they were in contained at least a dozen more wickedly edged weapons. A personal collection, she understood. Didn't blame him; her own vault, back when she'd been in a universe a little easier to understand, had been chock full of all sorts of firearms. The urge to hoard was a strong one.
"Possibly not," Thunderhowl said, shrugging. "Seekers are not held in high regard."
"Shocker."
"But what is a little prejudice if not a tantalising challenge? Tackle it. Break it down."
Hawkmoon resisted the urge to roll her optics. "Yeah, that's inspiring."
"If you want comfort, you'll have to ask for it specifically."
"No. Not looking for comfort," Hawkmoon grunted. "Just a clearer picture."
"I'm not hiding anything from you - but you need to ask first. You want to understand? Give me a question to answer."
"Okay. What the frag am I supposed to do now?"
Thunderhowl put the axe and rag with which he was cleaning it aside, standing up straight. "That's fair. What do you want?"
Hawkmoon glanced away. "I don't know. To do... something. Before I do something, ah... self-destructive. Something to busy me. Something to satisfy me."
"What do you like?"
"Fieldwork. Moving. Thinking. Calculating the present. Fighting." She paused. "You guys do that, don't you? Fighting?"
Thunderhowl dipped his helm. "We take contracts from neighbouring star systems, our sister-clans and our other affiliates."
"Mercenary work?"
"Not exactly. We aren't thugs." Thunderhowl's faceplates hardened. "We negotiate. We settle diplomatic disputes. We offer protection. We hunt. We live. We don't... war."
"Wish you would," Hawkmoon muttered. "Some people deserve it."
"Some, maybe. But we aren't built for it." Thunderhowl frowned. "You're referring to-"
"The bastards who killed... yeah." Hawkmoon grimaced. "Yeah, pretty much."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"Is there anything I should know?" Thunderhowl pressed.
Hawkmoon shrugged. "I mean... probably, yeah."
"Tell me about them."
"They're called the Hive. They have three eyes, usually, and they kill everything. Nihilists, the lot of them."
"How dangerous are they?"
"They tossed a fortified warmoon at a fragging planet just for kicks." Hawkmoon deadpanned. Thunderhowl's frown deepened. "And they… they don't heed natural law. Like physics. It's just a... a vague suggestion to them at this point. A guideline they've all but left behind."
"That's some claim."
"You don't believe me?"
"I never said that." Thunderhowl narrowed his optics. "Is it feasible for these... creatures to pass through the Brachian Divide?"
"I... I don't know. Maybe. I mean, it's a long trip so if they try they might just save us the trouble and eat each other, but... I really don't know. Cybertron needs to be warned. You said you could help with that."
"Aboard the Axalon, I remember. We have an inter-planetary transceiver aboard; we can send that message right now, if you want."
"Of course I want to send it right now!" Hawkmoon's plating flared up. "This is something urgent-"
"Easy, easy," Thunderhowl urged her, raising a hand as if to ward her off. It just annoyed her. "We'll do that, then. Just give me a..." He tidied up where he'd left off, slotting the axe back onto its stand and shoving the rag into subspace storage. "There. Come along."
They left the armoury behind - Hawkmoon had forgotten why they had been there in the first place (ostensibly, maybe, to talk somewhere they could both be comfortable) - and picked their way through the station. The Holdfast was relatively busy, even beyond the commercial district, and they had to force their way through throngs of beastformers going this way and that. It didn't help, well, that she had wings large enough to block off some of the narrower hallways. At least with Thunderhowl leading the charge there was some space cleared.
Eventually they arrived at an elevator system boasting armed guards, but one word from Thunderhowl and they were good to go. Sure, the guards tossed her looks ranging from bewildered to outright disdainful, but that was neither here nor there. Up the elevator they went, up and up to what was assuredly one of the station's towers, and at last they emerged into what looked like the inside of an air control tower, just... with all the flourishes of alien tech instead of human. Lightly staffed, too. Plenty of technicians to curiously glance over at them as well. Definitely not the barebones set-up she'd been expecting.
Thunderhowl took her to an adjoining chamber, wherein they found a massive terminal being operated and monitored by three mecha.
"Sir," the closest said, bowing his helm.
Thunderhowl nodded to them, then turned to Hawkmoon. "Who do you want to contact first? Iacon? Or-"
"Vos," Hawkmoon said quickly. "Vos. Vos... Vos only, maybe. Or... I'll send the others a message, but Vos and the Institute need their own message."
Thunderhowl raised an optical ridge. "Why does Vos get special treatment?"
"Because it's the only Cybertronian polity I trust."
Thunderhowl narrowed his optics and scrutinized her for a long moment, before turning around and saying to the operators, "Ready a tight-beam data-burst. Location is Vos City, Cybertron."
"Understood." The head operator ran his digits over the control board, moving so fast Hawkmoon couldn't tell what he was doing. "Database registers three operable inter-planetary transceivers in Vos City. Should we hail them all?"
Thunderhowl gave Hawkmoon an expectant look.
"Just the Vosian Exploratory Institute," Hawkmoon clarified. "I have priority access codes, too."
The operator indicated to the terminal. Have at it, he seemed to say. So she did. Hawkmoon stepped up, with her digits hovering over the screen full of alien glyphs and... paused.
Augur peeked over her shoulder, saw where she was stuck and hummed. "You have no choice. Ask."
Her internal chronometer was broken, out of the loop and ticking at random, but its logs were still there. 3485 P.C. That was the vorn they'd departed. From Vos. Cybertron.
She wanted to believe it was still 3485.
But Augur...
"What vorn is it?" Hawkmoon meekly asked. Meekly because she was afraid of the answer - afraid that she was going to lose evn more time. Afraid that Augur would have something else to gloat about. Afraid that this was going to be a common occurrence; that she was little more than a spectator being hurried through different points of history.
"Third Trimara," Thunderhowl told her, "3489 Post-Creation."
That was, give or take, four vorns. Four entire vorns. Hawkmoon stilled, optics wide.
Approximately three hundred and thirty-two Earth years. Gone. In the blink of an eye. Just like that. Her time - eaten up by a dragon. Again. Again again again. The world swept away from her; the only sensation Hawkmoon felt then, in that moment, was complete vertigo. Imbalance. Directionlessness.
It left her fumbling for something to cling to.
Duty was what she settled on.
Duty was fine, that could work, but only for a moment. So Hawkmoon turned back to the terminal, keyed in the date, uploaded the Institute priority-codes and tapped out her message. Her warning. Her report. Kept it professional. Kept it obscure on her end. Kept everything else crystal clear. They couldn't know she was alive, not yet, not until she was emotionally able, but they deserved to know that everyone else was almost certainly dead - or worse. They deserved to know that that fate wasn't something confined to far-off places and less sophisticated peoples, that it was a very real danger and it was definitely swinging their way sooner or later. After all she'd done, all the interference she'd run, Hawkoon was all but certain that elements of the opposition were going to get curious eventually.
Her only hope was that Cybertron's exact location was still unbeknownst to them.
Hawkmoon stepped back. Looked it over to make sure the code was there - the one to carry the message straight to the top desks of the Institute and the second code, the one they'd drilled into her processor as an initiate, in the Cybertronian glyphs themselves - to tell an entirely separate message, instructions on what to do with the rest of what she told them.
High Priority Threat - do not engage.
She'd detailed a complete overview of the Hive but stopping at the how. Sword Logic, paracausality, soulfire rifts - those were fine, in so far as she explained what they did, but not how to work them. Hawkmoon wasn't quite that trusting. Not by a long shot. Not when she'd seen how much a toll forbidden knowledge had on people (she recalled Eris, scarred and broken in ways she couldn't even begin to imagine; she remembered Toland, unrecognisable and inhuman; she considered Ikharos, so haunted by what he'd seen and done aboard the Dreadnaught that the ensuing nightmares plagued him years after they'd left it behind them). She wasn't going to leave that to chance.
Human Dredgens had been bad enough...
"That's all I've got," Hawkmoon mumbled. She stepped back, retreated. Couldn't write anything else. Couldn't bear to look at it any longer. Couldn't bear to think about it.
Thunderhowl nodded. "Send it on," he ordered.
The operator loaded the message up and fired a signal off. "It'll take some orns before they catch it," he said. "We probably won't get a response for another decaorn at least. Did you want to send another message?"
Hawkmoon blinked. "Yeah, uh, to… Iacon, I guess. And Praxus and Tarn."
"And to all post-imperial holdings in the neighbouring sectors," Thunderhowl added. "Every capital territory bordering the Brachian Divide. Issue an orange-alert warning; highlight a possibility of aggressive military action towards all Cybertronian strongholds and cultural centres, xenological in origin. Offenders are..." he looked at her. "Biological, yes?"
Hawkmoon slowly nodded. "You had one in Axalon's morgue."
"Ah. The mollusc or-"
"The other one. With the parasite in its stomach."
"I see." Thunderhowl turned back to the operator. "Offenders are biological, organic-based. Technological capacity is unknown; advise caution."
"Sir."
Duty was done. Warnings had been made, reports had been sent, she'd done her job. It left her with nothing to do but languish and live with the idea that...
Four vorns.
That was... forever. Longer than she'd been alive - even with all her many lives smushed together into one. It was such a daunting thing, such a staggeringly long time, that she could hardly believe it, hardly think around it.
They were in Thunderhowl's office. Hawkmoon was sitting in some flimsy chair, the only one available that was remotely kind on her wings, and facing the desk behind which the eponymous mech himself was hunched over, studying the contents of a datapad. Augur was stretched out in front of him, unseen and unheard, and lazily stalked from one end to the other. It was beginning to get distracting - but at that point Hawkmoon was desperate enough for any form of reprieve, so she didn't say anything.
Well, that and she didn't want to further convince people that she was crazy.
"How far do you envision yourself staying?" Thunderhowl questioned. "Just out of idle curiosity."
Augur tossed her a curious look. "Indeed. What now, Seeker?"
Hawkmoon shrugged. "I'm just playing things by..." by ear, she'd been about to say, but that wouldn't have made sense in a Cybertronian context. "I dunno. I don't know much of anything right now, let alone what to do with myself."
"You really do need something to do."
"Are you saying that-"
"For your own well-being," Thunderhowl clarified, "but it would do well to assure some concerned parties that you're willing to pull your own weight."
"... Yeah, 'spose that makes sense." Hawkmoon raised her helm. "Then what?"
"What skills do you have?"
"Fighting, mostly. Cartography too, with a sprinkling of topography if you want to play hardline. I can thread dataweave to a degree, kitbash a weapon or radio outta nothing but scrap, apply makeshift repairs. Fieldwork, y'know? Scout's trade. That's my game. That and, ah, flying. I'm quiet too. Know when to keep my head down and when to come out blasting."
"Combat-orientated, then." Thunderhowl frowned. "I'd originally presumed you'd want a quieter posting after..."
"After my trine was butchered," Hawkmoon said tiredly. "You can say it."
"Ye-es. That."
"I mean... no?" Hawkmoon shrugged. "I don't do... 'civilian'. No, I'm a soldier through and through. I'm military. Have been, 'sfar as I can remember."
"Can you command?"
"I... I'd prefer not to. I mean, yeah, in a pinch. Or with people I know - that always makes it easier. I'm not fit for brass; I work best in small groups or alone. Logistics aren't my game. My needs resource-wise are easy to look after. Other mecha's? That's their business. I don't care to get involved in it."
"I'm not asking you to lead an army," Thunderhowl elaborated. "Nor to oversee the clan's logistical needs. I'm only inquiring whether you have any experience in a leading position. I'm not assigning you one anyways - not until I know your worth."
She snorted. "Thought you got my worth. With Torca."
"Combat prowess does not equate to leadership qualities," Thunderhowl replied coolly.
"Got that right," Hawkmoon mumbled. She raised her voice. "I am good for a fight, though, if that's what you're looking for - and you know I am. I don't mind getting my servos dirty, just that the work is good. That it's right."
"You want a cause."
"I want my bad qualities to mean something good."
"You'll get that chance," Thunderhowl said softly. "We aren't thugs."
"I know. You said that already."
"We don't raise our servos unless it's going to have a positive impact. We're offering protection and stability to those who want it, those who need it."
"Heard that too."
"Because it is needed." Thunderhowl narrowed his optics. "This isn't the homeworld, Seeker. The empire's long dead. Where we are is a frontier space; you'll find there's going to be a whole lot less laws around - and few of them are the ones you're used to. Outside of these walls, outside this station, there's precious little in the ways of order."
"Oh, I'm good with that."
"Just so long as we have an understanding. I don't care for civility, either; all I want from you is respect. Honour. Carry yourself with both and we'll have few problems between us. Got it?"
"Got it."
"Good. First order of action - lose the Vosian outlook."
"Never had one to begin with," Hawkmoon quietly admitted. Thunderhowl ignored her.
"If you get a partner, doesn't matter if they have wings or wheels - you treat them the same. Doesn't matter which colony they come from, which clan, doesn't even matter if they're a mech or femme or Minicon or Insecticon or even a fragging Predacon back from the Well of Allsparks; if I hear one whiff of caste-ism there's going to be trouble."
She sat up straight. "Understood."
Hawkmoon resisted the urge to pull a deep breath and kicked out, into the open nothingness. Her thrusters burned; her wings tilted. She flew, out and out. Flew. Flew until the cold of absence covered her from helm to pede and the station was far behind. She stopped, then, and turned around. Looked at it. Stared at its blinking lights, at the way it drifted and blotted out distant stars.
The Krensha Holdfast. Home of Clan Krensha. A sect devoted to the worship of Onyx Prime - or at least embracing his teachings. Not the only clan; there were others, scattered throughout the ruins of what had once constituted the Cybertronian Empire. A culture of beastformers. Flesh-lovers. Naturalists. Brawlers for hire. Mercenaries with morals and mercy. One only needed to look at her survival to know that. Like Iron Lords, almost.
Except they were alive. And they were flourishing.
They were offering her a place, too. Or - had offered. And she'd accepted. Desperately. Still was. Still desperate. For an escape. For an outlet. Something to sink her teeth into, to let wash over her, wash away all her present troubles and replace them with something else. The pillars of a new life, a new purpose.
Hawkmoon wished, wished hard, that Gecko was there to tell her if it was a bad idea or not.
They're kind, she imagined him whispering into her ear. They've been kind to you.
But no. No Ghost. No partner to last her her entire immortal life. Just a phantom alien fox who never knew when to shut his trap. Who delighted in picking at her vulnerabilities, her patience, again and again. Just a phantom alien fox and an army of Hive on the horizon, more than she'd ever known could exist before - complete with an entire pantheon of Ascendant gods, complete with an entire fleet of dark muses, dark prophets, dark monuments shaped like the fangs of something far, far worse. Something with slim glaive-toting agents of its own, hunting her through the otherworld.
She was doing it wrong. She was supposed to warn Cybertron properly. Help them prepare. Help them-
But the Brachian Divide. It was there. It was the perfect border, to keep even the Hive at bay. Wide and long enough to ward them away for hundreds of vorns, even, particularly if they didn't know where to even look to find Cybertron.
But-
But-
But-
Hawkmoon hung her helm, catching it in her servos. She drifted. Floated. Soundlessly, wordlessly, trembling.
"I don't know," she whispered to herself. "I don't know what to do. I... I don't know."
"Keep your current course," Augur murmured, perched on her shoulder. His little claws dug into the surface plating, keeping him anchored there. It was an almost comical sight - but she didn't care enough to look.
"I don't know what my current course is," Hawkmoon complained. "Stay with the Krenshans?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"They are closest to danger," Augur explained. "And they are more adventurous than you. They will face the Foe before any other."
"Give or take an eternity, what with that Divide in the way."
"If they are fortunate, yes."
"But only so long as that fortune holds." Hawkmoon shuttered her optics. "If it doesn't, they're dead. And we're dead with them. There's no dragons about. There's no Sun Emperor or star gods. Nothing to pull us out of the eye of the storm a second time. I... we shouldn't have even survived the first. I shouldn't have. I..." Her armour flared, letting in the cold. It felt good on her overheated system. "I made too many mistakes. Too many. I should've died for it. I should've died."
"You want to live."
"Yes, 'course I... I mean... I don't… I don't know."
"Yes you do," Augur said firmly. "You fought to live. You ran to live. You wished to live. Are you having regrets, Seeker?"
"So many," she whispered. "So... so many."
"Don't. Life has been lived, death has been dealt, you have been given a second chance. If you are to squander this final mercy - then I will be left disappointed."
"Not everything's about you," Hawkmoon snapped. Her servos pulled away, digits curling in to make fists - cutting into the steel of her palms in the process. "The universe doesn't revolve around you."
"Wrath is a remarkable thing," Augur said with a smile. She could hear it. "It continually robs us of our ability to rationally choose our next step."
"Like you with Kharad-Tan?" Hawkmoon bit out.
"Like you with your grief," Augur shot back. "You name yourself a soldier. So wage war."
"Easy for you to say."
"Do you not consider yourself a weapon? A tool of harm?"
"Sweet Traveler above you are annoying," Hawkmoon complained. "Can we just not?"
"I was under the impression you wished to have your purpose reaffirmed."
"Oh, I do. Just not by you." Hawkmoon scoffed. "Wage war? Like... what, on the Hive? Alone? How? How? They'll kill me, simple as that. No bother either. I just... I can't. They have the numbers. They have the power. Úthaessel had power too. More than I ever had. And she died. I won't ever hold a candle to her, and even she lost this fight. What makes you think it'll go any better for me?"
"You are powerless."
"Exactly."
"But not inconsequential. The Sun-Daughter valued you."
"She valued what I knew. About the Hive."
"Precisely."
Hawkmoon rolled her optics. "Yeah, and? It's one thing to understand the Hive - and I don't, by the way, not as entirely as I should - but it's another thing to act on it, to use it against them. Hell, it's not even them alone. That... thing. The one that chased us. That... that shot me down, shot us as we were... what was that? Who was that?"
"A student," Augur muttered. "An earnest pupil, carrying out an errant assignment for a curious master."
"What assignment would that be?"
"To uncover the cause of a scuttled vessel. To understand the basis of irreparable damage dealt to that which cannot be conventionally harmed."
"'Conventionally harmed'," Hawkmoon scoffed. "You mean me breaking that pyramid."
"Indeed."
"It was my mod. It's just advanced Cybertronian tech; there's nothing unconventional about it. "
"So say you."
"Yeah. So say I - whose chassis holds the mod."
"Did you create it?" Augur challenged.
"No, I..." Hawkmoon trailed off. "No. But Cybertron doesn't exactly have the capability to work with paracausal systems. They don't have the resources."
"And you know this?"
"Of course I do. There's nothing even remotely paracausal on-" Hawkmoon stopped herself.
Because there was.
The tree.
The potted sapling in Sunburst's hallway bothered her. As in - it bothered her on a deeply spiritual level. Hawkmoon hadn't even realized she was a spiritual person, but there it was - soulful discomfort. It was like... walking into a Hive nest with one's Light bared and bright, Dark rolling past in rough waves that felt like sandpaper mixed with thousands of prickly insect-like legs. In short: really, really uncomfortable.
"Oh."
"There is?" Augur questioned. "So your people do-"
"I don't... No, they don't. Not to the capacity we need," Hawkmoon grumbled. "Bits and pieces - at most. Souvenirs, nothing more. Or... look, okay, let's humour this, let's say they are incorporating less-than-causal things into secret weapons and mods - that still isn't enough. We can't arm everyone with that - and we'll need to arm everyone with something."
"You seek to give a knife a new edge, but it is a poor craftswoman who blames her tools. Adapt. Turn to the blade's other strengths, other sides, other edges. Find where your adopted people are sharp. Find what shape they fall into - and wield them from then on."
"Easy for you to say. I'm not exactly rolling in authority; there isn't a Pit of a chance I can just up and mobilize an entire Cybertronian fleet."
"Find a way."
Hawkmoon scoffed. Her contempt filled in the ensuing silence, left it thick with tension. It wasn't long before it drove her to soar back to the Holdfast, trying her best to shrug Augur off and knowing he was still somehow there - and would be, for the foreseeable future.
The next orn found her in Longhorn's company, nodding along and trying to pay attention as he guided her around the station's extraneous facilities. Hawkmoon marked off those places she found interesting while disregarding the rest - like temples and shrines, of which there were plenty. Fighting pens too; her tour ended with the two of them sitting in the stadium surrounding a caged ring, watching a scarred old mech tackle some vividly horrific alien beast. Stingers lunged, tentacles lashed, blades sung and blood flew. Energon too.. A grisly sight, certainly, but she'd always had a strong stomach.
It was almost entertaining to watch.
"Why do you do this to yourselves?" Hawkmoon asked with a frown. "Like - look, I'm all for testing oneself, but there comes a point where you got to be rational. Limits and all that. This is just... unnecessary."
"It's about being strong," Longhorn explained.
He didn't elaborate after that. Just turned back to the fight, satisfied that he'd given her a reasonable and well thought-out answer. Hawkmoon was left... startled. Sat there for a minute, then an entire breem, before responding, "What?"
"Strong." Longhorn glanced at her, all innocent. "We want to be strong."
"... Just being strong. For the sake of it."
"Yep."
"Yeah, that makes no sense."
Longhorn's optical ridges furrowed. "Really?"
"Why do you want to be strong?"
"Because..." Longhorn looked around, as if searching for an answer. "Because..." And back to her. "Because I like the feeling of fighting? Of winning? If I'm not strong I won't get that."
"So you're just after that high?"
"I think so. I enjoyed our fight. Remember?"
"I won," Hawkmoon pointed out. "I had you dead to rights."
Longhorn snickered. "Yeah, you did. That was great."
"But you lost."
"Yeah."
"Even though what you enjoy is winning."
"I enjoy a good fight. That's always a win. Even if I lose, I'm okay with it. As long as I get to grow stronger so I can try again." Longhorn nodded, mostly to himself. "That's what got me through this," he said, tapping one of his horns.
Hawkmoon raised an optical ridge. "You're going to have to explain that."
"Hunting down my, uh, my... my quarry. A beast, alien. Brutal thing. I killed it, mapped its body with a Krenshan transformation-codex and took its form. I used its strength to amplify my own. A reward for winning. It made me feel good." Longhorn paused. "You'll understand when you get yours."
"My... what, my-"
"Your beast."
Hawkmoon grimaced. "I'm fine with what I have, honestly. I like having wings and thrusters and all that." I like having the shape of a Taishibethi fold-fighter.
"What?" Longhorn quizzically tilted his head. "Oh, no. You'll get to keep all that. The codex just gives you more."
"But my alt-modes written onto my T-cog," Hawkmoon replied. "I can't very well tell it to make room."
"You don't. The codex is a secondary transformation system, a mod you hook up to your T-cog. I have two alt-modes." Longhorn stood up and transformed - first into a stocky wheeled vehicle that resembled an armoured truck and then into an animal that looked for all the world like a fanged, predatory bull. He shifted back a moment later, plating clanking into place as he sat back down. "See?"
Hawkmoon nodded. Slowly. Looked away. "I don't know. It seems a little... grim. I'm not one for hunting down some poor alien critter just for the fun of it. Does it have to die?"
"The codex needs biomatter, so-"
"Yeah, no thanks. Killing for the sake of a wardrobe change just isn't for me."
"Sometimes they deserve it."
"That's necessity, not hate. Look, I'll kill something if I have to - but to actively hunt it? I mean... yeah, I'm okay with the practice, I've done it before, but not the reason. Not that one, your one. Most of the things I hate are living, breathing people. And incorporating their... I dunno, their forms into my own's a little ick. It's just animals, though, right? You don't steal the forms of people, surely?"
"Just animals."
Hawkmoon vented a relieved sigh. "Right, right, that's good. That's good..."
The conversation died off there. They watched as the arena mech took to dismembering the alien creature limb by limb, steadily cutting it down to size. It stopped being entertaining at that point.
"Hey, uh, listen," Longhorn said. He turned to her again. "I'm sorry about your buds. Your, um... whatsit, your trine. And your formation. I really am. Losing a pack's hard on you. I know-"
"Stop," Hawkmoon hissed past clenched denta. "Just stop."
"... Oh. Okay. Sorry."
And that was the end of that.
AN: Thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!