'I-need-I-need-to-leave-I-need-Tox-En.' Blurr was getting distracted and he was keenly aware of it. He hadn't been expecting to encounter another sapient-creature outside the Earth's surface; nor had he anticipated all the delightfully green surroundings of nature; his fleeting attention had been flayed into multiple directions, and he struggled not to panic.
"You've-been-here-too-long."
"Pardon?" asked the beaver.
"You've-been-here-too-long." Blurr was muttering to himself, looking down at the water, as if he was peering into a scrying mirror.
The beaver backed up a step, watching as Blurr's ghost waded further into the water. The ghost appeared blind to his surroundings, swinging his servos, batting at nothing within the air.
"Blurr, are you alright?"
The short question seemed to snap Blurr out of whatever ghostly dilemma he'd been experiencing.
"I-need-Tox-En." Blurr remembered his goal from before and his optics widened a fraction, amazed he'd recovered the information, from himself.
"I-remembered." Delighted, he said it again. "I-need-Tox-En."
He looked down at the tiny creature which had addressed him and felt obligated to ask the furry stranger a question.
"Can-you-help-me-find-it?"
"Find what?" The beaver cocked its head, seeming unperturbed by the behemoth-sized ghost, manifested in front of it.
Still, the beaver nervously twirled in place, finding itself bobbing along the water - instinctively itching to get away from the ghost that had so rudely encroached upon its pond.
"I-need-Tox-En. That? Can-you-find-that?"
"What makes you think I know anything about that?"
Blurr paused, not moving, appearing to be recalibrating his own thinking.
Normally he wouldn't pay attention to a small, quadrupedal organic - but it was talking, and it either Blurr talked to this creature, or no one at all. Blurr only had Starscream to talk to for conversations, and he wasn't exactly keen on Starscream being his only option.
Blurr couldn't help but to notice - that the chatty-creature was only the size of one of his fingertips.
'It's-so-impossibly-small.' He thought.
He felt compelled to measure the beaver from head to tail, and he gave no warning before his ghostly servo impulsively covered its hapless form - it froze - terrified.
It had a spark.
It was cybertronian.
It wasn't an organic.
He knew this creature.
The simple facts flowed into his processor like air through lungs. The "beaver" feigned panicked-breathing as he pulled his ghostly servo away from its fur. It was one of the sparklings, though Blurr couldn't remember which one.
"You're-a-sparkeater." He said simply.
"I am."
"I-don't-like-talking-to-the-undead."
The beaver patted down its fur, which had puffed up after Blurr had scared it.
"But that's hypocritical?"
"It-is." Blurr said simply. Normally he wasn't so curt in his speech, but he didn't exactly have the attention-span for anything else.
"Can-you-help-me?" Blurr asked again.
The beaver hesitated for a moment, pacing back and forth as it muttered something about excitable rock collectors - interrupting his day.
"Why do you need it? This Tox-En?" The beaver said snappishly, clacking its orange teeth.
For a moment, Blurr remained quiet, looking as dour as ever.
"I-don't-remember-but-I-need-Tox-En."
The beaver sighed, as if resigning itself to something terrible. "Fine." Its tail dragged behind it, impossibly slowly, carving grooves throughout mud as it walked.
He remembered not to float, and practiced his ped-steps again as he followed the beaver.
Blurr was grounded again and it felt amazing; the more he walked the more he was convinced he wasn't a ghost.
He became enamored with the beaver's delicate, impossibly small footprints; and Blurr became more interested in his surroundings, walking back the path he had come, up the river boarded by trees - leading the way back to base.
"What-is-this-place?" Blurr asked. "This...green?" He tried to find a more descriptive word, but Blurr could only gesture haplessly to his surroundings - his servos grasped at nothing as he moved to examine the closest object in front of his optics - green needles upon a brown, carbon-based growth.
"Well for one, that's a pine tree." Guffawed the beaver. "Specifically a 'Pinus longaeva,' a Great Basin bristlecone pine."
Blurr was unable to comprehend the useless spillage of alien-terms, but he was still content to listen. Both the beaver and himself wordlessly passed behind the holographic boulder and back into the tunnels. The beaver led him through twists and turns, looking back every so often to see if Blurr was still following him. Whatever fuzzy, twisted expression a beaver could make - appeared amused, or nervous - some mixture of the two.
"Here we are." The beaver pawed the front of a plainly white door. "My brothers here keep track of all the energon down here. If they can't find you Tox-En, no one can."
Before Blurr could make a sound, the door slid open, revealing a speckled brown, pink, black, and white sparkling.
"Snapshot, it's been a while!" The sparkling was ecstatic as it bent forward, picking up the newly-dubbed "Snapshot" by the armpits, as if he was some kind of pet. The sparkling was twice Snapshot's size, but still much too small in comparison to Blurr.
"So you haven't comm'd me for weeks and suddenly I get a message from you." The sparkling grumbled, crossing her arms. "What's this about Tox-En?"
"Blurr needs it." The beaver blurted out, and wiggled free from the sparkling, running into the room. Then, as if noticing him for the first time, the sparkling flinched away from Blurr, obviously afraid. "O-oh, Blurr. It's been a while, also. " The sparkling backpedaled into the room, not taking her optics off Blurr. "W-welcome. I mean, welcome Blurr." There was the clattering of noise as Blurr stepped into the room, his non-incorporeal form floated partially through the entrance and his leg seeped into a chair. "Everyone welcome, Blurr!" Shouted the sparkling, with some authority.
Blurr took in the sight, concluding the room to be some sort of recreational break-room. There were energon-converters labeled with different flavors atop a counter, and appliances fashioned after human-make. There was a mesh-metal couch of cybertronian-origin tucked away into a corner, dusty and unused.
The sights of normal cybertronian-society stirred something familiar within Blurr - he felt more lucid - his words and memories became solid, more real - less likely to slip from his milky servos.
Snapshot had made himself comfortable atop a massive-round kitchen table, sized to comfortably seat two or three cybertronians around the size of Starscream, and so the chairs were angled-awkwardly, shaped in anticipation of containing wings or the bulky mudguards of a fully-grown mech.
But the room was empty, save for the beaver and mystery sparkling, who plopped comedically into one of the oversized chairs.
"Guys, come on. Don't be rude."
A moment of silence passed.
Then there was the sound of an alt-mode shifting to root-mode, and atop the counter a human-make "microwave" transformed into an off-white sparkling.
"Ick, it's Blurr. I thought we agreed never to talk to the guy." It rudely said. "What's he doing here, Teakup?"
"Oh hush you! If you're going to say rude things, at least keep it to the comm-calls." said Teakup.
"Microwave, do you know which lab has Tox-En? We kinda need it." Spoke Snapshot.
The off-white sparkling, dubbed "Microwave," looked at Blurr, Snapshot, and Teakup from his countertop, entirely unconvinced. "That depends, why do you need it? You guys aren't exactly known for being interested in weapons of mass-destruction." He paused, optics trailing nervously over Blurr. "And again, what's he doing here? This Tox-En business obviously has to do with him."
Blurr approached the countertop, his servos outstretched uselessly to potentially feel the glass and metal counter underneath "I-need-Tox-En." He muttered. Microwave scowled. "I'm not getting involved in this nonsense." He turned around, kicking a retro mini-fridge besides him. "But this doofus will." A green, blue, and white sparkling collapsed out of the fridge-facsimile, unamused. "Frag you, Microwave! I told you I didn't want anything to do with Blurr!"
"Well, neither do I!" he said bluntly. "But who else is going to risk handling Tox-En? Not me! And not Teakup!"
Snapshot sighed. "What do you guys have against Blurr, anyway? Blurr's our ma-ker, we should be more respectful."
"Like Primus's twitchy-optic, we should! He ditched us, left us for dead!" Microwave shouted, jumping down from the counter, to seat himself besides Teakup, who looked not pleased at all to see him there. "Need I remind you of the terrible things Blurr has done? That Starscream gave more of a damn about us than he ever did?" Microwave whispered against Teakup's antennae, and she winced away as if struck. "No." She murmured, nervously. She peeked up at Blurr, shrinking further into her chair and said not a word.
Blurr watched the entire exchanged - stupefied. Obviously, the little mechs knew him, but Blurr couldn't recall how or where. It was a little concerning, and he could only hope some memory or clue concerning the matter would eventually come to him.
Snapshot rolled his optics at Microwave's outburst. It was typical behavior for him, as for Teakup's meekness. "Right, well, I'd like to get back to the Earth's surface before it's pitch-black out, so lets get Blurr his Tox-En so I can leave. Please."
The green and blue sparkling jumped onto the table, giving Snapshot an affirmative "Let's Go!" gesture with his servo, his antennas whirring with private comm-messages.
"Come on, Blurr. Icescream and I will show you to the Tox-En." He slapped his little beaver tail for emphasize. "And then you don't bother those guys again. If you can help it. " He paused, looking over to see if Blurr was following.
He was.
Snapshot took the opportunity to chat with one of his brothers alone. He wasn't exactly social and his work as a photographer on the planet's surface didn't endear him to much company.
"Microwave sure is annoying with his comm-messages, huh Icescream?"
"Yah, he hasn't stopped spamming the line. I think I'll just turn it off. Teakup says sorry by the way." said Icescream.
"Sure. Whatever."
"Ugh, I miss my blender alt-mode. I move so slowly as a fridge."
"Why'd you change it?"
"Well, for one, my heavy-duty glass container always got cracked, no matter how careful I was. As a fridge I'm a lot more durable now when Microwave decides to surprise bodyslam me."
Snapshot chortled. "Why do you let him bully you guys? You can take him in a fight, right?"
"Of course..." Icescream trailed off, watching as Blurr began to step besides them. He looked more curious than afraid, but he kept his mouth shut and his optics glued to the ground.
"Okay, this is the coordinates Microwave sent." said Snapshot. "Icescream, your fridge-mode is actually a compact-freezer, right? Because we are going to need that ice to shield all that Tox-En radiation."
"Oh yah, I've got the ice. Believe me this isn't the first time I'm handling something sketchy."
Blurr watched silently as the two sparklings corralled him through another door. The room was mostly empty and Blurr was delighted to find it free from painful distractions.
'I-need-Tox-En.' He reminded himself, and he hummed triumphantly as the two sparklings pulled out a specimen drawer, which unraveled into a high-clearance container - an ominous white cube, labeled dangerously in countless labels as "Tox-En."
"Here we are. I hope you are happy Blurr." said Snapshot.
Blurr just grinned, ludicrously deeply as Icescream nervously coaxed the Tox-En cube into his alt-mode freezer with the help of Snapshot's tail. There was little space for anything else but ice, yet the Tox-En inside made Icescream feel hot, regardless. He moved nervously around in his alt-mode on threads attached to his fridge, for difficult situations such as that very moment. "Hurry, Snapshot. It's starting to burn."
"Right, the next stop is this way. Come on, Blurr!"
It took about a bream or two, for the sparklings to run across the entire tunnel-complex, looking for Blurr's respective laboratory-room. Eventually they found it, only to find they didn't have clearance to open the doors.
"Damnit, we can't get through!" Snapshot wailed, in beaver-tongue. "Ugh, Microwave would know how to crack Shockwave's dodgy passcodes. Why didn't he just come? That sensitive-bitlet..."
"I tried to comm Microwave, but he isn't replying now." Said Icescream. His tone was panicked and his twirled in-place on his threads; the Tox-En was quickly melting all of his ice and water was beginning to spill out from the edges of his frame.
"Oh Primus, this Tox-En is more burn-ey than I thought!" he screamed, and Snapshot desperately tried to guess the passcode, but he was quickly overwhelmed by second-hand panic from his brother. Snapshot wasn't a hacker nor strong enough to rip the doors apart; he could only stare stupidly at the doors, begging the Universe to will it open for him.
Blurr had watched the entire situation unfold, more annoyed than anything that they'd stopped moving. He was dispassionate as he watched Icescream dart back and forth in a panic - the Tox-En obviously burning his insides. Blurr reached out with a servo, grabbing at the cube of Tox-En within the sparkling's chassis and phased into the room. He expected to have "cube-in-hand," but instead he had pulled through the entire sparkling, who was howling in agony, begging for the Tox-En to be removed.
Blurr grabbed hold of the Tox-En again, only this time his servo glowed green and the cube...
Exploded.
Icescream died instantly. His fridge plating had burst open like a botulism fruit can, painting the room in Tox-En and black sparkeater energon...
"Perfect." Blurr murmured. But he could barely comprehend the scene in front of him. That a death occurred, didn't register across his processor - only the sheer magnitude of power he suddenly felt, instilled within his servos.
His entire ghostly body had enveloped itself in Tox-En, bleeding the substance dry as he sucked the energy from it. Tox-En peeled from the walls and floor as more and more drained into Blurr, including from Icescream's body.
Blurr acted on pure intuition alone. He knew from Icescream's combustion moments ago, that Tox-En was dangerous and so when he intended to place both of his servos atop the gestation chamber, he reconsidered. Wisely, Blurr placed only a single finger against the glass.
It was enough.
The glass was bullet-proof, but not "ghost-proof."
Blurr would be careful.
Too much energy and his new body would explode.
Just like Icescream had.
He recognized the dead sparkling now, scattered in front of his gestation chamber, as if it'd been an evil-intentional, ritualistic sacrifice...
He watched in morbid fascination as his protoform knitted itself together. Rubber-circuitry filled up his arms and legs. Metal-nanites peeled across his form at deranged speeds, printing plating as if from thin-air.
Blurr cackled dangerously.
The lab was experiencing a supernatural meltdown.
A beaver by the laboratory doors, had run away terrified, sometime ago...