To say that the situation was salvageable would've been a grave overestimation.
Shockwave's personal office had been destroyed.
Countless walls in the lab had been splattered with Tox-En, the glowing mixture was steadily eating into the metal, akin to a termite across dead bark.
Who was going to report the incident to Shockwave?
Teakup had been considered the sacrifice that afternoon, having been assigned as the base's Spectacular Janitorial Officer. The job was thankless, but safe, at least that's what Teakup had been assured of, when she'd first signed up to join her sparkeater brother's on their earth mission.
"It'll be fun they said - like a vacation away from the cafe! What a load of slag that was..." She murmured. She'd half a mind to think her brothers wanted to get rid of her, leaving her to clean up such a deadly mess by herself. Typically such a hazardous spill was handled by the Hazardous Materials Officer, Icescream, but he was nowhere to be seen since disappearing with Snapshot and the suspicious-likes of Blurr.
No doubt the Tox-En exploding everywhere had been their fault.
Black ped-steps led out just barely before the office entrance, until the path disappeared completely.
It was as if the bot responsible had suddenly disintegrated.
"When I find out who's responsible for all this, I'm gonna cut their rations down to droplets!" she hissed, directing a small militia of cleaning drones to concentrate cleaning efforts against the most afflicted side of the office.
An explosion had wrought an ashy crater into the middle of the room.
There wasn't much office or laboratory space left.
And Blurr's gestation chamber had been completely destroyed...
'I guess Blurr is deader than dead now.' She concluded, with conflicting feelings on the matter. She wanted to like Blurr, but... well ...the bot was mean...ignored her... neglected her...
But she supposed it didn't matter how she felt about Blurr now.
His ghost was nowhere to be seen.
Maybe he was gone forever.
Teakup vented a sigh of relief at the idea. 'No more Blurr. Gone forever. And ever, and ever~' She sing-songed in her head.
She gingerly stepped around pools of Tox-En wider than her entire small body. Fortunately, she was dressed in appropriate cybertronian hazmat attire, a quadruple layered mesh-suit, gilded with hardened glass-shielding.
It would keep her alive - long enough - supposedly - to clean up the spill.
Teakup wasn't the sort of bot to try her luck; especially with post-war cybertronian engineering. Any product created after The Great War was known to be of shoddy craftmanship and of sketchy origin - her hazmat suit was unfortunately included in such a category - custom-made to suit the likes of a sparkling.
She had no interest in testing the durability of her hazmat suit, and so she stood far away, leaving the cleaning drones to finish up the bulk of the work. Leaning against a wall, she busied herself with the report she had the misfortune to deliver to Shockwave the next chance she got.
"Sorry Shockwave. Everything exploded. Best of luck next vorn." She said out-loud, rehearsing what to say. A smile almost crossed her plates, but then a drone dragged something outwards from the blackened mess...depositing it in front of her...
"Oh, Icescream...there you are..." There was no time for tears - there never was. With shaky servos she altered her report.
Blurr was surprised. Typically his sparklings would've noticed he had disappeared.
But not today.
Not anymore.
The tunnels around him weren't home, but instead some sort of stranger's abode.
Blurr would've panicked at the unfamiliar walls and flooring, were it not for his agent-training and long lifespan.
The coloring was off, the titanium was too soft.
He did not know these tunnels.
The layout was wrong, the path too clean and unworn.
His ped-steps glided off the metal, almost swimming in midair as he propelled himself forward with a series of leg kicks.
It took little effort on his part, to move so quickly.
But he could hardly remember where he was going.
And that was a problem when he was fast running out of tunnels to navigate.
He took the only path he knew and his tires screeched in surprise when water pelted his head.
A waterfall.
He'd been here before.
But when?
He could not say.
It felt like a dream, the sights in front of him. Blurr allowed himself the luxury of slowing down, placing his servos against wet cavernous walls. He dragged his fingertips across cold refreshing stone...
He was alive.
Blurr pulled his hand away to find it covered in algae, and all manner of horrid organic matter, but to him, in that moment of revelry...
It was the most beautiful thing.
Snapshot was exiled.
Nobody had told him he was, but he assumed as much.
The incident with Blurr had been completely unacceptable.
Unprofessional.
Tox-En had exploded!
And that explosion mimicked what was left of his authority within that base.
His brothers no doubt hated him now.
His job within the base had been lackluster - he would not be missed in his exile.
His brothers never took his expertise seriously.
Never.
Regardless, he was considered the foremost expert on all things organic, concerning Earth.
Truly, which was no small matter, considering his brothers couldn't recognize the differences between cows and horses - both of which were relevant to their stay on Earth - both were animals cybertronians commonly spotted out in their missions - animals plentiful in their pastures to better serve humans.
But not like any other cybertronian bothered to know such a fact.
And ever since that horrible incident with Blurr...
Snapshot couldn't sleep.
Yes.
Sleep.
He preferred to use earth-vocabulary whenever possible, so as to fully enmesh himself within his various earthly personas.
Only then, in such a devoted and concentrated state-of-mind, could he catalogue data correctly; his goal was to be as passionate about the life on planet Earth as any creature born from it.
At times it was hard.
Little value was seen in his work. His cybertronian-brethren treated him oddly whenever he insisted to walk around them as an organic creature, whether beaver or a juvenile human.
Snapshot was always seen as the odd-one-out.
The one too small to be a useful spark-eater.
The one too small to not be in the way.
The one too small to do much of anything, besides to hear conversations he wasn't meant to hear.
"Did you see that? Snapshot just stamped filthy organic-matter down the walkway."
"It's just mud, but yah, it's disgusting. Hey, Snapshot! Clean your mess up!"
Giggling
"I don't think he can hear you with those tiny, primitive audials of his."
"Not like he could clean up his mess properly, anyway. He'd just make it worse with those dirty fleshling servos ."
"Abomination."
"Disgrace."
"Gross."
It was a typical recharge session when Snapshot experienced his night-terrors, recounting the many incidents and insults hurled towards his person by his brothers - and sisters, alike.
So it was good he had brothers he could appreciate.
He had sequestered himself away into a litter of beaver pups, perhaps the 27th litter to have accepted him in his various ventures back and forth, between beaver dams that season. Their mother he had helped raise from a pup three stellar-cycles ago, feeding the beaver-family back then tributes of quaking aspen saplings.
He'd grown them himself.
Snapshot had been very proud at the time.
But he had no one to share his discovery with.
And so, like any of his little victories.
Any joy they'd initially brought, was doomed to wither away.
Eventually, it would just become routine to Snapshot.
Since he couldn't sleep, he felt an instinctive urge to make himself useful. At least then, he would be appreciated - if only by himself.
Idle servos had helped cause the death of many a lazy, unprepared sparkling. Past a certain age one was expected to feed and to fuel themselves, and besides the animals upon planet Earth, Snapshot was certain he knew that lesson better than anyone.
He'd been the smallest since he could remember.
A runt among thousands.
And countless others, he never knew.
Rats had it better, their upbringing buffered by their numbers from predators.
Wasps had it good in their sister-nests, their lives given in support of one another.
But not cybertronians - not sparklings.
And especially not spark-eaters.
Snapshot had only survived so long, within those hellish cannibalistic tunnels...
Because he'd gone unnoticed.
What insanity had infected his processor, to cause him to desire - to remove the one element of his person which had kept him safe?
Surely, his safety wasn't owed to his ferocity of fang, nor his charisma of word - but it was owed to his pitifulness - his smallness.
His unthreatening stature.
And it was a great shame he could not shake.
He owed it.
His runtiness.
A great debt.
He could not escape it.
But he could swim.
And so he left the warmth of the beaver pups, trusting their parents to do their bidding as nature intended. Tucking into the water, he lingered at the water's bottom out of habit, searching the pond's surface for any new activity.
There wasn't a duck in sight.
Which was odd.
It was the time for their spring migration and the pond was typically full of the creatures.
Snapshot couldn't shake a budding pustule of dread within his spark.