"What do you mean it's clean? Clearly it's not." Said Storm, with a spotless mesh-rag in hand.
Ratchet laughed, actually laughed.
"No, seriously kid. These walls have never been so shiny." Ratchet paused to admired his reflection atop a polished countertop and Storm was about to step forward to wipe the surface again; until he realized, Ratchet would've noticed he had no reflection to speak of.
"I should make you my medbay assistant." Stated Ratchet, but when he turned around to evaluate Storm's reaction, the mechling was gone.
Without ceremony, Storm had run out of the room, with little choice to do otherwise.
Or so he thought.
"Well hey there, thunderboots. What's the hurry?" A black and white mech he'd never seen before stopped him in his tracks.
"Jazz! You're here." Ratchet called out excitedly behind him and Storm became corralled between the two mechs, as Ratchet made his way up the hallway.
"Looks like Storm couldn't wait to meet you." Ratchet clapped Storm on the shoulder, and he could only stare mutely, dumbly - as Ratchet politely walked him back into the room, with the so-called "Jazz" mystery mech following behind them.
"Wow, you guys weren't kidding when you said you'd all wanted me to move in." Jazz said, dragging a fingertip across a freshly polished countertop, much to Storm's chagrin. "My face is flashing across every surface." He said.
Storm almost hissed in frustration, swallowing the noise last minute as the strange mech looked him up and down. "Did you do all this? Good job kid." Storm noncommittally hummed, not really aware he'd been complimented. He was hyper-focused on getting out of the room, feeling his plating itch, as if it was liable to flake off like a second skin.
Jazz and Ratchet didn't seem to notice his distinct lack of reflection besides them - he stood between them as if they were at a photoshoot, with garishly shiny walls serving as a backdrop.
"I can hardly tell Prowl was here." He heard Jazz whisper, and Ratchet nodded his head solemnly. Storm took that as his queue to leave and without so much a thought he tiptoed out of the room, only to be stopped at the entrance, by a curious gaggle of Autobots. Smokescreen and Bumblebee rudely looked over his shoulders, almost pushing him over due to his freakily small height. "Is Jazz in there?" asked Smokescreen, his tone full of the same excited veneer he talked to Optimus Prime in.
He didn't bother with a reply; though Smokescreen had been a good sparring partner to Storm - it didn't make them friends. Bumblebee in turn clicked out his words, babbling at such a speed it might as well have been gibberish.
Storm weaseled passed them, ducking under their much too large arms, only to be blocked by Arcee standing in the middle of the hallway - Jack the human was seated atop her outstretched servo.
Storm would've gladly ignored them both, and he did, his head bowed indifferently as he tried to walk by - but then Jack bit out a noise, stopping him in his tracks.
"What did you do with Miko's phone?" Jack's tone was borderline accusatory, and it wasn't friendly either.
"It's in my room, why?"
"Well, can we see it?" asked Arcee. "We were hoping Raf could have a look at it, to recover all those pictures off of it."
Storm sneered. "I told you guys to do it tomorrow. It's not completely repaired yet." He twitched his wings, stamping awkwardly on the tips of his talons for emphasize. He vented out a breath, reminding himself that tantrums were unbecoming of a professional like him. "It's already useable if you want the pictures on it. The phone was shattered into pieces - it just took a while to tweeze everything together. The outside isn't finished, either."
It wasn't perfect yet.
"But you said we could get the photos off it, today." Jack crossed him arms.
Storm sighed. "Fine. Whatever." He felt weird about interrupting one of his repair projects, but if the human insisted...
"But it hasn't even been repainted yet." He said.
Arcee gazed at Storm apologetically, giving him a neutral smile, as if aware of his growing frustration. "Sorry Storm, I know you like the results to be perfect, but having the phone functional is good enough."
Storm had never been an expert at hiding his body language, and he was keenly aware of such a fact.
Or his emotions, though he tried.
"Well, follow me then. It's in a display case inside my room." Reluctantly, he waved them forward. "I can't exactly move it, unless I want to break it again."
The trio stopped by the common-lounge room, the place the human couch and their small organic amenities sat at a safe, elevated position atop a spacious cybertronian desk. There was even access to a human restroom from atop the desk and Arcee let Jack dropped down from the palm of her hand.
"Hold on, let me get Raf. Just a sec, Jet." said Jack. Storm grumbled. The little organic better not continue to have the nerve to think it was appropriate to give him a nickname.
"Jet," how uncreative - that wasn't his name.
Jack had knocked on the restroom door, and it quickly swished open - Storm had expected more of a delay in Raf showing an appearance - if what he read about what humans did in "restrooms" had been correct.
Disgusting organics.
Their habits, looked and sounded horrible.
And Raf came out of the restroom, looking like he'd just died. His face was flush with tears, and his already white face was paler still, shiny from a sort of oil secretion upon his skin. His red-orange hair looked dirty, unkept, and tangled.
Wasn't he supposed to brush it when in a restroom?
'What's wrong with him?' Storm asked silently, to himself.
Sometimes humans visited restrooms when they were sick.
Was Raf sick?
"You okay there buddy? We can do this another time if you want?" asked Jack.
"No!" Shouted Raf. "No, I'm good. Let's just get this over with." The boy walked hunched over, utterly dejected.
Jack climbed aboard Arcee's hand and noticed her other hand was occupied by a piece of lab equipment she'd picked up - what for, Storm couldn't guess.
"Storm could you take Raf please?" asked Arcee. "My servo isn't big enough for two humans."
Storm didn't think that was true . Arcee's hand had plenty of room for such tiny organics, but he wasn't about to argue about something so trivial.
Reluctantly, Storm shrugged his shoulders and outstretched a servo - with a nod he asked Raf Esquivel to hop aboard. A moment passed as the boy gathered his trinkets with his laptop in tow, using Storm's fingers as a boarding ramp.
Storm was nervous.
He'd carried tiny things like mineral samples and his sparkling-brothers before - things he wouldn't dare to drop.
But a human felt different.
He'd never held a human before, save for the facsimile of one when his brother Snapshot chose to be particularly annoying that day.
An organic was soft, squishy, nor durable enough to survive a fall.
They had no armor nor a thick outershell.
If Raf was nervous to travel atop a stranger's servo, he politely said not a word - his face already starkly pale with despair, Storm couldn't tell if he was afraid. Raf held his closed laptop against his chest like a shield, his knees tucked in closely.
"You're going too fast." Arcee stated, her voice almost like a venomous sting, and Storm quickly corrected his speed and posture.
'How was I walking too fast?' he scoffed, to himself. 'I wasn't going fast at all. Arcee, you bolthead.' But again, he wasn't about to argue about something so trivial.
Jack glared at his backside, which he noticed from the corner of his optics - and it was for a reason Storm could not discern. Arcee appeared to nod at Raf apologetically from across Storm's shoulder. The boy Raf looked nauseous atop his servo and Storm struggled to squash an irrational flutter of anger and jealousy towards Arcee.
Why did the tiny, hapless juvenile humans trust Arcee, but not him , to ferry them safely around the base?
Was it because Arcee was larger, an adult Autobot?
Was Storm just too small? Did he look clumsy?
Storm frowned, huffing in relief when he entered his quarters, depositing Raf without ceremony onto his desk.
"Hey, careful!" Jack cried, and he leaped viciously from Arcee's servo, reminding Storm of a grasshopper.
He could certainly crush Jack's head like one.
Humans crushed insects.
Would it be wrong for a mech, to crush humans, like they did bugs?
Of course it would be - but that moral understanding alone wasn't enough to prevent the twisted idea from violently flashing across Storm's processor.
It was as if Jack could read his mind, and he stepped as far away from Storm as he could. He helped Raf up from the floor, the surface of the desk Storm had placed him upon. Raf brushed the surface of his knees, as if he'd been hurt.
'Did I do that? Did I drop Raf too quickly?'
"Are you okay? Did you fall?" he asked Raf, simply. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."
Raf looked up at him, smiling. "No problem, Storm. I'm just...just tired."
"Yeah." Jack added lamely.
"Well, here's the phone Raf, best get started while you can. You have school in the morning." Said Arcee.
Raf sighed. "That, I do." He placed his laptop against the display case Storm had set up, connecting cables through the glass. Inside was Miko's pink flip-phone. Earlier it had been shattered into oblivion, as if a mech had purposefully stepped on it, over and over. It sat on a bed of dirt and gravel Storm had scooped the pieces from.
The phone was still in a state of disrepair, but the remaining damage was superficial and it was ready for use as Raf intended. The phone's data loaded in without issue and quickly Raf made copies onto a flashdrive.
The pictures didn't look suspicious at first glance, as the majority were harmless Nevada landscapes, each befitting of a postcard. The desert Bulkhead and Miko had been patrolling had been a section of Nevada's hidden, infamous cliffsides - a spot known for past Decepticon activity, before they'd been driven from the area years ago.
"Look, this is the last photo she took." Said Raf, his lips quivering.
Jack looked away with crossed arms. "What the heck is it?"
Arcee leaned closer, optics zooming in to view the small monitor display of Raf's computer.
"It looks like...a mech?" Raf said. There was a shadow of blue metal looking up from a hole within a desert cliff Miko must've passed by. But it was questionable if Miko or Bulkhead had even noticed the strange mech within their vicinity. The next photos taken looked candid - one was a shelfie of Miko, showing her seated atop Bulkhead's shoulder.
There was nothing unusual there.
Save for the shadow earlier.
"That shadow was a Decepticon, no doubt about it." Jack was convinced the mech would be from the enemy-faction, no matter what. "Maybe Soundwave? He looks like the sneaky type."
'Naïve child.' Storm thought. 'If only you knew what horrors lurked beneath the Earth's crust.' He paused to snort. 'What are baby humans even doing here, with the Autobots? They aren't warriors.'
But Storm had also been a child, conscripted into a war without rhyme or reason; but he refused to entertain the hypocrisy of his thinking - he'd been born into that situation - Jack and Raf, had not been. He looked over Jack and Raf with a livid expression - they had no reason to be there, except to get in the way.
The both of them were utterly engrossed in Miko's photos for that day, as was Arcee - her optics roved over each one, dangerously.
The last photo was remarkably blurry, as if it'd been captured moments before Miko's death. Autopsy reports had shown she'd fallen, most likely from Bulkhead's shoulder. At such a height, it was no wonder her spine had severed in half.
Then there was that one damning detail.
Storm's optics had grown wide.
There imprinted on the dirt was the unmistakable imprint of a sparkeater's talons. Each claw that had sprouted from the foot was double-serrated, like miniature upper jaws from a moray eel - which served beautifully to bite and to hook into the backsides of hapless, panicking prey.
It was the most perfect design for toes any carnivore could've asked for.
Storm would know.
The claws peeled armor plating from a bot's protoform, like bark from a tree.
"No way that's from anything native on Earth." Stated Raf. "Unless there are dinosaurs running around, somehow."
"Think the footprint is still out there?" asked Jack.
"No reason to not check it out. It's still daylight out." Said Arcee. "Come on, let's go." She held out her servo. "You too Raf, up."
Whatever lab item had occupied Arcee's second servo had been left atop Storm's desk, connected to the phone's cabling in lieu of Raf's computer. Both of Arcee's hands cupped together, allowing Jack and Raf to sit together as she moved. Storm looked down at the ground - jealousy or a feeling of failure blossomed within his chest.
The humans didn't like him.
He'd carried Raf too roughly.
Storm pulled his wings close, suddenly very nervous.
He couldn't help but to think of that picture.
If the Autobots found out about that footprint, about sparkeaters.
It would be the end of him.
"I'm sorry Jazz. I didn't think we'd put you to work right away." Said Ratchet, with Jazz crouched besides him. "No trouble, Doc. I wouldn't want to waste my time down in the Autobot-base anyway, if that makes you feel any better."
Ratchet chuckled, bitterly. "Oh, I don't think I'll get over this terrible mood anytime soon." He snapped his fingers. "Bulkhead and Miko, gone just like that." He grumbled, looking over the footprint Jazz was gingerly digging around, out of a sandstone cliff. He dug around the impression to create an even oval shape, using his fingers like unconventional pickaxes. "They were my responsibility." Ratchet added.
Jazz sighed in response, pausing with his excavation."Ratchet, you say that about anyone who goes into your medbay, even if they only visit once." Jazz shook his head. "Nah, this was just some freak chance-of-fate. If you're responsible for this, so am I - all Autobots are, if you think about it."
A thick but thinly bristled brush was within Jazz's servo, designed for delicate forensic work to capture paint flakes from a crime scene - but the brush served just as well to clean up the area around a mech's footprint impression.
It was a mile or so away from where Bulkhead's mangled body had been found. Using the landmarks provided by Miko's last photo, it had been easy to locate the mystery cybertronian footprint.
"Yeah, this thing is definitely cybertronian. Either it's a drone or some experimental vehicon model - it's a weird footprint for everyday use - it looks like the mech had cleats for running - and..."
...
...
Jazz pointed. "Look here Ratchet, look how deep the serrated claws go in. Those are the very same scratch marks we found all over Bulkhead. They went deep."
"This, thing!" Ratchet shouted, walking over to an unfortunate rock, kicking it over the cliffside. "It tore Bulkhead apart!"
Jazz hummed. "Yep. Looks like." He turned to look Ratchet up into the optics. "Don't sweat it Doc. We will put down whatever monster did this as quick as a whip."
Ratchet stared down from the cliffside glancing at Arcee and Bumblebee, who were keeping watch for any suspicious activity.
He smiled slightly - knowing his teammates were around to watch his back made him happy.
It was just a shame the team hadn't been around for Bulkhead and Miko...
'And Jetfire.' He added, as an afterthought. Ratchet had yet to tell anyone save for Optimus, but he suspected the young mechling was dead. Megatron and the other Decepticons weren't exactly known for their mercy. Since his kidnapping by Soundwave, there had been no sign of Jetfire anywhere, not even from the spy-drones the Autobots had flying around New Kaon and The Nemesis.
'Poor Jetfire...we haven't even had a funeral for him yet...' Ratchet would've felt guilty about the matter, but he was startled by a noise behind him.
Crrrrrcccckkk.
A chunk of sandstone had broken loose, crash landing near Jazz's excavation site.
Storm had flown down from his lookout, his leg-thrusters kicking up dust before he landed, much closer than Jazz would've liked.
"Hey, hey! Step away from the merchandise, kid!" Jazz shouted, waving a servo around, pointing in the opposite direction Storm had landed. "You're blocking my sunlight."
"Oh, sorry! I wasn't paying attention." Said Storm.
"I for sure noticed , kid. You dropped outta the sky without a care in the world." Jazz gave him a withering look, as much as he could under his blue visor-optic. Funny enough, Storm also wore a blue visor-optic and it was impossible to see who was winning the impromptu staring contest.
"You're looking at this fancy foot like it's an ancient cybertronian rune." Said Jazz. "What gives kid?"
Storm said not a word.
Instead, he loomed around a crevice, just above Jazz and the footprint. Storm would've looked like a gargoyle perched atop a cliff or some monster ready to pounce - if he hadn't looked so visibly afraid - as if he recognized it somehow.
"You, uh...recognize this print from somewhere, kid?"
Again, Storm said not a word.
'Creepy kid, blocking my sunlight.' Jazz thought.
Silence said more than words at times, and Jazz filed away Storm's odd behavior for later.
Ratchet looked back at the scene, eager to leave.
The sun was going down.
'Strange, since when does Storm get spooked so easily? Maybe he does recognize it.' Ratchet watched Storm carefully, and the mechling nonsensically clicked his teeth together nervously, for no discernable reason.
'I never thought about how Storm has such weirdly shaped denta. He looks related to the sharkticons from the water colonies.' Ratchet made a reminder to himself - to give the kid a more thorough check-up when he got the chance. Storm seemed like a candidate for an undiscovered outlier ability.
Ratchet had known mechs who'd went almost their entire functioning without discovering the extra mutations and abilities embedded into their very CNA; such cases always involved powers that were distinctly subtle or mundane - inoffensive to everyday life.
'Like faster protoform regeneration, or more flexible joints.' Ratchet thought. 'An ability that doesn't look too strange at first.' He again looked over Storm, not noticing anything extreme about his person save for his teeth. 'Maybe he has a better bite-force than the average mech.' Ratchet thought, amused.
All in all, Storm was a normal mechling.