Cccrrrkkk.
The camera went.
And a bird flew away.
Snapshot's face was solemn as he lied down with his belly to the ground, crouched beneath a bush. He was in his human persona, a dark haired boy he'd dubbed "Gideon," a human name of Hebrew origin which translated to "feller" or "hewer," which Snapshot thought was most appropriate, considering he hung out with beavers most cycles.
He'd been stalking a yellow cardinal, a creature with a rare mutation of xanthism, for hours.
On his camera he looked at the photo he'd taken of the creature, nodding in approval at the results. The young cardinal bird had bright giddy lemon feathers instead of cherry red; the picture was close to pristine - the image having been pulled off due to the fact the bird had landed within the perfect patch of sunlight - a patch that Snapshot had thrown seeds into. Patiently he had waited beneath that bush with the perfect bait, with fingers crossed - until hunger coaxed the wild creature down from the safety of the branches, to the potential perils along the ground.
Finally Snapshot had succeeded, he'd gotten another pristine picture for his collection.
And yet.
No matter how many pictures of rare animals he took, it didn't dowse the guilty pain within his spark.
Icescream was dead because of him, and he was very much stressed about the matter.
No one had come for him yet - to avenge Icescream - or, to at least beat him up for tracking mud again, into the base hallways.
He had left his pond and log cabin a while ago - his instincts had been screaming at him to leave. He wasn't the type of mech to ever ignore a deep itching feeling within his tanks...
Countless camping supplies littered his little dirt-patch of paradise, but he used very little of the human knickknacks to survive.
But it was fun to pretend, to be an organic.
He wasn't tempted to go back to his pond anytime soon; despite his beaver friends being there - it simply wasn't safe for a mech like him.
Plus.
Something was breathing down his back besides his guilt.
It was something literal.
And real.
He couldn't understand what it was - when he gazed long enough into the branchy deep of the trees - he would spot a silhouette of someone familiar...
Starscream?
Seaspray?
Jetstorm?
The shadow was tall enough to be a mechling at the very least - it dwarfed the trees, looming over the growth with a condescending feeling flaring outwards from its chest, as if it didn't like how small and pathetic nature was around it.
When he saw it, the mystery silhouette, Snapshot was always half asleep besides his roaring campfire, monitoring the blaze for any stray embers like a good camper would.
The shadow would creep closer, until Snapshot would jump to attention, his human holoform hair would prickle upwards like a porcupine's backside - from static electricity thick in the air.
And then the shadow would be gone again.
Snapshot would relocate his camp.
But the shadow found him again and again.
'Perhaps I'm going crazy without my beavers?' he admitted, wanting more than ever to take a morning swim - his human holoform wasn't solid, so mud and debris didn't stick to the surface like real skin.
But then he'd brush the human illusion away to preserve energy - his "real" root form was dirty - what little armor he had for a sparkling was dented, full of knicks and bangs - he had little green and brown paint remaining unstained - black flecks of sparkeater's blood had coated his body countless times throughout his life - and he'd never bothered to scrub or to wax his wounds once the pain had healed away.
He transformed back into his beaver alt-mode, much more comfortable in such a form than anything else.
Without his beautiful pond to swim in, Snapshot opted for a dustbathe to keep clean - like he'd seen desert chinchillas and birds do. He looked down at the charcoal and white ash from his campfire - and proceeded to roll around in it - the embers still hot and burning.
It was an odd, novel sight.
Were he any creature from Earth he'd be in agony, but to a cybertronian, to Snapshot and his weary metal - a fire was heaven.
Storm had left his self-imposed isolation within his room to take a shower.
There at the wash racks, was Wheeljack.
"Well, Jetstorm, you've left your room for once; that's a surprise."
Storm hissed through his teeth, the sound quieted under a rush of cleaning solvent as he violently twisted the activation-knob. He turned away from Wheeljack, not paying the mech any bit of attention.
"Fine, be like that, then." He heard Wheeljack mutter bitterly, despite the roar of cleaner clogging his twitching audials.
Storm scoffed; it hardly mattered what Wheeljack or any Autobot thought of him.
'This whole stupid become an autobot thingy was Jetfire's idea.'
For the first time since his capture, he seriously thought of his brother.
"He's dead." He concluded, out loud.
"Who's dead?" Wheeljack swiveled his head, a confused look crinkled across his optics. "You mean Bulkhead?"
Storm couldn't hold in a surprised cackle of laughter. The noise bounced cleanly around the off-white wash rack ceiling. Storm didn't see Wheeljack's expression, but it was more tight and confused than ever. "Damn kid, other mechs tell me I'm funny when I don't mean to be, but I didn't think it meant dark humor funny."
Storm sighed, as the other mech tried and failed to add levity into their conversation - except Storm didn't want a conversation - he didn't want to talk to any mech, period - he aptly ignored Wheeljack, ducking his head low to avoid the mech's burning, questioning gaze.
He didn't even want to talk to his brother.
The ghost could come up to him and try.
He'd spit in his face.
Storm smiled despite himself; his nervous laugher had done wonders for relieving the pent up pressure stacked up against his plating.
Just existing in the Autobot-base was becoming painful.
Optimus Prime didn't let him out to fly as often as he'd like.
And, he was awfully hungry.
He gazed at Wheeljack from the corner of his visor-optics - the mech had thankfully gone back to his shower, leaving him alone.
'If Wheeljack just up and died in the showers, what would everyone think?' He almost burst out laughing from the bizarre mental-imagery assaulting his processor.
'Optimus probably wouldn't let us shower for a decacycle or something dumb like that - in honor of a fellow Autobot.' That time he giggled, just a little - imaging Optimus Prime covered head to toe in messy organic garbage-galore, with rotten banana peels everywhere. 'His new alt-mode could be a dump truck. Arcee would have the honor of being a janitor's bucket.' He chuckled openly, immaturely.
He felt like a mechling then, but he didn't care.
The scalding refreshing solvent did wonders in dissolving the rest of his hidden lingering stressors, which cascaded off his armor along with what little wax existed upon his armor.
He allowed himself a moment to relax - he only felt such a feeling when he was truly left alone.
Jetfire had never understood that - had never allowed it when possible.
Storm's non-existent reflection flashed across the glaringly empty shower stall - it was a sad, plain ghost of a thing - just like his spark. Fog and condensation from his heated shower was quick to engulf his space, and in that serene moment, he dimmed his optics, finally at peace.
Miko's phone was repaired.
But that hadn't given everyone the right to break into his room.
While he was distracted and enjoying a shower, no less.
"What the slag!? Everyone get the frag out - out. of. my. room!" Storm shrieked, his privacy and possessions invaded, pawed over by dirty-oily human hands. Electricity crackled imperceptibly beneath his palms - his anger a quivering, delicate thing.
"Raf, don't touch my rocks!" He all but snarled at the scared red-haired creature, and perhaps he would've done more, if Arcee hadn't stepped in, pushing him gently backwards, away from her tiny charge.
"See, I told you he'd be mad." Said Jack, not bothering to look over Raf's way; instead, he fiddled with Miko's pink phone in both his hands.
"How'd you get...that...?" Storm snapped, stopping short when he noticed that the display case the phone had been placed within had been cracked open, clean in half.
"Arcee, did you do this?" he asked, and from Arcee's guilty apologetic expression, nothing else had to be said. The data-cylinder she'd brought and left the day before on his desk tossed nervously between her servos - it was a backup of Miko's phone and photos.
"I'm sorry Storm, Jack and Raf sorta just ran in here, in a hurry about something, and I didn't think anything of it. Breaking the glass had been impulsive of me - it was a mistake - I'll owe you a favor because of this, alright?" Arcee sub-spaced the cylinder away, using her now free servos to gather Raf and Jack respectively into her hands. "They needed Miko's phone to place into her coffin; we'll get out of your plating now." Arcee tried to smile at him, but Storm bared his teeth, wanting more than ever to rip her face off.
The monster inside of him was desperate for any excuse to crawl out - out of the void within his spark.
She left without another word, and Storm noted in satisfaction how the human children didn't dare to look his way.
"Hey what gives? You were supposed to show up an hour ago for your pictures. I'm leaving."
This Raphael kid was getting on his nerves.
Snapshot considered himself a patient bot, spending most of his cycles lounging around peacefully with animals of various shapes and sizes.
Humans included.
And he sold printouts of his pictures - landscapes befitting postcards - calendars full to the brim of his best animal close-ups.
He had proudly displayed his new yellow cardinal photo - front and center upon the table.
Snapshot also took commissions, taking pictures of whatever a customer requested - within reason.
Once a particularly creepy man had requested photos of a naked women, and Snapshot had politely refused.
That man was now buried in the woods somewhere.
Apparently some humans handled rejection poorly.
The sun had gone down, so Snapshot had packed up his photo-stand rather quickly for what appeared to be a human ten year old.
By the time his very late customer showed up, his face puffy with tears - Snapshot had already been already walking away from the park he'd illegally set up shop in,
"You're lucky I'm still here." He said simply, eyeing the yellow sports car the boy had arrived in nervously. Obviously the boy was rich, and would likely have a bodyguard or two hovering over his shoulder in a part of town like this.
"I'm...I'm sorry. Something came up." Raf said honestly, as one of his hands nervously patted his scattered red hair. Snapshot took this all in and more, sighing when he realized he genuinely felt sorry for the obviously distraught boy.
Why?
He had no idea.
Why.
He placed his "selling" backpack onto the ground, camping pans clinked against each other as he did so. He pulled out the boy's commission, filed away neatly within a cardboard envelope. "Here you are, pictures of rainbows just like you've requested. It's for your school project, correct?"
Raf smiled meekly, nodding his head. "Yah, it's all about how rainbows are created; though I might not even turn the project in - it feels wrong somehow."
Snapshot frowned, he didn't want to have flown after storm clouds as a crow and waited in the rain for no reason. "Why?"
The boy's face dropped, becoming impossibly paler, but Snapshot had to know. "Why even bother to pick these up then?"
"T-to give you this." The boy had pulled out a fat stack of cash, and Snapshot had thought it was a pile of messy dollar bills, except when he uncrumpled one, he was left with a bunch of $100s.
"Uh kid, you know this is too much right? I'm not charging one hundred bucks per photo here!" Snapshot was almost offended. He didn't know enough about humans compared to most animals, but he knew humans coveted their precious green leaves - money was the backbone of their budding civilizations.
Despite Snapshot's snappishness, the boy took a step back, laughing when Snapshot tried to pass back the money.
"Haha sorry, I wasn't trying to imply anything." He said nervously, gesturing to Snapshot's suspiciously packed backpack. Before Snapshot could scream that he wasn't homeless, or that he wasn't selling drugs - the boy spoke again. "It's...it's money for the funeral. I got it from my friend's life-insurance payout to help plan things..." He scratched his arms nervously. "I didn't want to keep a hold of it. I was gonna send it to her parents in Japan but they insisted that I should keep it, the extra leftovers." He paused, breathing stiffly, as if to compose himself. "That money is the last of it. I don't want it. Please keep it."
Snapshot looked at the ground sternly for a moment, before silently pocketing the money into his subspace. If the boy noticed the strange fluid action, he didn't say anything, but his eyes lit up.
Green human leaves wouldn't undo the trouble he went through to get rainbow pictures.
'Though it's my fault for signing up for the job, I suppose.'
"So your friend...died? What does that have to do with not turning in your...school project?" Snapshot asked, a little bitter over the matter.
"She was my lab partner. We worked on all our projects together. I don't wanna turn in the project without her - the subject was her idea."
"I see...I guess I can understand that...sorta." Snapshot began to riffle through his backpack, pulling out binders and folders of his photos - some were master copies - others were boring stacks of endless prints.
"What things did your friend like? I'll give you photos she would've appreciated." He looked up at Raf sternly, as if daring the boy to reject his offer. "Else I'm not keeping that ridiculous sum of money. I'll burn it in my campfire." He said bluntly.
Raf was surprised or perhaps stupefied from the boy's dangerous look; he sat on a park bench as he watched Snapshot reset-up shop onto dirty concrete sidewalk.
"Are those unicorns?" The boy squinted past his glasses, thoroughly amused. "I thought you didn't edit or photoshop your pictures?" Snapshot didn't like the boy's skeptical, accusatory tone - his human ears twitched unnaturally, his eyebrows pinched ridiculously low.
"I don't. I assure you." Snapshot's head of hair bristled. "Unicorns are real."
"O-okay."
Snapshot proceeded to pull out photos of gnomes, fairies as colorful balls of light, and a few candid shots of bigfoot.
"Alright, I admit - the ones of bigfeet are of me. Those are shelfies."
Raf was very uncomfortable. Buying photos from a kid younger than him seemed harmless at first - but now he was worried.
Where were his parents?
"Ahh, cool?" he said simply. "I'll take the unicorn ones, and the ones of the fairies. Miko loved magical, colorful stuff."
Snapshot nodded, almost smiling as he refilled another cardboard envelop with his precious captures, and handed it off to the boy.
"Don't be a stranger now. You know where to find me."
Raf wasn't sure of that. The boy picked up his backpack, having cleaned up his photos strewn across the ground in record time - then he slinked into a treeline alongside the park.
Then he was gone.
Raf shuffled his feet nervously as he speed walked back to Bumblebee; his hands held out the envelops away from his person, as if they were wet, dirty rags. Jack was inside waiting for him in the driver's seat, his hands fiddling across the steering wheel, as if he'd be the one driving.
"Who the hell was that?" Jack blurted out.
"Hey, watch your language!" Raf laughed, and Jack shook his head, smiling.
:"Yes, who was that Raf? He felt weird...": Bumblebee beeped out his question, car honks punctuated his curiosity.
"Weird how?" asked Raf. "He seemed normal." Shrugging, he handed the photo envelopes over to Jack, who eagerly began to palm through the prints. :"I'm not sure...": Bumblebee grumbled quietly, as if his tanks were running low on energon.
"Oh wow, that weirdo kid has a business card, check it out." Jack held up the card so Bumblebee could see.
[ Gideon Chopper ]
[ "Can You Chop This?" ]
[ Photographer Extraordinaire ]
[ Call 5#4-555-0179 for Picture Commissions ]
:"It's probably nothing, but I'll let Optimus know about this."