"Finally, there you are." Said a small, bitter-pink sparkling.
Seaspray was too far away to commlink or to receive a message, as least from the precarious position Teakup held herself in, hanging upside down from a thick treetop branch.
She unhooked her leg, allowing herself to drop into a freefall.
From the tallest conifer tree she'd ever seen.
Her target, Snapshot, had a talent for disappearing into the woods. She suspected he sometimes went underground, into random burrows she couldn't find him in.
It was as if he knew she was watching.
'How fraggin' frustrating.' Seaspray had assured her that it would only take a single cycle to track down Snapshot, when the duo had approached his log cabin, finding it eerily empty.
Yet full to the brim with red energon.
That hadn't been weird, nor suspicious in the slightest.
Last Teakup heard, Seaspray had removed the crystal, ripping the cabin's rooftop from its bindings and the delicate wooden structure had almost crumbled into sawdust from the violent action; instead, the walls toppled over into a mess of splinters, looking for all the world like a giant bird's nest abandoned along the ground...
Teakup had felt awful then.
Snapshot had worked so hard on it - his beloved log cabin.
Teakup had been one of the first to watch in fascination, as her "little brother" chopped down each tree with his teeth - and only perhaps, once used an axe, out of curiosity.
Only to return to his biting and gnashing.
Maybe it had something to do with being a sparkeater - the habit, the need - some innate obsession with biting within his coding.
Teakup certainly liked to bite things - though she always chose sweet things like energon-stuffed muffins and leadcakes.
She was good at baking.
She was meant for baking.
She wasn't built for whatever wretched assignment Seaspray had crudely thrown her way.
She wasn't meant to climb trees...
Oh right.
She was falling.
'Why did I listen to him?' she lamented. 'Stupid big brother.'
She transformed into her alt-mode, only a meter or so from colliding into the ground - the form wasn't regal but it expanded outwards with long elegant pink wings, which caught on the air expertly.
She was raised by Starscream - she knew how to fly - dangerously so.
Her chosen form, a flamingo, hurled itself through the air like a comical meteor - aiming for Snapshot's last known ground coordinates, recorded less than a minute ago.
Pink wings angled downwards, slipping around the knotted trunks of trees. Her webbed purple flamingo-feet bounced her gently as she landed on flaking pine needles and soft mud, keeping her momentum as best she could, running.
Snapshot didn't know what hit him.
Literally.
He screeched in beaver tongue, already in his camouflaged alt-mode. He gnashed his heavy teeth upwards, though to another bot like Teakup, his orange teeth were soft like copper - in theory.
His teeth sunk into her purple-pink leg - the limb much too thin - the metal already bending unfortunately - the metal already conveniently shaped like a weak dry tree branch.
Teakup's leg exploded in agony.
But the pain served to fuel what she was meant to do.
She flamingo-screeched, almost honking like a goose as her massive, twisted-upside-down-beak gripped Snapshot by his neck - his teeth hopelessly still latched into her leg.
He couldn't let go.
He couldn't wrestled free.
He was trapped.
Snapshot was viciously flung around by his neck, shaken sideways and his neck-meat shredded; Teakup pelted him with her wings, disorientating him with kicks from her other unbitten leg.
He bit down harder.
His little claws scrambled for purchase alongside her quivering leg.
It broke.
Clean off.
'This-was-a-mistake-thiswasamistake-thiswasamistake-thiswasamistake!' Teakup crumpled to the ground, in so much pain that she couldn't even get a word out - to beg for mercy - or even to drag herself away, to flap to safety as she'd been taught!
Fortunately for her, Snapshot was a reasonable mech, and her brother.
He recognized her; despite his sparkeater coding, prodding him forward to rip his prey's throat out.
In the haze of battle he turned into a vicious little thing, but he wasn't blind nor bloodthirsty enough for wanton slaughter.
Unlike his brothers.
He considered himself peaceable and he sat down on his haunches, trying his best to wisely evaluate the strange situation.
He wheezed, trying to speak as black energon dribbled down his tongue, past his chin.
"Tea...k-kup?" he said slowly, his voice garbled from the taste of metal and bitter-sour energon; and the injury along the back of his neck didn't help either. He shivered, his spine tingled uneasily from a hissing open-would, spitting crackling sparks as the meat of his protoform slowly stitched together.
"W-why...did?" he cleared his throat, swallowing down his bleeding gums.
"Why'd you attack me?" he asked, a lot more clearer. "Teakup!" he shouted, but it was obvious he wouldn't be getting an answer. Teakup had curled around herself miserably, cradling the stump of her foot; she was bleeding out, but not enough to kill her. A sparkeater's resilience was uncanny even when small, and her blood had the viscosity of crude-oil or even tar-pitch, clotting quickly into a black, horrid mess.
So she wouldn't bleed out, that was the important part.
"I'll uh..." Snapshot looked away uncomfortably, suddenly standing up onto his rodent-legs, his noise twitching as if he spotted something else along the treeline - but just as soon as he'd seen it, the mech was gone again.
Snapshot was very much sure, that it was a mech he'd seen.
There was nothing else something so big could possibly be.
Snapshot shook his head - it was an issue to address at another time, and as long as the shadow, the watcher, the spy: he had many names for the thing - didn't attack him, like Teakup had; he was confident his day would be just fine.
"O-okay." He squeaked-whistled out uneasily. "Let's get you back to my camp." Snapshot didn't have much medical know-how...he knew as much as the animals did - that bleeding was bad - and that lots of sleep was paramount - but outside of those two things, there was little he could do to stop the pain, especially Teakup's.
"Just don't fall into recharge..." He added, hoping she was still awake enough to hear him, before clamping down as gently as he could onto Teakup's other leg. To her credit she didn't freak out, thinking Snapshot was going to chew off her other leg, as she was dragged away through mud and debris; but the serene calmness she was displaying could've been on account of the shear amount of shock and pain she was in.
"You didn't subspace my leg!?" She snapped harshly, an hour or so later at camp. "Then how are we going to fix me!?" Snapshot was bashful about the matter. "S-sorry, I forgot!" He said simply, and without another word, ran away to go fetch it, a few miles away.
Teakup was left alone, splayed out on a human's sleeping mat. For the foreseeable future, she was stuck in her flamingo alt-mode and she looked bitterly down at her fingerless, graspless wings.
She should've chosen her Earth-form more wisely - like some of her other siblings, she had treated being on Earth like a joke; the Earth-creature called "flamingo" had been chosen simply for its goofy looking appearance and her favorite color of pink.
Which was useless to her now.
'Who's the joke now?' she tiredly thought.
She couldn't even defend herself from humans anymore, laying down as broken as she was. Experimentally she flapped her wings, in hopes she could at least disappear into the clouds, if push came to shove.
Trwwaaacckkk!
Suddenly, a twig snapped.
And it was the loudest thing Teakup had ever heard, in the empty forest.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed over her, engulfing the entirety of Snapshot's small, human encampment.
And she was too bedridden to scream, herself too stunned from the fright and pain she was in.
She didn't even try to scream for help, too afraid to antagonize whatever was in front of her.
Treeeaaak, whirrrl, clack.
And suddenly, Teakup felt very stupid.
"O-oh. My. The. One." She mumbled. Then, she finally screamed. "You scared me outta my spark-chamber! You jack-aft!"
An off-white sparkling stared at her - his beady yellow eyes alight with mischief.
"I know, that's why I stopped. No need to have Starscream or Seaspray kill me later if you died from a spark-attack." He faked a shudder-of-terror throughout his frame, mocking her.
Teakup put on her best scowl, but he just started to laugh.
Microwave snickered, perched within the confines of his adult-body like a vulture - the body was jet black, very much like a shadow, a Decepticon-mech once known as Makeshift - who nobody really knew much about - all Microwave and the rest knew was that Starscream one day had lobbed the body at them, telling them to make use of it.
So they did.
Microwave had been the lucky sparkling who had won his new body in the little lottery they held, though Teakup herself had suspected that little contest had been rigged - most likely by Quasar, the little dictator-in-charge.
Microwave and Quasar hung out too often for comfort.
It had surprised Teakup, at first, to learn that Quasar and Microwave considered themselves "best friends."
Not Quasar and Seaspray, at was considered common knowledge at the time.
When questioned about the matter over a cup of energon in the rec-room, Seaspray had merely laughed, almost spraying energon across a freshly cleaned table.
"No, no!" Seaspray had choked. "We are friends, but not best friends, you know?"
Teakup shook her head, she didn't really understand.
Seaspray thankfully elaborated, when she plopped down another hot cup of energon.
"No." He shrugged his shoulders, taking a sip. "We are like Starscream and Megatron." He paused, smiling bizarrely. "Would you consider those two best friends?"
Finally everyone in the rec-room had understood.
Icescream had spilled ice everywhere, collapsing out of his blender alt-mode to guffaw atop a countertop. Deadend had been there, playing a game of "human chess" carefully atop a table with a beaver-sized Snapshot - Teakup recalled how careful and considerate Deadend had been to moved the game pieces with a pair of tweezers; years later, she still regretted not taking him up on the offer of "playing chess" as well.
...
...
...
And then there had been Blurr, in all his unholy glory staring at a television screen full of static - she swore she heard the creep giggle once or twice, for no discernable reason.
"Really?" Teakup laughed, almost dropping the cup she was scrubbing. "That's how you see your dynamic?"
Everyone was staring at Seaspray, wanting further explanation, even Blurr looked curious. Seaspray made a grabby motion at his now empty cup, pushing it towards Teakup for another, only for his servo to be slapped away.
"You've had enough for now, you drunk!" Despite her stern tone, Seaspray laughed. "Whatever you say, shortstack~!" And then everyone else laughed, Seaspray was clearly drunk out of his gou-ore-ed...
He tried to stand, only to fall flat on his face against the table. Deadend took charge then, cursing when he spied Snapshot daring to eat the "captured" wooden pieces as soon as he left the game table.
Seaspray was unceremoniously dropped against a dusty, unused cybertronian couch and he wasn't even laying there half a minute before he fell into recharge.
Teakup had an epiphany then.
Everyone saw Seaspray as an adult, even though his frame was clearly a mechling's.
'How did he manage that?' she thought.
Starscream, Deadend, and anyone else who grew into an adult-frame still treated them like babies.
But not Seaspray. Perhaps because he was the oldest?
He was their "big brother," always had been. The title was a big joke to everyone, used to scorn a mech who'd grown slightly bigger than the rest; despite everyone being close to the same age.
But perhaps Seaspray genuinely didn't see it that way. He took charge, when nobody else did.
Teakup remembered that moment vividly, only because Seaspray had shattered his countless, empty energon cups across the table – and she'd been the lucky bot assigned to pick it all up, shard by shard…
...
...
...
"Sea…Spray…?"
"What. The. Frag. Why are you dreaming of Seaspray, when I'm the one patching you up?" Microwave said it in jest, but Teakup scowled, confused out of her wits.
"W-what? How'd I fall asleep!?" She jumped up out of recharge, only to realize she wasn't on a berth, and instead was on a much too-soft human's nest.
"Hold still bolthead, I'm not done yet!"
"Microwave? Is that you? I thought you were Seaspray."
"Took you long enough. I've been not-him the whole time."
"What h-happened?" she squawked, still stuck in her flamingo alt-form.
"I drugged you. I'm surprised you didn't see the syringe coming." He held up an empty needle, before it flickered away into his subspace.
"Ugh!" Teakup squawked again, indignantly. "You aft!" She used her wings to batter Microwave away, but he only laughed, holding her one intact leg up, the kneecap pinched between Makeshift's claws.
"I can't do anymore until Snapshot arrives with your other leg." He tossed something at her using Makeshift's massive servo, and she ducked downwards in fear, thinking the mech was swiping at her. "Patch your own leg up." Makeshift's corpse-face came uncomfortably close to her own.
"And do me a favor, don't tell Snapshot you saw me. I still have a warrant out for his arrest!"
Microwave backpedaled goofily on Makeshift's frame, as if he was balancing on stilts, shouting one last time, "Don't you dare cross me!" He said, right before closing the mech's spark-chamber up and ceasing to speak entirely.
If Teakup remembered correctly, Makeshift the mech, never had any natural speech capabilities.
She watched the treeline, as "Makeshift" left and waited with her wings crossed, for Snapshot to arrive, utterly dumbfound.