=Chapter-1=
"A Seeker dropped from the Sky"
The main entrance of the Decepticons' HQ appeared in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, sea water crowding around the big pillar. But it didn't matter; transformers' technology was advanced enough to deal with such powers of Earth's nature. The three Conehead seekers and the unknown transformer who they carried flew towards the main gate and took the lift.
When the lift's door opened, Soundwave was already waiting for them, along with the Constructicons. There wasn't any sign of Megatron or Starscream, or even any of the other high ranks. The three seekers walked out the lift, carrying the strange Cybertronian by its arms and facing upwards in order to prevent a bigger loss of energon.
Ramjet separated from his companions to let Soundwave view the unknown guy. His visor sparkled in an odd way, but nobody noticed. When he talked, his voice was tilted with curiosity as much as it was possible to be; this wasn't the first time they found a strange transformer on Earth, but...
"Where did you find him?" Soundwave inquired.
"He dropped from a hole in the sky and crashed onto Ramjet," informed Thrust. The Constructicons laughed at him.
"Yeah, sure! He dropped from the sky," laughed Longhaul. "Are you sure you weren't drunk and found him in a seedy energon bar on Cybertron?"
The rest of the gestalt group laughed with him, but the three seekers didn't find it funny…
'I knew it,' thought Dirge, 'I knew nobody would believe us!' But he was wrong: Soundwave was telepathic, and he could read their minds. The communications officer was quite sure that Thrust's explication was true. He could see that, and he found it… intriguing.
"Bar? What bar?" replied Thrust. "We haven't seen Cybertron since we came here!"
"I did not say all of you were in the bar now… he must have got lost when you came here," Longhaul said mockingly.
"Silence," Soundwave finally ordered. "Carry him to the repair bay-4. Constructicons, come with me." Then, the communications officer turned and began to walk towards the mentioned repair bay.
The Constructicons watched him, confused, till Scrapper gave an order.
"C'mon, guys! There is hard work ahead!" He began to follow Soundwave as his companions complained.
"So uncharismatic…" murmured LongHaul as he stepped after his companions.
Dirge, Ramjet and Thrust deposited the unknown and strange Seeker on a metal table in repair bay-4, being watched closely by the Constructicons and Soundwave himself. Then, they turned towards their superior.
"Did he drop from a hole in the sky?" Soundwave asked without any hesitation. The unexpected question made the three seekers nervous.
"Yes… he did," Ramjet answered. "There was a warp in the sky… we were watching it, and suddenly… he fell on me."
"Understood," Soundwave answered. There wasn't any sign of doubt or surprise on his face; it was as blank as usual. "Go, you're dismissed from here," he ordered.
"As you command, Soundwave," was Ramjet's answer. The three Coneheads walked out of the room under the muffled laughs of the Constructicons.
Soundwave always knew the Coneheads' story was true… at least, they thought it was true. He couldn't find any sign indicating that they were lying, even though their story was such an incredible one. It was the main reason he decided they should repair the strange blue seeker; he couldn't get any satisfactory answer from the unknown flyer if he was unconscious. He knew that they couldn't ignore a phenomenon like that. It might be important, even dangerous.
Then, he closely observed the foreign newcomer. The blue seeker was as tall as common seekers, and he had a cockpit, wings, a standard-seeker face, which made clear his class, except for those showy kibbles, such as the big launchers on his shoulders and the panels on his pedes. His armored body was heavily damaged, though: there were two big wounds in his cockpit-torso which dripped a mixture of oil and energon, Transformer's blood, their body's most appreciated possession. His left wing also was missing, and his general armor status was very deteriorated… but it didn't make him different. Who was he anyway? And where did he come from? He dropped from the sky, and people, usually, don't do that... so, what was he? All those points were the main reason of his curiosity, but there were several points about his strange origin that they'd find out when they began to repair the strange blue seeker.
He gave the order to the Constructicons.
"Repair him now." he said.
The Decepticons hadn't any proper medical officers among them, not like the Autobots had. They usually repaired themselves by helping each other. But when their wounds were more serious than usual, the Constructicons and Soundwave himself were the ones who repaired their companions. None of them were medical officers in the same sense Ratchet was, but the Constructicons liked working together on whatever kind of activity which could be related with "construction"… and that meant building cities, machines, people, etc. Even though they also liked to destroy those. Another matter was Soundwave himself: he only repaired his companions when he thought it might help the cause.
However, as they started to work, they also started to find out interesting things about the stranger as the first inspection of the strange seeker began to reveal more and more odd details about him. Neither Soundwave nor the Constructicons could remain apathetic to those facts.
It began when the Constructicons were inspecting the damaged body of the unknown one: they knew Seeker anatomy quite well, but this one was different, so they had to do a medical examination in order to repair him. Then, Scrapper made the first discovery:
"Look at this!" he exclaimed. "The shining thing inside his torso… is his spark!"
"What!?" asked Hook.
"See for yourself," he answered, pointing to the big wounds on the seeker's torso. "His spark has concentrated itself around the wound."
"It doesn't make any sense," Hook replied. "Why would his spark do such a thing like that? ...His spark should be integrated with his body through the lasercore."
It was true: Transformers had life because their mechanical bodies were equipped with a mind and a heart. But their personality components were also related with their bodies: that was what showed that a Seeker was, indeed, a Seeker… Or that a military hard driver was a Decepticon. They couldn't change their bodies so easily (1).
"I know, I know…But," Scrapper began, but was interrupted by Soundwave.
"It's possible that the nature of his wounds did that." he reasoned.
"Hmmmm," murmured Hook. He was skeptical about that.
"Anyway, we should stabilize it, otherwise we won't be able to repair him," Scrapper suggested.
Hook was surprised by a statement like that from Scrapper.
Since the lasercore seemed to be badly crushed, they began to concentrate the spark into a single point in order to extract it without creating any further damage: then Soundwave created a cube recipient smaller than the usual energon cubes, yet similar to the ones used for keeping personality components. Carefully, the Constructicons took the spark and suited it inside the cube. It shined weakly at first, but soon, it began to emit a stronger blue shine. Hook smirked, it was a good job and now, they could take care of that body freely, starting with the sliced lasercore.(2)
Meanwhile, Soundwave took care of the spark, hoping it wouldn't be badly damaged; now, the seeker's body was just a machine, and he couldn't obtain any thought from it, or from the spark-cube until the life components and the personality components were put together again. He didn't like the idea of keeping the unknown mech like this, but they needed to make a full repair of that body if he wanted to get any response.
…That was the reason for this repair procedure.
Later, as the seeker body was just an empty shell, the Constructicons divided themselves into different tasks; two of them focused on repairing the lasercore, others in checking the personality components, and the rest over the ruined amour. In fact, Mixmaster was concentrated in manipulating the right shoulder of the blue seeker; as he did so, the servo articulation became relaxed, and then the long sword made a loud "Clank!" when it crashed on the floor. It had fallen from the servo of its owner. Mixmaster knelt down to gather the sword from the metallic floor, dirtied by the mixture of oil and energon that dropped from the damaged body on the table. When he did, the weapon folded in on itself and became… a wing.
"Can you guys believe this?" he pointed. "His sword is the left wing!"
"This seeker's wing is a weapon?" exclaimed Longhaul as he raised his optics from the wounded lasercore. "What freaking thing is that? ...Those guys get loopy every time somebody catches them by their wings!"
"Perhaps this one is different…" suggested Mixmaster. "If you look carefully at this sword's grip, you'll see there are little connections which can hook onto its owner's servo… I think that Seeker could energize up his sword, too."
"It's an interesting point," observed Hook. "I've found he has cluster cannons in both sides of his torso as well."
"And what about the big launchers from his shoulders?" pointed Scavenger. "They seem to be able to point themselves ahead to shoot… and they seem to be even more powerful than Megatron's fusion cannon." Scavenger was awed at this realization.
The rest of the crew looked back at him disturbed.
"This option is not possible," interrupted Soundwave coldly.
"Perhaps," replied Scavenger, again, "but it is also not possible for a Decepticon to have blue optics!" he added pointed to the mentioned mechanism on his face. "At first, I didn't notice that because they were off-line... but when I started to test a spectacles mechanism that he has, I found that out."
That was true. Usually, the Decepticons had red optics, except some of them who had yellow optics, like Thrust's. Or violet ones like the Combaticons had. Blue optics were only for the Autobots and some neutrals, so it couldn't be that a seeker owned such optic color. It, along with the rest of the discoveries, made Soundwave nervous. Till now, there weren't any doubts that the unknown seeker was a former Decepticon; but he also was a heavily armored warrior. But what kind of Decepticon seeker would have blue optics? Definitively his unusual body shape was more than only for esthetics.
That was the question everybody was pondering at this point.
There were so many weird points about the unknown seeker. Soundwave found himself questioning if the efforts of repairing him had any kind of recompense; if the strange one certainly was a former Decepticon, he would be a powerful ally on Earth… but if that statement was wrong, then, they'd have a stubborn opponent. In fact, if he thought hard about it, that might be the reason for the origin of that seeker whose spark rested inside of a cube near him.
However, Soundwave was disposed to run the risk…
The Constructicons continued repairing the unidentified seeker. It wasn't so hard when they avoided the differences with common Seekers. Step by step, the empty body began to recover its old look; the two big wounds across the cockpit were closed, his metallic skin was polished, and as the dents and scars began to disappear, so it began to shine again in blue, purple and red. It also got back its two wings and the doubled mechanisms of the optics were available, again. Even though Scavenger didn't have a clue what the purpose was of such spectacles as those. He just repaired them.
At this point, Hook started to test the transformation mechanism of the Seeker. Apparently, his robot mode was fine enough, but the meticulous engineer wanted to be sure about all functions of that body. He suddenly stopped at the transformation cog.
"I cannot believe this!" he exclaimed, suddenly. The rest of his companions looked at him, their gazes showing a question.
"This transformation cog…" he began to explain, showing it to the confused optics of his crew "…has been altered twice!"
"Say what?" asked a very confused Bonecrusher
"I mean, this guy was reformatted into an earthling form like us… twice. His alternative mode isn't cybetronic at all!"
"So what?" replied Bonecrusher. "We were too."
"How many of us have been reformatted twice, Bonecrusher?" was Hook's rhetorical question. "We may have earthling alt. modes… but none of us, Constructicons or Decepticons at all, have been reformatted twice. Instead, this guy had both an original Cybetronic robot body and alt mode … but his body was fully reformatted, not only his alt mode."
"What do you mean?" Mixmaster asked at this point.
Hook sighed, sometimes to be the most of the Constructicons had inconveniences.
"This guy," he began to say patiently, "… had a Cybertronian alternative mode… and body. None of our mech modes have been reformed, only our alt modes were. But this seeker …I'm not so sure he even looked like a seeker in the past."
"That means he might not be a seeker, then," pointed out Scavenger.
"Yeah, it might be… Moreover, if you look carefully at the cog…" he explained showing it to his companions, "…you'll find it was reformatted at one time, and later repaired again."
"Repaired? It seems the t-cog got upgraded in some weird way," affirmed Scrapper as he examined it closely. "How could this t-cog have been reformatted like that?" was his rhetorical question.
"That's something I'd like to know…" Hook murmured.
"Let's test it," Mixmaster suggested, snatching the cog from Hook's right servo.
"No! Wait!" exclaimed the engineer.
But it was too late… The rest of the crew always thought Mixmaster was a bit nuts, but now, they were more certain of that. Mixmaster had placed the transformation cog inside the weird seeker's body, and activated it without any hesitation. Suddenly, the empty body folded and expanded over itself and it turned into a blue airplane with long wings, yellow cockpit and a heavy looking body that rested on the metallic table. The transformation wasn't soft, but harsh, and the characteristic sound of the transformation was screeching more than usual.
"…Well," began Mixmaster after quite a long silence, "It's a bit odd for an Earthling airplane alt mode, but… it works."
"Yeah, it works…" Hook snapped. "Would you mind asking before doing something like that next time!?"
"What's on!?" replied Mixmaster a bit loudly. "The cog may be weird but it works as usual… Why are you angry about it?"
Hook clutched his fist and glared at his companion. His perfectionism was a hard contrast with Mixmaster's crazy experiments.
"But we don't know if that t-cog...!" he began, but trailed off at Scrapper's speech.
"Stop that both of you right now, guys!" he ordered. "We still have a lot of work here… And Mixmaster, the next time, ask before doing something. We're repairing that seeker, not ruining it."
Mixmaster grunted.
"Still… he has a different alternative mode than the usual Seeker…" observed Longhaul, but he also trailed off when he noticed Soundwave was also glaring at them.
"Finish the stupid quarrels and repair him." The communications officer ordered with his usual monotone.
Meanwhile, the three Conehead seekers were taking a break. After several frustrating inspections over the assigned area, they were low on energy and a bit worried because their search hadn't shown any results. Megatron, as well as their "wingmate", Starscream, would bash them because of it, for sure; even if they had found the bizarre seeker. At least, that was Dirge's prediction. Ramjet saw it in a different way: perhaps the mission hadn't any results, but they have found another Decepticon… a really weird one. It would catch Megatron's and Screamer's attention, which would help to distract them from the failure of their mission. But he also was intrigued about the weird mech and wanted to know who the heck he was. Putting aside those facts, he also was angry because of his paintjob still dirtied with the mud he got in the last crash. Since they carried the unknown seeker all the way, he hadn't had the chance to clean himself up with sea water as he could have done.
As for Thrust…
"I'm going to get some energon," he announced with a certain relief. "My energy levels are getting lower every minute." He turned towards his two coneheaded wingmates. "Shall I get some for you?" he offered. Dirge looked inquisitively at the Conehead with the red paintjob and yellow optics, looking for any strange signal.
But before Thrust could have the chance to respond, the automatic door of the room where they were opened, revealing two new seekers who walked inside the room. They were as tall as the Coneheads, with red optics and white faces with angular features. One of them was blue and grey, but the other's paintjob had different shades of purple. Their cockpits were yellow and they both had a red stripe and Decepticon symbol on both wings. The Coneheads granted them in spite of their tired faces.
"Hi, guys!" Thrust saluted them. "How long ago did you arrive here?"
"Just a breem ago…" came the disinterested answer of Skywarp."Man! Finally, we were able to get back here!" he exclaimed, waving his arms.
The Coneheads looked each other.
"Why? What happened? Weren't you both with Screamer and our Leader?"
"Yes! That's it… That is exactly the point," the purple seeker answered, turning towards the Coneheads. "What do you think happened?" The Coneheads had a puzzled look. "Megatron, our Leader, took us with him and Starscream… we didn't find any suitable places for another Space Bridge, a Spaceship, whatever… So Screamer started trying to get on Megatron's nerves in his usual fashion." There was an understanding look in the Coneheads' gaze. "Slag! TC and I have had to listen to every verbal fight of theirs all day long! … And, now, I'm sooo tired…" he trailed off, throwing himself to the floor. "I'm so very tired…"
"I see…" Ramjet murmured after a silence. He wanted to tell the rest of their wingmates about the seeker stranger, but he couldn't find the right moment. He should've told them about it before…
"What about Screamer?" Thrust interrupted. "Wasn't he with you guys?"
"Yeah, the geek was," Thundercracker explained. Even his deep and strong voice sounded tired. "But he's with our Leader, now… They had to discuss new plans, after all." He shook his head.
Thundercracker didn't say anything new. He always had been the pensive type, or rather, he was the type who watched, listened, and kept his opinions to himself. Surely Skywarp could know what was going on inside Thundercracker's mind, they were close after all, but sometimes Dirge thought TC wasn't really sure about what everything meant. However, the blue seeker lifted his gaze again and addressed Ramjet.
"And what about you guys? Have you found any way of getting back to Cybertron soon?"
The sudden question caught Ramjet off guard.
"Eeerh, well… not really… We didn't find any good places, either."
"Slag!" exclaimed Skywarp again. "Can't we leave this mud ball world and get back home at once!?... What was the problem with your search, then?" he demanded from the floor.
"The problem is we found something… different," began Thrust. "So we got back to HQ sooner."
"Say what?" Skywarp inquired, "What is it?"
"We found another Seeker," the red Conehead informed them.
There was a silent pause.
"Thrust… Perhaps you are the single one who isn't aware of this… but the Laughing-boy here is me," informed Skywarp softly. "You're even more of a bigmouth than Screamer, don't you know that?"
"I'm telling the truth!" Thrust replied. "Ask Ramjet or Dirge!"
The two common seekers turned towards the other two Coneheads with an interrogative look on their faces.
"Yes, he's right…" Ramjet informed, "We found a new Seeker when we were flying over that region called Gran Chaco."
Thundercracker had a skeptical look in his gaze. "Another Seeker?" he asked. "Who is he?"
"We don't know, none of us have ever met him… in fact I've never even seen a Seeker like him… He has an odd design and appeared suddenly out of nowhere," Thrust concluded.
"Yeah, sure…" began Skywarp, talking from his sitting position on the floor. "And now you're going to tell us he dropped from the sky and crashed into Ramjet for a change, right?" he mocked.
"HEY!" Ramjet complained at Skywarp's comment.
"Do tell me; how did you manage to become so dirty, then?" replied the purple seeker in a mocking tone.
"Yes… that was exactly what happened," the blue Conehead confirmed, ignoring Ramjet's annoyance.
"You too, Dirge?" Skywarp inquired exasperatedly. "What's happening here, today? Does everybody think that they're so funny and want to make bad jokes?"
"I'm telling the truth, 'Warp," Dirge confirmed.
The serious tone of the blue Conehead was enough to catch the interest of the two common seekers. Usually, Dirge was too pesimistic dark to make jokes and funny comments. So, the three Coneheads began to tell their companions the whole story. They had skeptical looks on their faces, but they also knew it wasn't something to be taken lightly, but something serious. Finally, Dirge told the blue seeker something that he couldn't ignore.
"In fact, he looks like you a lot, Thundercracker…"
The latter frowned.
"Status Report," demanded Soundwave.
"We've almost finished the repairs," answered Scrapper, turning towards the Communications Officer. "The body is fully repaired of the damage it had and we're testing his weapons mechanism… However, the transformation mechanism's still worn-out, even though the T-cog fits well enough. And there is something that we cannot understand, too."
"What is it?"
"He… his body has something attached to his left arm." Soundwave looked inquisitively at him. "It looks like Dragstrip's alternative mode, but blue and smaller... a lot smaller."
The last part of Scrapper's speech caught Soundwave's interest, and the communications officer went to the table where the Constructicons were still repairing the unknown seeker; they parted to let him check the body as he got closer.
"Show it to me," he ordered.
Scavenger caught the left arm of the seeker and displayed it, as well as the attachment, to him.
Yes, it was there: it looked like a very little blue human race car and it was hardly inlaid in the left arm. At first there wasn't any way to remove it without causing any damage.
"…We don't know what it is, exactly," informed Hook, "but it seems to be combined with the arm structure. I'm not really sure if this thing is an original part of the seeker's body or a different entity, or just a drone, really."
Soundwave's big single optic darkened. This was the last thing he expected.
A big screen was opened in a wall of the room and suddenly a very familiar faces appeared there.
Everyone in the room turned towards the screen and were met with a grey silver mech of angry countenance, and next to him, the dark face of an unwelcome seeker. He didn't seem pleased, either. The fun was over right then.
"Where are you, Soundwave?" demanded the Leader of the Decepticons. "Why aren't you in the main control room?"
The mech to whom he referred walked towards the screen and answered the question.
"Repair Bay-4… There were important matters."
"Matters?" exclaimed Megatron. "What matters are so important now?"
"A new seeker was found. He was heavily damaged."
"A new Seeker!?" exclaimed the Air Commander from behind in his harsh voice. "How is it...? Who is he!?"
"The Seeker's repairs required full attention," Soundwave informed. "I've completed a full report."
Surprisingly, Starscream and Megatron exchanged confused looks, and then they turned towards the communications officer.
"Report right now, Soundwave!" Megatron ordered.
*Notes: Special Thanks to Dolphin, who has edited this chapter for me!
(1) If you think about this, you'll see that in the whole Transformers series, in the end this species is just some kind of energy life-form who lives inside mechanical armor. But this opinion is so radical, too, because there are differences between individuals because of their bodies' natures. You can see it in the seekers, or in certain characters. Think about Bumblebee: he thinks he's little, weak and a not very valuable guy… if he thinks that, why didn't he change his body then?
(2) In later Transformers series it is stated that the spark is kept in a body through the lasercore-spark chamber; therefore, if you want to kill a TF, you just need to destroy the lasercore or the personality components. However, in the G-1 cartoon universe, the spark isn't hosted in a special organ, but it's part of the body itself; that's why the Constructicons had to extract it using that procedure.
Re-edited by Cathleigh.