Work Text:
Nine Megacycles, Thirty-One Cycles, and Four Nanokliks ago:
Sari had told them once that New York City, another human settlement even larger than Detroit, was also called the “City That Never Sleeps”.
Since her upgrades, Sari had been attending what she called “high school”. Even though they weren’t exactly sure why humans separated their education levels by altitude, she seemed to be having a good time (when she wasn’t complaining about the work that followed her from the school itself).
She had said that New York had been a staple of Earth’s popular culture for centuries, as a hub for new cultural developments, inventions, and even different art movements. The part about never recharging referred to how the city was constantly busy, with a nightlife of its own.
Optimus thought that title was better given to Detroit.
He’d lost track of the number of fires, crashes, disasters, body-snatchings, illegal races, attempted heists, and general threats that menaced the city at night.
While there weren’t so many people out tonight that he felt he needed his sirens, the thought still itched at his processor. Using them would certainly let him get where he was going faster.
No, replied the rational part of his processor, sirens meant attention. And that was, honestly, the last thing he wanted.
Sneaking out of the base hadn’t been difficult, it was Earth’s summer part of rotation and the doors had been left open to let them cycle the cool night air as his team recharged. Sari was safely with her father, Ratchet’s vents were rattling away, Prowl quietly meditating, Bumblebee and Bulkhead out cold after a long day of patrols.
Now the same cool air flooded over his plating as he wove through the tight maze of streets that tangled at the city’s edges, before straightening off to a long, flat stretch of road that pointed directly toward the horizon.
The night was clear, and Earth’s single moon was in full view. His optics were by no means tuned to the infrared spectrum, but the light was bright enough that he killed his headlights once he passed the last intersection.
Tall grass grew outside the city, protected plants native to Lake Erie’s highly specific watershed ecosystem. Insects chirped from somewhere within the mass, the occasional soft call of a nocturnal bird providing a hushed, rushing background to his tires against the pavement.
Fitting, considering how his spark was feeling.
Nine Megacycles, Six Cycles, and Forty-One Nanokliks Ago:
For a species that didn't use credits, the Yautja sure knew how to make an infrared scanner.
It was a piece and a half of work to wrench the thing away from its previous user, and another entirely to implement it into his own systems. But at the end of the solar cycle, Lockdown had emerged from that particular outing covered in glowing green blood and one infrared scanner richer.
He was crouched low to the soft, almost mushy organic ground, optics focused on the spots of yellow and orange that cropped up against the blue-black of the cold foliage.
What he was chasing was out there somewhere. It was just a matter of finding him.
The island they had chosen was a little out of the way, but in all honesty, Lockdown couldn’t think of another place he’d pick. It was secluded, the forest inside it was dense, and best of all, it was completely cloaked with a handy little holographic mod.
Lockdown smirked and straightened, flipping up the visor and taking in the scenery with his own optics. He had what he came looking for: a hot trail, snaking off into the depths of the forest, barely even noticeable for how light and quick the pedes that had made it were.
This was gonna be fun .
Nine Megacycles, One Cycle, and Two Nanokliks Ago:
Lake Erie was one of five enormous freshwater bodies on the continent, so it was really no wonder that it and its shores were so important to the organics that lived there. From what Optimus gathered, they facilitated trade, travel, and even recreation.
Recreation seemed to be the most favored, which was why places like this one existed.
The cove was shallow and secluded, boxed in by jutting cliffs of rock that extended just far enough into the water to maintain some privacy. The underbrush, cleared into two neat paths exactly the width of his tires by prior visits, hardly made a sound.
Optimus nearly winced thinking about the first time he had driven out here, looking over his shoulder every few cycles like Alpha Trion himself was going to materialize behind him.
Eventually, the trees thinned, and the dry, hard-packed soil gave way to loose, shifting sand and soft, short grass.
The sky seemed even brighter than before, and Optimus transformed out of vehicle mode, momentum carrying him a few steps towards the glimmering water, the reflection of the moon waving peacefully on its surface.
Casting his optics up, he found himself more taken with the spray of uncountable stars that slashed across the sky.
Eight Megacycles, Ninety-Seven Cycles, and Thirty Nanokliks Ago:
Lockdown had always preferred open planet to settlements, truth be told. There was just something about mossy topsoil or dried-out rock that you just couldn’t get on the smooth road of the city.
He paused just short of the trunk of a decently-sized tree, one of the warped ones that didn’t grow straight. Every planet had ‘em, even ones that weren’t organic. Try as you might, nothing’s ever gonna come out all exactly the same.
This particular tree twisted in and around itself, one big old tangle of organic matter at the base before branches finally made sense of themselves and grew skyward. Dark shadows stood out stark against the cold light of the moon.
Humming softly, Lockdown stooped and ran his good servo, the one that still had tactile receptors, down the length of the twisted trunk. If he knew his quarry, which he did, then there might be something worth having right—
There.
Neatly tucked into a spot where the tree split, was a thin, brassy-colored disc. Smiling now, Lockdown held it to the light and pressed shortly in the center.
The disc split apart with a clean shink, neatly expanding into three razor-sharp blades. Returning the throwing star to its original configuration, Lockdown smiled and switched the scanner on again. Trail was even hotter.
“Kid, you’re making this too easy,” he muttered under his ventilations, and continued on.
Eight Megacycles, Ninety-Six Cycles, and Twelve Nanokliks Ago:
Faintly, somewhere, the sound barrier broke.
Optimus’ finial twitched at it, the muffled clap that, a few stellar cycles ago, would have sent his spark spinning with anxiety.
Not to say it wasn’t spinning now , although for a completely different reason.
His finial twitched again as his audials picked up a faint rustling. The wind picked up, ever so slightly, sending the once-steady tide rippling minutely.
The trees that had been gently swaying were suddenly bent forward as a jet screamed by overhead, the forest whipping back and forth as the wind tunnel took hold of it.
The jet shot out across the lake before assuming a sharp climb, whirling and twisting as wings formed a double helix of moisture that caught the moonlight.
Optimus crossed from grass to sand, stopping at the water’s edge with a small smile, arms folded.
The jet rolled dizzyingly backward, completing one, two, three, four loops before dropping so low to the water’s surface that the streamlined undercarriage nearly touched it. Behind, the thrusters’ force pushed the lake surface aside and up in two impressive plumes of white water.
Engine roaring, the jet drew closer, closer, speeding towards Optimus with all the locked-on intention of a guided missile, before the telltale sound of a transformation sequence joined the sound of rushing water.
Optimus looked up, allowing himself a moment to appreciate the slick white highlights the moonlight cast on magenta armor, the soft purple glow of burning thrusters hovering above the water, the swell of pristine cockpit canopy glass.
He really had managed to end up with the most beautiful flyer in the whole armada, hadn’t he?
Eight Megacycles, Ninety-Two Cycles, and Sixty-Four Nanokliks Ago:
Lockdown was starting to get the feeling that something was up.
He found two more shurikens, each tucked safely away behind some bush of colorful plants or between the rocks by a tiny stream. And all the while, those pede-prints stayed hot, right in front of him.
Like he was supposed to see them.
Lockdown gave an ex-vent and followed the prints again, this time into a small clearing. Even without the Yautja mod, Earth’s single moon washed the whole thing over in blue, hanging silently in between the gap in the trees.
A twig snapped behind him, and even though his processor knew full well who that was more than likely to be, a couple thousand stellar cycles of bounty hunting were great for the reflexes.
Lockdown whipped around, frame tensed in a ready stance and his hook already transforming away for the chainsaw.
Predictably, no one was there.
Heh. Pit, he must really be getting old, if he was falling for something as simple as—
“I believe you have something of mine,” said a smooth, measured voice at his back.
Lockdown didn’t even bother to turn back around, or to hide his smile.
“Nice to see you, too, Prowl.”
Eight Megacycles, Ninety Cycles, and Seventy-Three Nanokliks Ago:
Greetings were a bit difficult when your dermas were pressed together, so they had to wait until after the fact.
“Hey, Star,” he said, and it was scarcely more than a whisper, his arms looped around his lover’s neck.
“Optimus,” the Seeker breathed, air ghosting out from his vents, a smile turning the corners of his intake.
The Prime in question smiled, shuttering his optics and leaning his forehelm against Starscream’s chevron.
“Every time I think I’ve seen everything, you pull something like that in the air and prove me wrong.”
As they both pulled away, Optimus caught a glimpse of fang in Starscream’s smile as his wings raised, plating fluffed slightly with pride.
“As if I would give you anything less.” He said, bending at the waist to set Optimus back on his pedes again, keeping their servos linked.
Eight Megacycles, Eighty-Three Cycles, and Six Nanokliks Ago:
“So you left those things there because…?” Lockdown trailed off, gesturing with his hook at the ninja-bot beside him.
He was crouched in the undergrowth of the forest, forearms resting on his thighs, in front of the same twisted tree where he had found Prowl’s first throwing star. Prowl himself had assumed a similar position, focusing intently on the clump of gnarled wood before them.
“I wanted you to take a moment away from your hunt.”
Lockdown scoffed.
“Kid, these things were part of my hunt. Let me know I was on the right trail.”
Prowl, as usual, didn’t respond and leapt directly from that conversation to the next.
“Look.”
With a roll of his optics that wasn’t possible to see, given that he’d replaced that particular feature with a nice pair of high-res mods a couple hundred stellar cycles ago, Lockdown looked, and didn’t see anything.
“Fascinating.” He said flatly.
“Look closer .”
Lockdown ex-vented, but increased his magnification. A line of tiny organic creatures marched steadily down the trunk.
“Wow. Camponotus Formicidae, ” he read off his HUD display. “Consider my processor blown.”
Prowl didn’t look like he was listening, instead, he had risen to stand over the dead tree, jutting his helm towards the shadowed hollows in the trunk.
“Organic life can be so small,” Prowl said, “yet still be so organized. The colony is methodically hollowing out this tree, making a new home for themselves.”
“Hm,” Lockdown said, moving to stand beside him and draping a lazy arm across Prowl’s shoulders, “I guess I could see why a bio-minded bot like you’d like ‘em.”
Prowl fixed him with a glare from behind that visor, but didn’t move away.
Eight Megacycles, Twenty-Seven Cycles, and Twenty-Two Nanokliks Ago:
“—and then, before Shockwave can say another word,” Starscream said, one set of claws gesturing in the air, “Lugnut barrels straight into him, and sends him flying into a wall!”
Optimus snorted midway into a sip from his cube, his sputtering dissolving into a full throated laugh as Starscream’s cackles filled the night air.
The high-grade wasn’t from any Autobot distillery. Starscream had proudly presented the cube to him as the closest recreation of Vosian energon the Seeker had ever tasted. It was light and sweet, and sitting on the sharp face of one of the jetties, tucked aside Starscream’s cockpit, the wind was just enough like a caress to make him forget that they had ventured out of the cove’s privacy.
“But anyway ,” Starscream said, leaning back on his elbows and letting his wings droop contentedly, “how’s your little team of heroes been doing?”
Optimus gave a large ex-vent that was probably more dramatic than it needed to be, and dropped his helm to rest on Starscream’s chassis.
“Same as ever,” he said, swirling the shimmering liquid in his cube, “Ratchet keeps pestering me into recharging earlier.”
Starscream sniffed disdainfully.
“That medic acts like he’s your carrier sometimes.”
Optimus shrugged, letting his optics roam appreciatively over the Seeker’s long, elegant legs.
“He might, but Ratchet’s one of the best mechs I know. He has all our best interests at spark.”
“ Right, ” Starscream drawled, smirking down at him, “like when he sent me that file on newspark care for my fully mature clones. ”
Optimus laughed again.
“Did you honestly just look me in the optics and call your clones ‘fully mature’?”
Starscream said nothing, choosing to take another sip from his cube and look the opposite direction.
“Thundercracker was beside himself when Ramjet met Marissa and Buster. If they’re ‘fully mature’, then I’m ready to give my Primacy to Bumblebee.”
“Point taken,” Starscream grumbled, shifting against Optimus, drawing him closer. “Slipstream says he’s my pride, and I take that particular incident to mean it dents easily.”
“How is she, Star?” Optimus asked softly, casting his optics up the Seeker’s frame.
“...Acclimating,” Starscream said. “She’s off exploring the planet, most solar cycles. The others stick to her like they’re magnetized at the hip. It’s… odd.”
He looked down, setting his empty cube in the grass.
“It wouldn’t take a RAM-damaged minicon to tell you this, but she’s so… different. More so than I ever would have anticipated. I don’t know what part of
this
—” he gestured at his processor, then the segment of cockpit glass that covered his spark chamber, “—she came from, but…”
“Star.”
Optimus said, taking one of Starscream’s servos in both of his as they sat up more fully together, staring straight into each other’s optics.
“If she’s anything like you, anything at all, she’ll find her calling and chase it to the edges of the universe. You’re the most focused, ambitious, driven mech I’ve ever met. You’ve never let anything stop you, and—”
As previously stated, talking was a bit difficult with another set of dermas against your own.
Seven Megacycles, Ninety-One Cycles, and Seventy-Four Nanokliks Ago:
So that was the idea with tonight’s outing: nature.
Prowl had led them through just about every mechanometer of this forest, stopping only when they saw the tracks of something much bigger than they were. When Lockdown asked, he got an response that raised more questions than it answered.
Following the ninja-bot, Lockdown had watched him live up to his designation as he moved through the forest like he was protoformed to be there. Prowl stood still in the little stream for so long that a lumpy little organic “frog” had actually come to sit on one of his pedes.
Lockdown didn’t exactly see the point in all of this (he had never been big on the “processor over matter” type stuff Yoketron tried to teach), but looking at Prowl was a nice enough thing that he couldn’t quite bring himself to complain.
Prowl cut a nice frame, for stating the obvious, but there was a little more to it than that, in Lockdown’s opinion. He was elegant, purposeful, looked like he never moved unless he knew exactly what he was doing. He was careful, quick, and stopped to look at organics other mechs would have stepped on without a second thought.
Weakly, Lockdown cursed his luck and his traitorous spark.
Things came to a head when the ninja-bot fully laid down in a clearing full of flowers, ones that Lockdown’s HUD told him were yellow, but looked a pale shade of purple in the moonlight.
“Lie with me.” Prowl said simply.
Just because Lockdown did exactly that did not mean that he was giving up this issue. In fact, this was just the perfect moment he’d been waiting for.
“You know,” he said, biting back a grunt as one of his older leg struts creaked, “you did promise me a hunt tonight, kid.”
“I did,” Prowl had loosely folded his servos over his midsection, and looked up at the stars, “and I gave you one.”
“Really.” Lockdown said dryly, eyeing the sky and not finding it nearly as captivating as Prowl made it out to be.
“Tonight, I hunted tranquility across this island, and you aided me on that hunt.”
Yep. Those were the words of someone who took all of Yoketron’s lessons straight to the spark.
But Lockdown smiled in spite of himself, and huffed out a laugh that was only a little derisive.
“Alright, I guess that can count as your hunt. But you still don’t have these anymore,” he said, opening and shuttering a shuriken in one quick motion.
“I know,” Prowl said, not turning, “but I do want something in return.”
“Return?” Lockdown echoed, a laugh still in his vocalizer, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with that old expression ‘finder’s keeper’s—’”
He was cut off when, very suddenly, Prowl’s entire frame made itself known, crouched on his chassis like some kind of demented pneuma-puma.
“Just this,” Prowl said softly in his audial, and as their derma brushed together, Lockdown thought, faintly, that he should have seen that one coming.
Seven Megacycles, Seventy-Four Cycles, and Twelve Nanokliks Ago:
Condensation fogged Starscream’s cockpit canopy, and Optimus was sure the case was the same with his windshield.
The gusts of air pushed out from Starscream’s lateral vents mingled with the wind, and the only thing stopping Optimus’ finials from twitching was the gentle caress of gray claws.
He opened his optics just enough to catch the deep, dusky gray flush that colored Starscream’s faceplates, the slivers of light from his optics, heady and overbright, derma that he had kissed again and again and again.
Optimus smiled, and moved forward for more.
Seven Megacycles, Sixty-Nine Cycles, and Forty Nanokliks Ago:
In the end, Prowl got his shurikens back, but only because the deal was too sweet for Lockdown to refuse.
“Tomorrow,” Lockdown said, stretching, “we go on a real hunt.”
Prowl arched an optic ridge at him.
Lockdown waved his good servo dismissively.
“Yeah, yeah, nothing about hurting the native species, blah, blah. You’re gonna have to lighten up sometime , kid.”
Seven Megacycles, Sixty-Four Cycles, and Twenty-Nine Nanokliks Ago:
“Not yet.”
“Star—”
“Not yet. ”
Arms tightened around him, and Optimus sighed into the Seeker’s neck.
“Your team can manage another megacycle without you, can’t they?”
“You’d be surprised.” Optimus said dryly.
Starscream’s wings fell and his grip loosened. Optimus pressed one more kiss, chaste and soft, to his neck (just aside of a particularly tender-looking bite mark), and then moved to look him in the optics.
Spark, Starscream was living proof that “puppy-dog eyes” weren’t an exclusively human concept.
“Tomorrow,” Optimus said, “and maybe you can give me some help with that armor. I never did quite get the hang of turning in the air.”
Seven Megacycles, Sixty-Three Cycles, and Fifty-One Nanokliks Ago:
“Then I’ll see you there. Nakadai National Park.”
Seven Megacycles, Sixty-Three Cycles, and Forty-Nine Nanokliks Ago:
“Nakadai Park has the space I’d want for instructing you. Tomorrow, then.”
Seven Megacycles, Sixty-Three Cycles, and Forty-Two Nanokliks Ago:
“Until then, mercenary.”
“‘Til then, kid. ”
Seven Megacycles, Sixty-Three Cycles, and Thirty-Eight Nanokliks Ago:
“Tomorrow.”
“If I’m not there, assume that something’s finally managed to kill me for good."
One Cycle and Eighteen Nanokliks Ago:
Just like last night-cycle. Nothing had changed.
Ratchet’s ex-vents while he recharged covered any accidental creaks or groans of the old metal in their base, and Bumblebee and Bulkhead had taken the night out with Sari. Prowl had said he intended to take a “meditation voyage” tonight, which probably meant he’d be sitting beneath his tree, optics shuttered and humming for the next few megacycles.
The coast had never been clearer, and Optimus made his way towards the central area, where the opened doors would provide a clean exit.
Twenty-Six Nanokliks Ago:
Stillness, then strike. Prowl’s adage applied to the base, too. A soundless exit was just a matter of determining the strong points in the riveted metal, and he had done this so often that his pedes practically had them memorized.
Ratchet was recharging (loudly), Bulkhead and Bumblebee were out with Sari, and Optimus had said he was going to recharge early, for once.
Prowl smiled to himself as he took the last few steps into the central area.
Right Now:
“...”
“...”
“...Prowl.”
“...Prime.”
“What—ah, what are you doing? I thought you were on a… meditation voyage.”
“I… could ask you the same question. You said you were recharging early tonight.”
“...”
“...”
Right Now:
“What the
Spark
are
you
doing here?!”