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(ZMFTS) Fanfic: "Out With the Old"
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Zobovor
Jan 8, 2017, 1:53:46 AM1/8/17
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During the first few years of the twenty-first century, the Autobots helped the citizens of Earth assemble a defense program that would largely enable them to protect their planet from the Decepticons on their own. The Autobots continued cordial relations with that world, and would maintain a token presence on Earth, but Cybertron was, first and foremost, their home. After half a lifetime, they were finally making preparations to return to their homeworld, which involved the relocation and reassignment of key personnel as well as a rather difficult transition for the Autobots who had grown accustomed to living on Earth. Autobots who had not been involved in the mission on Earth had been instrumental in the creation of Earth Defense Command, and had arguably earned the right to help manage the planet's affairs.
Managing the Autobots who had disappeared for four million years, on the other hand, was another matter.
"It's not that I'm complaining, you understand," Sunstreaker was saying, shrugging his shoulders. You could hear the old-style mechanical pulleys creaking slightly, if you were aware of such distinctions. It was a motorized, antiquated noise that you didn't hear too much these days.
"Of course not," Sky Lynx replied to the lone passenger inside his cabin, in exactly the same tone of voice that conveyed his utter lack of interest in the conversation. He had picked up Sunstreaker from the Mars outpost, which was just one more stop on the route to Cybertron anyway. Sky Lynx had been dispatched to transport a group of Autobots to Earth to complete work on the new city-base. Some Autobots might have complained about such a menial task, but not Sky Lynx. He was above petty complaints. Those were for lesser robots.
"It's just that... you know... you're a ship," Sunstreaker continued. He wasn't sure whether to look up (assuming Sky Lynx had optical scanners somewhere inside his space shuttle cabin) or whether to look at the flight controls (which also included display monitors) but in the end he settled for staring outside the windows, which he knew were also Sky Lynx's eyes when he transformed to robot mode. Or dino-bird mode. Whatever that bizarre thing was that he changed into. What was the point of transforming into something so utterly alien and grotesque?
"Yes," Sky Lynx agreed, drawing out the word pointedly as if to illustrate Sunstreaker's utter and complete lack of a point.
"But you can talk," Sunstreaker concluded. He supplied no further elaboration on the point, leaving Sky Lynx to wonder, if only for a split astro-second, if a valid point had indeed been made and he'd actually managed to somehow miss it.
"That I can," Sky Lynx replied proudly. He could have been sarcastic about it if he'd so chosen, but this little Autobot was an outdated contraption who was hardly worth arguing with, and Sky Lynx was above brow-beating an obvious inferior. Besides, the truth of the matter was that Sky Lynx *was* proud of being able to do things that other ships could not.
"It's just a little strange, is all," Sunstreaker continued, affecting a half-smirk and shrugging again. "Ships that think, ships that fly on their own... it's bizarre. What if I was piloting you but you didn't like the direction I wanted to go? What if we stopped on a planet somewhere to refuel and you decided to take off without us? What if we flew into an asteroid field and instead of—"
"If I may interrupt," Sky Lynx said in his clipped accent, "I can assure you that, while I am, naturally, capable of thinking for myself, I would never dream of jeopardizing an Autobot mission. As to your specific examples, you would quickly find that you would not be required to pilot me, as I am more than able to quickly and expediently plot the shortest and safest course to any destination in my astrographic circuits. We would have no need to stop somewhere before arriving at our destination, because I would ensure that we had more than adequate fuel for the journey. And I would certainly refrain from deliberately flying into an asteroid field—though finding myself in such a situation would hardly be a challenge for my computational and navigational abilities!"
"It's still pretty weird," said an unconvinced Sunstreaker, catching his chin in his palm as he slumped up against the controls. "I don't know if I could get used to it."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but your old ship—what was it called, the Archangel?"
"Just Ark," Sunstreaker managed to slip in.
"—had an intelligence controlling it as well," Sky Lynx continued. "Not as vast or impressive as my own, admittedly, but an intelligence nevertheless."
"A Teletraan unit is totally different," Sunstreaker said, annoyance creeping into his tone. "It's just a computer. You punch a bunch of buttons and it does what you tell it to do. It doesn't interrupt you to tell you how great it thinks it is!"
"Excuse me!" Sky Lynx said, his pride clearly bruised. "I can't help it if I was engineered to be inherently above many of my fellow Autobots, intellectually and physically. It is both a gift and a curse with which I must live every day of my existence. Surely you don't fault me for being self-aware enough to recognize my own innate superiority!"
Sunstreaker refused to dignify Sky Lynx's comments with a response. He crossed his arms and pouted for a long while, the trip to Cybertron now uncomfortably silent, save the intermittent beeping of Sky Lynx's instruments.
Then, the beeping got louder.
"I'm detecting two Decepticons on an intercept course," Sky Lynx announced, not sounding at all worried. "Octane and Blast Off, if my high-resolution optic scanners are not deceiving me. They were hiding behind that orphaned moon. I will change direction to engage them immediately."
"No, our orders are to get to Cybertron to transfer the rest of the work crew to Earth! Autobot City isn't finished yet and our guys are vulnerable! Evade them! You can fly faster than a Combaticon bucket of bolts, can't you?"
"Your feeble efforts to bait me into a course of action will not succeed," Sky Lynx warned his Autobot passenger. "I am a ranking lieutenant commander and I simply do not answer to cannon fodder. I suggest that you proceed to the forward section of the cabin and strap yourself in tightly. Preparing to reconfigure into combat mode in ten, nine, eight, seven..."
It took Sunstreaker until Sky Lynx got all the way to "four" before he finally scrambled to the front of the cabin, just in time to watch the floor behind him split in half. Stars and the blackness of space were visible below. At first he thought that the shuttle had been blasted open, but there had been no explosion, and the rupture in the hull was far too clean. A moment later, bulkheads closed around the opening and the shuttle cabin became infinitesimally smaller. On some level, Sunstreaker realized he was riding inside Sky Lynx's now-transformed head.
"How a misguided rabble rouser like you could possibly expect catch me unawares is quite beyond me, indeed!" Sky Lynx was saying to Blast Off, engaging the Combaticon space shuttle with the laser gun embedded within his mouth. Sunstreaker found himself wondering how Sky Lynx was able to articulate himself so clearly while firing proton bursts from his throat, but he didn't ponder the question for very long. Peering through the cockpit windows, Sunstreaker realized that he'd lost track of Octane. At about the same time, the Triple Changer hit Sky Lynx with a volley of shots, scoring a hit in a vulnerable area (the emergency battery pack, as it turned out) that caused Sky Lynx to plummet, caught in the gravity well of the orphaned moon.
"Is that moon getting bigger," Sunstreaker quipped, "or are we about to hit the surface?"
"There is absolutely no cause for alarm," Sky Lynx assured his passenger. "As you no doubt are aware, assuming you've been listening, I have been blessed with state-of-the-art space-faring technology. Though it may appear that we are plummeting uncontrollably, it is merely a ruse, designed to throw those addle-brained Decepticons off our scent, as it were. Recovery is a simple matter of engaging my emergency retro-thrusters and breaking free from the moon's gravity well."
Sunstreaker hear the retro-thrusters misfire several times before sputtering out completely. Their slow descent had turned into a nose dive.
"Okay, that's it," Sunstreaker said, attempting to disengage Sky Lynx's flight controls with a manual override. "I'm not about to texture-coat the craters on that moon just because you're too delusional to see that we're about to crash!"
"Excuse me!" Sky Lynx said indignantly. At the same time, the illuminated flight controls went dead. "I'll thank you to remove your hands from my instruments! While it appears that my retro rockets appear to be suffering from an extremely minor and assuredly temporary malfunction, my poly-alloy armor plating is designed to withstand the most rigorous of punishment. I assure you, even a crash-landing at maximum speed would hardly put a scratch in my magnificent exterior!"
"I'm more worried about *my* exterior!" Sunstreaker exclaimed. As if on cue, Sunstreaker was thrown from side to side as gravity and inertia took Sky Lynx for a considerably bumpy ride. Sunstreaker was thrown into control panels and bulkheads and more control panels. He winced and cried out each time he hit something, not because he was in pain but because he knew that each and every impact represented six hours' or more of sanding and buffing and priming and painting. Every. Single. One.
Sky Lynx had managed to pull out of the nose dive at the last possible moment and slid into the ground at approximately the correct orientation of a normal flight. Then he teetered a little. Then he flipped completely over. He did all of this while burrowing into the soil at a velocity Sunstreaker could never hope to achieve under his own power. It took many excruciating seconds before he finally came to a stop.
Sky Lynx's feline module, which found itself for the first time ever on the top of the combined form, detached itself and transformed into lynx mode. Having shifted his consciousness into this framework (for the dino-bird module was too embedded into the soil to immediately effect a transformation), the lynx module grabbed at the upside-down space shuttle with his teeth, clawing and gnashing with futility.
He wasn't necessarily trying to save Sunstreaker; he was primarily focused on extricating the other half of his body. He disliked operating in one form or the other; it was the combined form, the uncategorizable quadropedal dinosaur-like thing, that Sky Lynx had always felt exhibited his true majesty. A lynx was, after all, just a lynx, and in some ways even a dino-bird (he didn't like the term archaeopteryx) wasn't that special, but the combined mode was truly unique. It was so unique that nobody really knew what to call it. Grimlock was a Tyrannosaurus rex and Ramhorn was a rhinoceros, but Sky Lynx was, simply put, Sky Lynx.
Finally, not of his own volition, the mouth of the dino-bird module was forced open from the inside. Something that might once had been Sunstreaker came tumbling out. The distinction here is that the former, dearly departed Sunstreaker had been a brilliant shade of shiny, glistening yellow, while this sad, poor imitation was riddled with dents and pock marks and some alarmingly, disturbingly visible bare silver metal. It was a sad and sorry and sickening sight, to be sure.
"You call that a landing?!" Sunstreaker balked. "I thought I was going to be knocked out for another four million years!"
"I'm disappointed about that, too," Sky Lynx remarked quietly, and the lack of a response from Sunstreaker indicated that he either didn't hear the comment or hadn't successfully processed that it was intended as a dig.
"Now what are we going to do? What is this moon even called, anyway?" Sunstreaker asked. "How are we gonna contact the other Autobots? Who's going to rescue us?" He probably asked several more questions after this, but Sky Lynx had stopped listening.
"What are you doing?" Sunstreaker asked finally, after it became clear that Sky Lynx (or, perhaps, just Lynx) was doing something. Specifically, he had been pacing around in circles until he seemed to find a preferred directional stance, and cranked his head to and fro for a moment before appearing to have found an ideal position in which to hold it.
"While I am loathe to explain my actions to such a patently inferior mechanism, it nevertheless requires only a tiny fraction of my attention, and it is for this reason alone I shall indulge you. Though the bulk of my primary communications equipment is aboard my regrettably incapacitiated dino-bird module, even my auxiliary equipment is considerably impressive. If I attenuate myself just so, it provides maximum transmission capability..."
"There's no such thing as a dino-bird," Sunstreaker remarked.
"Under normal circumstances, I would not require any sort of assistance to achieve my goal," Sky Lynx continued, "but perhaps you can make your presence a useful one instead of merely irritating. If you were to position yourself atop my sensory apparatus, the metal in your body could serve as a receiver antenna to amplify my distress signal."
"I don't even know what you just said," said Sunstreaker.
"Sit on my head," Sky Lynx said in very slow, exaggerated syllables.
Sunstreaker made a show of climbing up onto the lynx module's back and then positioning himself atop the lynx's cranial module. They sat there for several minutes, Sky Lynx listening intently for Autobot transmissions and Sunstreaker occasionally extending an arm or a leg out into the air when he thought he heard a shift in the static frequency.
The quiet was unnerving to both of them (particularly Sky Lynx, who was in love with the sound of his own voice) and eventually they felt compelled to fill the silence with something. Anything. Even if they were out of insults and jabs and had to fill the emptiness with an entirely different flavor of conversation.
"This is probably my last mission," Sunstreaker said quietly.
"Oh, I'm certain there are plenty of important jobs on Cybertron for you," Sky Lynx replied, sounding as if he didn't really believe it. "You were a vital part of Optimus Prime's team. He hand-picked you for the Ark's bridge crew, after all."
"That was a few million years ago," Sunstreaker sighed. "Cybertron's different now. We were knocked offline for so long that everyone pretty much forgot we existed. Sure, they'll make the expected effort to help us fit in somewhere, but... we're all superfluous. Whatever vacuum was created by our departure has been long since filled. We're obsolete... all of us."
"I'm afraid I have to contradict you on that point. I don't think you realize how everyone looks at your crew," Sky Lynx said. "You chaps are legends in your own time. I was off-planet when the Ark launched, but news of your mission quickly spread to every corner of the galaxy. For millions of years, we all thought you had sacrificed yourselves. All of your names quickly passed into legend. There are hundreds of Autobots out there that nobody remembers, but everybody remembers the names of the Ark crew."
"Really?" Sunstreaker said.
Sky Lynx just nodded, or at least as best as he was able to with Sunstreaker still sitting on his head module.
"You know, it's funny," Sunstreaker said after a moment of introspection. "I never even wanted to be on board the Ark in the first place. Optimus Prime hand-picked me and Sideswipe, but I wouldn't have agreed to go if Sideswipe hadn't. He was always the more adventurous one, not me. I would have been perfectly content to stay on Cybertron. After all, I figured it would be a quick energy-scouting mission. I never figured we'd take the war to an entirely different planet and fight the most decisive battles of our careers. I'll tell you one thing, though. He may transform into the same car as me, but I think Sideswipe has always been jealous of my exposed engine. It's completely unique. No other Autobot has one like I do. Well, I guess Hound does, but he's not a race car. Well, and Mirage, I suppose, but..."
"That's very interesting," said Sky Lynx. "I just have one question."
"Hmm?" was Sunstreaker's response.
"Who is Sideswipe?"
***
Broadside was eventually dispatched to recover Sky Lynx and his crew of one. While Sunstreaker had ridden inside Broadside's spacefaring aerial mode, Sky Lynx was simply too large to fit, so had suffered the ignominity of being towed through space until they reached a docking bay on Cybertron.
Neither Sky Lynx nor Sunstreaker had been damaged to the point where it was potentially fatal. Nonetheless, their mission had been given to other Autobots so that they could both go to the repair bay.
"Not that my performance would suffer in any way imaginable due to the negligible damages I incurred," Sky Lynx was saying. "Nonetheless, it provides the lesser Autobots with a stronger sense of morale to see me operating in tip-top operational condition. I have, regrettably, been saddled with this duty. They admire me and are inspired by me—"
"Hey, Sky Lynx," Sunstreaker said. "Do you ever think about dropping the act? Losing all the posturing and pretenses? You know, just being yourself?"
"Do you?" Sky Lynx asked him.
Sunstreaker thought about it for a moment.
"Look at these scratches," Sunstreaker said. "They go all the way down to the bare alloys. They'll have to strip off all the paint, then lay down a new primer coat, then buff it down, then paint it again, then there's the top coat and polish..."
"That's what I thought," said Sky Lynx before he transformed and flew off into space.
***
Zob (only been working on this one for about two years)
Managing the Autobots who had disappeared for four million years, on the other hand, was another matter.
"It's not that I'm complaining, you understand," Sunstreaker was saying, shrugging his shoulders. You could hear the old-style mechanical pulleys creaking slightly, if you were aware of such distinctions. It was a motorized, antiquated noise that you didn't hear too much these days.
"Of course not," Sky Lynx replied to the lone passenger inside his cabin, in exactly the same tone of voice that conveyed his utter lack of interest in the conversation. He had picked up Sunstreaker from the Mars outpost, which was just one more stop on the route to Cybertron anyway. Sky Lynx had been dispatched to transport a group of Autobots to Earth to complete work on the new city-base. Some Autobots might have complained about such a menial task, but not Sky Lynx. He was above petty complaints. Those were for lesser robots.
"It's just that... you know... you're a ship," Sunstreaker continued. He wasn't sure whether to look up (assuming Sky Lynx had optical scanners somewhere inside his space shuttle cabin) or whether to look at the flight controls (which also included display monitors) but in the end he settled for staring outside the windows, which he knew were also Sky Lynx's eyes when he transformed to robot mode. Or dino-bird mode. Whatever that bizarre thing was that he changed into. What was the point of transforming into something so utterly alien and grotesque?
"Yes," Sky Lynx agreed, drawing out the word pointedly as if to illustrate Sunstreaker's utter and complete lack of a point.
"But you can talk," Sunstreaker concluded. He supplied no further elaboration on the point, leaving Sky Lynx to wonder, if only for a split astro-second, if a valid point had indeed been made and he'd actually managed to somehow miss it.
"That I can," Sky Lynx replied proudly. He could have been sarcastic about it if he'd so chosen, but this little Autobot was an outdated contraption who was hardly worth arguing with, and Sky Lynx was above brow-beating an obvious inferior. Besides, the truth of the matter was that Sky Lynx *was* proud of being able to do things that other ships could not.
"It's just a little strange, is all," Sunstreaker continued, affecting a half-smirk and shrugging again. "Ships that think, ships that fly on their own... it's bizarre. What if I was piloting you but you didn't like the direction I wanted to go? What if we stopped on a planet somewhere to refuel and you decided to take off without us? What if we flew into an asteroid field and instead of—"
"If I may interrupt," Sky Lynx said in his clipped accent, "I can assure you that, while I am, naturally, capable of thinking for myself, I would never dream of jeopardizing an Autobot mission. As to your specific examples, you would quickly find that you would not be required to pilot me, as I am more than able to quickly and expediently plot the shortest and safest course to any destination in my astrographic circuits. We would have no need to stop somewhere before arriving at our destination, because I would ensure that we had more than adequate fuel for the journey. And I would certainly refrain from deliberately flying into an asteroid field—though finding myself in such a situation would hardly be a challenge for my computational and navigational abilities!"
"It's still pretty weird," said an unconvinced Sunstreaker, catching his chin in his palm as he slumped up against the controls. "I don't know if I could get used to it."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but your old ship—what was it called, the Archangel?"
"Just Ark," Sunstreaker managed to slip in.
"—had an intelligence controlling it as well," Sky Lynx continued. "Not as vast or impressive as my own, admittedly, but an intelligence nevertheless."
"A Teletraan unit is totally different," Sunstreaker said, annoyance creeping into his tone. "It's just a computer. You punch a bunch of buttons and it does what you tell it to do. It doesn't interrupt you to tell you how great it thinks it is!"
"Excuse me!" Sky Lynx said, his pride clearly bruised. "I can't help it if I was engineered to be inherently above many of my fellow Autobots, intellectually and physically. It is both a gift and a curse with which I must live every day of my existence. Surely you don't fault me for being self-aware enough to recognize my own innate superiority!"
Sunstreaker refused to dignify Sky Lynx's comments with a response. He crossed his arms and pouted for a long while, the trip to Cybertron now uncomfortably silent, save the intermittent beeping of Sky Lynx's instruments.
Then, the beeping got louder.
"I'm detecting two Decepticons on an intercept course," Sky Lynx announced, not sounding at all worried. "Octane and Blast Off, if my high-resolution optic scanners are not deceiving me. They were hiding behind that orphaned moon. I will change direction to engage them immediately."
"No, our orders are to get to Cybertron to transfer the rest of the work crew to Earth! Autobot City isn't finished yet and our guys are vulnerable! Evade them! You can fly faster than a Combaticon bucket of bolts, can't you?"
"Your feeble efforts to bait me into a course of action will not succeed," Sky Lynx warned his Autobot passenger. "I am a ranking lieutenant commander and I simply do not answer to cannon fodder. I suggest that you proceed to the forward section of the cabin and strap yourself in tightly. Preparing to reconfigure into combat mode in ten, nine, eight, seven..."
It took Sunstreaker until Sky Lynx got all the way to "four" before he finally scrambled to the front of the cabin, just in time to watch the floor behind him split in half. Stars and the blackness of space were visible below. At first he thought that the shuttle had been blasted open, but there had been no explosion, and the rupture in the hull was far too clean. A moment later, bulkheads closed around the opening and the shuttle cabin became infinitesimally smaller. On some level, Sunstreaker realized he was riding inside Sky Lynx's now-transformed head.
"How a misguided rabble rouser like you could possibly expect catch me unawares is quite beyond me, indeed!" Sky Lynx was saying to Blast Off, engaging the Combaticon space shuttle with the laser gun embedded within his mouth. Sunstreaker found himself wondering how Sky Lynx was able to articulate himself so clearly while firing proton bursts from his throat, but he didn't ponder the question for very long. Peering through the cockpit windows, Sunstreaker realized that he'd lost track of Octane. At about the same time, the Triple Changer hit Sky Lynx with a volley of shots, scoring a hit in a vulnerable area (the emergency battery pack, as it turned out) that caused Sky Lynx to plummet, caught in the gravity well of the orphaned moon.
"Is that moon getting bigger," Sunstreaker quipped, "or are we about to hit the surface?"
"There is absolutely no cause for alarm," Sky Lynx assured his passenger. "As you no doubt are aware, assuming you've been listening, I have been blessed with state-of-the-art space-faring technology. Though it may appear that we are plummeting uncontrollably, it is merely a ruse, designed to throw those addle-brained Decepticons off our scent, as it were. Recovery is a simple matter of engaging my emergency retro-thrusters and breaking free from the moon's gravity well."
Sunstreaker hear the retro-thrusters misfire several times before sputtering out completely. Their slow descent had turned into a nose dive.
"Okay, that's it," Sunstreaker said, attempting to disengage Sky Lynx's flight controls with a manual override. "I'm not about to texture-coat the craters on that moon just because you're too delusional to see that we're about to crash!"
"Excuse me!" Sky Lynx said indignantly. At the same time, the illuminated flight controls went dead. "I'll thank you to remove your hands from my instruments! While it appears that my retro rockets appear to be suffering from an extremely minor and assuredly temporary malfunction, my poly-alloy armor plating is designed to withstand the most rigorous of punishment. I assure you, even a crash-landing at maximum speed would hardly put a scratch in my magnificent exterior!"
"I'm more worried about *my* exterior!" Sunstreaker exclaimed. As if on cue, Sunstreaker was thrown from side to side as gravity and inertia took Sky Lynx for a considerably bumpy ride. Sunstreaker was thrown into control panels and bulkheads and more control panels. He winced and cried out each time he hit something, not because he was in pain but because he knew that each and every impact represented six hours' or more of sanding and buffing and priming and painting. Every. Single. One.
Sky Lynx had managed to pull out of the nose dive at the last possible moment and slid into the ground at approximately the correct orientation of a normal flight. Then he teetered a little. Then he flipped completely over. He did all of this while burrowing into the soil at a velocity Sunstreaker could never hope to achieve under his own power. It took many excruciating seconds before he finally came to a stop.
Sky Lynx's feline module, which found itself for the first time ever on the top of the combined form, detached itself and transformed into lynx mode. Having shifted his consciousness into this framework (for the dino-bird module was too embedded into the soil to immediately effect a transformation), the lynx module grabbed at the upside-down space shuttle with his teeth, clawing and gnashing with futility.
He wasn't necessarily trying to save Sunstreaker; he was primarily focused on extricating the other half of his body. He disliked operating in one form or the other; it was the combined form, the uncategorizable quadropedal dinosaur-like thing, that Sky Lynx had always felt exhibited his true majesty. A lynx was, after all, just a lynx, and in some ways even a dino-bird (he didn't like the term archaeopteryx) wasn't that special, but the combined mode was truly unique. It was so unique that nobody really knew what to call it. Grimlock was a Tyrannosaurus rex and Ramhorn was a rhinoceros, but Sky Lynx was, simply put, Sky Lynx.
Finally, not of his own volition, the mouth of the dino-bird module was forced open from the inside. Something that might once had been Sunstreaker came tumbling out. The distinction here is that the former, dearly departed Sunstreaker had been a brilliant shade of shiny, glistening yellow, while this sad, poor imitation was riddled with dents and pock marks and some alarmingly, disturbingly visible bare silver metal. It was a sad and sorry and sickening sight, to be sure.
"You call that a landing?!" Sunstreaker balked. "I thought I was going to be knocked out for another four million years!"
"I'm disappointed about that, too," Sky Lynx remarked quietly, and the lack of a response from Sunstreaker indicated that he either didn't hear the comment or hadn't successfully processed that it was intended as a dig.
"Now what are we going to do? What is this moon even called, anyway?" Sunstreaker asked. "How are we gonna contact the other Autobots? Who's going to rescue us?" He probably asked several more questions after this, but Sky Lynx had stopped listening.
"What are you doing?" Sunstreaker asked finally, after it became clear that Sky Lynx (or, perhaps, just Lynx) was doing something. Specifically, he had been pacing around in circles until he seemed to find a preferred directional stance, and cranked his head to and fro for a moment before appearing to have found an ideal position in which to hold it.
"While I am loathe to explain my actions to such a patently inferior mechanism, it nevertheless requires only a tiny fraction of my attention, and it is for this reason alone I shall indulge you. Though the bulk of my primary communications equipment is aboard my regrettably incapacitiated dino-bird module, even my auxiliary equipment is considerably impressive. If I attenuate myself just so, it provides maximum transmission capability..."
"There's no such thing as a dino-bird," Sunstreaker remarked.
"Under normal circumstances, I would not require any sort of assistance to achieve my goal," Sky Lynx continued, "but perhaps you can make your presence a useful one instead of merely irritating. If you were to position yourself atop my sensory apparatus, the metal in your body could serve as a receiver antenna to amplify my distress signal."
"I don't even know what you just said," said Sunstreaker.
"Sit on my head," Sky Lynx said in very slow, exaggerated syllables.
Sunstreaker made a show of climbing up onto the lynx module's back and then positioning himself atop the lynx's cranial module. They sat there for several minutes, Sky Lynx listening intently for Autobot transmissions and Sunstreaker occasionally extending an arm or a leg out into the air when he thought he heard a shift in the static frequency.
The quiet was unnerving to both of them (particularly Sky Lynx, who was in love with the sound of his own voice) and eventually they felt compelled to fill the silence with something. Anything. Even if they were out of insults and jabs and had to fill the emptiness with an entirely different flavor of conversation.
"This is probably my last mission," Sunstreaker said quietly.
"Oh, I'm certain there are plenty of important jobs on Cybertron for you," Sky Lynx replied, sounding as if he didn't really believe it. "You were a vital part of Optimus Prime's team. He hand-picked you for the Ark's bridge crew, after all."
"That was a few million years ago," Sunstreaker sighed. "Cybertron's different now. We were knocked offline for so long that everyone pretty much forgot we existed. Sure, they'll make the expected effort to help us fit in somewhere, but... we're all superfluous. Whatever vacuum was created by our departure has been long since filled. We're obsolete... all of us."
"I'm afraid I have to contradict you on that point. I don't think you realize how everyone looks at your crew," Sky Lynx said. "You chaps are legends in your own time. I was off-planet when the Ark launched, but news of your mission quickly spread to every corner of the galaxy. For millions of years, we all thought you had sacrificed yourselves. All of your names quickly passed into legend. There are hundreds of Autobots out there that nobody remembers, but everybody remembers the names of the Ark crew."
"Really?" Sunstreaker said.
Sky Lynx just nodded, or at least as best as he was able to with Sunstreaker still sitting on his head module.
"You know, it's funny," Sunstreaker said after a moment of introspection. "I never even wanted to be on board the Ark in the first place. Optimus Prime hand-picked me and Sideswipe, but I wouldn't have agreed to go if Sideswipe hadn't. He was always the more adventurous one, not me. I would have been perfectly content to stay on Cybertron. After all, I figured it would be a quick energy-scouting mission. I never figured we'd take the war to an entirely different planet and fight the most decisive battles of our careers. I'll tell you one thing, though. He may transform into the same car as me, but I think Sideswipe has always been jealous of my exposed engine. It's completely unique. No other Autobot has one like I do. Well, I guess Hound does, but he's not a race car. Well, and Mirage, I suppose, but..."
"That's very interesting," said Sky Lynx. "I just have one question."
"Hmm?" was Sunstreaker's response.
"Who is Sideswipe?"
***
Broadside was eventually dispatched to recover Sky Lynx and his crew of one. While Sunstreaker had ridden inside Broadside's spacefaring aerial mode, Sky Lynx was simply too large to fit, so had suffered the ignominity of being towed through space until they reached a docking bay on Cybertron.
Neither Sky Lynx nor Sunstreaker had been damaged to the point where it was potentially fatal. Nonetheless, their mission had been given to other Autobots so that they could both go to the repair bay.
"Not that my performance would suffer in any way imaginable due to the negligible damages I incurred," Sky Lynx was saying. "Nonetheless, it provides the lesser Autobots with a stronger sense of morale to see me operating in tip-top operational condition. I have, regrettably, been saddled with this duty. They admire me and are inspired by me—"
"Hey, Sky Lynx," Sunstreaker said. "Do you ever think about dropping the act? Losing all the posturing and pretenses? You know, just being yourself?"
"Do you?" Sky Lynx asked him.
Sunstreaker thought about it for a moment.
"Look at these scratches," Sunstreaker said. "They go all the way down to the bare alloys. They'll have to strip off all the paint, then lay down a new primer coat, then buff it down, then paint it again, then there's the top coat and polish..."
"That's what I thought," said Sky Lynx before he transformed and flew off into space.
***
Zob (only been working on this one for about two years)
David Connell
Jan 13, 2017, 1:26:23 PM1/13/17
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Though of course, in Sky Lynx's case it's completely justified ...
At some point I need to write my my idea for a profile for Sky Reign, from the point of Sky Lynx.
Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats
Jan 14, 2017, 3:45:42 AM1/14/17
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On Saturday, January 7, 2017 at 10:53:46 PM UTC-8, Zobovor wrote:
> During the first few years of the twenty-first century, the Autobots helped the citizens of Earth assemble a defense program that would largely enable them to protect their planet from the Decepticons on their own. The Autobots continued cordial relations with that world, and would maintain a token presence on Earth, but Cybertron was, first and foremost, their home. After half a lifetime, they were finally making preparations to return to their homeworld, which involved the relocation and reassignment of key personnel as well as a rather difficult transition for the Autobots who had grown accustomed to living on Earth. Autobots who had not been involved in the mission on Earth had been instrumental in the creation of Earth Defense Command, and had arguably earned the right to help manage the planet's affairs.
That first paragraph is just awkward. It's a little ball of almost impenetrable exposition. I'm not sure why you need an omniscient narrator when you have Sky Lynx.
> During the first few years of the twenty-first century, the Autobots helped the citizens of Earth assemble a defense program that would largely enable them to protect their planet from the Decepticons on their own. The Autobots continued cordial relations with that world, and would maintain a token presence on Earth, but Cybertron was, first and foremost, their home. After half a lifetime, they were finally making preparations to return to their homeworld, which involved the relocation and reassignment of key personnel as well as a rather difficult transition for the Autobots who had grown accustomed to living on Earth. Autobots who had not been involved in the mission on Earth had been instrumental in the creation of Earth Defense Command, and had arguably earned the right to help manage the planet's affairs.
> "Of course not," Sky Lynx replied to the lone passenger inside his cabin, in exactly the same tone of voice that conveyed his utter lack of interest in the conversation. He had picked up Sunstreaker from the Mars outpost, which was just one more stop on the route to Cybertron anyway. Sky Lynx had been dispatched to transport a group of Autobots to Earth to complete work on the new city-base. Some Autobots might have complained about such a menial task, but not Sky Lynx. He was above petty complaints. Those were for lesser robots.
> "It's just that... you know... you're a ship," Sunstreaker continued. He wasn't sure whether to look up (assuming Sky Lynx had optical scanners somewhere inside his space shuttle cabin) or whether to look at the flight controls (which also included display monitors) but in the end he settled for staring outside the windows, which he knew were also Sky Lynx's eyes when he transformed to robot mode.
Other than that, I like this a lot. You get the characters down right, to the point where a few bothersome details don't get in the way.
Zobovor
Jan 14, 2017, 11:34:39 AM1/14/17
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On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 1:45:42 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> That first paragraph is just awkward. It's a little ball of almost
> impenetrable exposition.
That's a justifiable complaint. I will say, for the record, that this story has been percolating for literal years. Far longer than I should have reasonably spent on something this short. Sometimes I'll find it when I'm looking for another file, and I'll open it and add, like, a paragraph to it.
> That first paragraph is just awkward. It's a little ball of almost
> impenetrable exposition.
The problem is that I wanted to write a Sunstreaker/Sky Lynx story but I had no idea how to end it. Finally I just threw an ending together that seemed to make sense thematically and called it good. I used to be okay about having tons of unfinished stories (you could argue some of them were just practice) but lately I've begun to reexamine that.
> This part bothers me. Genuinely feels off.
Basically, I just need to stop listening to other people's writing advice.
> Other than that, I like this a lot. You get the characters down right, to the
> point where a few bothersome details don't get in the way.
Zob (posting stories is a lot like being naked... it's either very exciting or very embarrassing)
Gustavo Wombat
Jan 20, 2017, 2:55:49 AM1/20/17
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Zobovor <zm...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 1:45:42 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the
> Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
>> That first paragraph is just awkward. It's a little ball of almost
>> impenetrable exposition.
>
> That's a justifiable complaint. I will say, for the record, that this
> story has been percolating for literal years. Far longer than I should
> have reasonably spent on something this short. Sometimes I'll find it
> when I'm looking for another file, and I'll open it and add, like, a paragraph to it.
>
> The problem is that I wanted to write a Sunstreaker/Sky Lynx story but I
> had no idea how to end it. Finally I just threw an ending together that
> seemed to make sense thematically and called it good. I used to be okay
> about having tons of unfinished stories (you could argue some of them
> were just practice) but lately I've begun to reexamine that.
I have a bunch that are waiting for inspiration to strike again.
> On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 1:45:42 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the
> Seattle Wombats wrote:
>
>> That first paragraph is just awkward. It's a little ball of almost
>> impenetrable exposition.
>
> That's a justifiable complaint. I will say, for the record, that this
> story has been percolating for literal years. Far longer than I should
> have reasonably spent on something this short. Sometimes I'll find it
> when I'm looking for another file, and I'll open it and add, like, a paragraph to it.
>
> The problem is that I wanted to write a Sunstreaker/Sky Lynx story but I
> had no idea how to end it. Finally I just threw an ending together that
> seemed to make sense thematically and called it good. I used to be okay
> about having tons of unfinished stories (you could argue some of them
> were just practice) but lately I've begun to reexamine that.
Two Kup Tales (one, entitled "Female Troubles" that explains what happened
to all the female Autobots, and another featuring Tommy Kennedy), a Nemesis
Prime story and one about The new TF:TM Autobots misadventures before
finding earth.
I try to write, but it feels forced right now.
--
I wish I was a mole in the ground.
Zobovor
Jan 20, 2017, 8:35:00 PM1/20/17
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On Friday, January 20, 2017 at 12:55:49 AM UTC-7, Gustavo Wombat, of the Seattle Wombats wrote:
> I have a bunch that are waiting for inspiration to strike again.
I still think we should do a story exchange and try to finish each other's stories. Of course, the Sunstreaker/Sky Lynx story was the one I would have sent you to finish, so I'd have to dig up another one... or deliberately start one and leave it half-finished. Man, I have no idea why I would do that deliberately. That's like asking the cats to pee on the carpet.
> I have a bunch that are waiting for inspiration to strike again.
The other character pair I was wanting to explore was a Hound/Breakdown story, so I guess I could start that one...
Zob (because I need more projects to work on, you see)
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