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transmorphobots · 1 year ago

Text

All of the Undesirable Things

A piece of prose about Mercykill before she became who she was as Queen of the Dread Pirates and her relationship with Dreadshadow through the context of things in the world she loves.

"What do you even see in her?" Her brother's rude statement nearly draws her eyes up from her paper. It's nothing new in the household, everyone questioning why her. Why the rogue. It's not that they had a problem with her, of course, no, there was no problem! Which is what they always said before asking the same question again. Why, though? It wasn't that they disliked Dreadshadow, she was relatively harmless if not a bit chaotic... no, no, I don't think she's weird! She's just... not anything like who we thought you'd be interested in, is all. She's loud-mouthed, arrogant, she's a fighter- what about Thermal down at the meteorology station, she's a large aircraft too and she's a well known scientist. No, no, it's fine she doesn't have a function, of course, but why her?

She starts to collect her papers instead of following her brother to another conversational dead end and as she stands, her eyes lock with him.

"Do you want to question my love of the salt marshes too?" Her reasons are held on her tongue but she keeps them there with her teeth. His eyes dart away in submission and she pushes past him.

The marshes are not good for writing a thesis in but she prefers fighting off swarms of bugs to their swarm of judgements. They were the upholders of Onyx Prime's archive, so of course, they had a high standard. Her aunt was from Cybertron, a student of Onyx, and her uncle was a sailor from when the Titans were more than dying off legends... it wasn't that Dreadshadow was a Transformer, it was that she wasn't the right kind.

She had no purpose or function. She wasn't some starcrossing valiant or a trader. She played pranks on passersby in the swamps when she rose out of the marsh with a bellow. She would sneak into matches to interrupt them. They didn’t want someone, who’s most recent disruption was breaching onto the floating arena and sending two fighters flying into the ocean, courting their daughter. Forget whatever the daughter’s desires or wants or needs are because if it went further than a fling then it would include Dreadshadow into their heritage. This wasn't someone they wanted to be attached to Onyx Prime's legacy... but they were attached to the prestige of the Prime and not her works. She had devoured every page of it, about the connections between them and a Transformer, and she was convinced that Onyx would like Dreadshadow.

A spaceship Transformer, abandoned for one reason or another after her first activation, who learned to adapt to the marshes. Her foundational routines and behaviors informed by the biome she was left in. No one took her in though some tried to provide for her, they couldn't house a nearly forty foot tall Transformer (so they claimed) and Dreadshadow did not trust people. Why would she, after all? Her experience was informed by crocodiles and frogs and a mysterious creator who left her wandering an environment that was harsh on mechanical lifeforms. Yet, she became a part of it. Her mimicry of the wild life was getting better and better and still she stretched more and more. She wanted something else to take the form of, she would say with a big grin and she'd leave the air open for a suggestion.

"A whole hive of Helian wasps." she would answer just to watch Dreadshadow's grin get bigger.

"I think I would get more annoying, I'd buzz around your home all day. I'd make colonies in your rafters. I'd eat your books." Her most favorite threat of all. Devouring all of the legacy of Onyx Prime and the long lineage of books her family maintained of students and apprentices to the students and of themselves. Their names proudly shining among the greats and they were great. She thought Dreadshadow was great.

"Transformation is inevitable for all things, even archives." And the sharp features would soften in a way that erases the years of roguish living. "And I like the sound of their wings. Even when they swarm."

"It would be fun to swarm a match." she would say... but she still hadn't decided and a hive was a hard thing to replicate. She'd suggest ticks, termites, and water striders. Then Dreadshadow would threaten to be a plague on her home and she would answer with what about those things she liked. Everything in a marsh held value in their niche. No matter how undesirable or perceived as unimportant the creepies and crawlies were to people it did not change the fact that the ecosystem balanced delicately on the populations it contained. She never missed how Dreadshadow looked when she started on a rant about how someone had tried to propose an extermination of mosquitoes through genetic sterilization because they were "an annoyance" and they did not care about what the insects supported in their own ecosystem. There was a certain nobility to a creature that was minding its business and she often wished that certain people would take up the same noble behaviors.

They never did go further with the proposal but she also had heard the person who proposed it was nearly devoured by a giant crocodile and rather than exterminate the annoyance- which may or may not have been related to them wanting to build seaside property- they moved back to the city further inland. Though she knew mosquitoes were present there, she knew crocodiles were in short supply.

The best way to write her thesis was under the shelter of a spider colony. Thick white webs connected all the trees and she never felt afraid to sit under them. She would draw prey for them and they would in exchange, let her finish her writing in peace. Smaller, bolder spiders would land on her shoulders and crawl her blouse and her arm; some would crawl across her page but would be shooed with a little touch of her finger. The larger ones would explore and she would stop in her writing to appreciate the yellow and white stripes across the black carapace.

She was serene within her solitude for all she ever had to do was wait. Straining to listen for any movement in the water, vibrations against the stump she sat on, any soft thwack of mud on metal... but the one she waits for moves as silently as her name.

"I needed my knights." Raising her hand she offers a perch to one of the larger spiders who was sitting on her shoulder. They take a moment and then crawl over, under her hand, down her wrist, exploring... patrolling.

"In your castle again?" She doesn't jump at the voice, expecting it, and she smiles. She looks up to Dreadshadow, a mountain of metal plate and scales, resting on the muddy shore with those bright eyes staring at her.

"Which one of them this time?" Dreadshadow's exasperation was something she wished she could express more freely when under the judgment of her family... but this was her castle and its woven walls kept her far from them. She lets it out in a ragged sigh of frustration.

"My oh so concerned brother who wants to know what I see in you."

"Did you tell him it was my 30,000 pounds of mechanical might and how you want to mangle your hands in all my bits and pieces?" The sweetness in her voice, the fluttering of the crocodilian eyes, draws out a snort and then a little laugh.

"Almost."

"You should be more vulgar. They'll stop asking questions when they're concerned about the logistics of us connecting cables." A part of her that was raised in the family's concerns balks at the idea of saying anything of the sort but the part of her that was growing as wild as the thickets of the marshes laughs at the idea. What if she was so bold? What if she could live forever in webbed castles and her eight-legged knights.

"Perhaps I should be." Words meant to push the fantasy down. She can't save marshes and insects by running away into them. She has to walk the life of an archivist and conservationist. She rests her chin in her unknighted hand and lets the fondness creep into her face like the little squires on the thesis forgotten in her lap.

"What form do you think I should try next?" Dreadshadow asks, as she always does, and somehow gets the maw of her form to look coy and playful in its rigid metal.

"Why not one of these spiders? You would scare so many gladiators with all your beautiful legs." She offers the one on the back of her hand.

"I would... and I could make you a manor out of webs for you to stay in. I could be your captain of the guard and the dragon that holds you hostage from all those annoying questions."

She stands up and carefully brushes her knights and squires off as she steps closer to Dreadshadow. She climbs up one of the crocodilian arms to sit on the expanse of her plated back. They slip into the water together, a boat, an island, to clear the marsh with. Over in the distance, hidden by a sandbar she can see the ocean. The air is salty and muggy, undesirable, and yet she desires it. It's hard to bear parts - the insects, the smell, the air, the vermin- exist free and in spite of everyone who would question why they need to.

"Doesn't your brother like to go sailing?" Dreadshadow's voice is tinged with the same tone of mischief she gets when she's told when and where the next match is. Her own little rebellion as no one expects the archivist's favorite fighter to be the disrupter.

Standing on the top the city area, cloaked in the darkness, with only those optics glittering like copper-core stars. Her sails open up to make herself look bigger, wider, as her laugh echoes in the night. Her orphanhood, her guideless life on display, the hard to bear parts all as performance, as presence, as she announces her challenge. She exists in spite of the questions.

"Often." She answers and feels an amused rumble under the plates.

"I've been thinking of going sailing too."

And so had she.

#tf oc #transformers oc #maccadam #dread ships #mercykill #dreadshadow #transmorphobots prose

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