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minniethemoocherda · 2 months ago

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Five Times Sunstreaker Didn't Tell Bluestreak What he Wanted to Say, Plus One Time that he Did: Chapter 3

A/N: GUESS WHO HAS FINALLY SEEN TRANSFORMERS ONE??!!!! Also the song for this chapter is Your Best American Girl by Mitski. And if you're wondering who Hoist's date was, it was Grapple. Xxxxxxx

Ao3

FF.net

The good thing about the war breaking out was that Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were finally able to escape their sponsors.

The bad was everything else.

Even though they had never fought Megatron themselves (if they had they'd be dead), they were more than aware of who their fellow gladiator was.

And as such they were also more than aware that he was a dangerously hypocritical maniac.

So they decided to throw themselves in with the Autobots.

However unlike their former sponsors, the Autobots didn't allow underage mechs to fight, so Sunstreaker and Sideswipe had been sent to a mostly civilian out post to bide their time until they were old enough to sign up.

Having never been treated like one before, it was strange to be treated like an actual child for once in Sunstreaker's life. Everyone expected him to be stupid yet at the same time act like a perfect little drone. At least the officers there gave him paint to play with.

The out post had been set up near Praxus due to the city's neutural status and the more time they spent there, the more certain Sunstreaker was that he could beat most of the adults there in a fight. He'd done so more than once, when he couldn't tell if the cries of the gladiator pit were screaming from the inside or the outside of his head.

But even then the Autbots wouldn't allow them to fight.

And so Sunstreaker and Sideswipe became bored.

And a bored set of twins was not a good set of twins

In their state, it wasn't hard for Sideswipe to convince Sunstreaker to get involved with his pranks. Pranks that quickly got out of hand when they accidently wrecked a months worth of supplies.

Apparently not being old enough for combat didn't protect them from adult punishments, as one of the officer's had no problem throwing the pair in the brig.

Not that giving them a clean space with a set of beds was much of a punishment for the twins in the first place. Being stuck in one room only succeeded in making them more bored. Which in turn inevitably lead to more pranks.

Thankfully It didn't take long for that officer, a former enforcer named Prowl, to realise the ensuing circle. So instead of time in the brig, he decided to rope the two of them into running errands.

Mostly he had them handing datapads back and forth between departments. It used up some of Sunstreaker's restlessness but frankly he didn't find walking from A to B five times in a row particularly enriching. So on the way, he started trying to decipher the encryptions on the datapads. Having never done it before, he found it inthuruatingly annoying at first. He had to resist the urge to throw the pad against the wall more than once. However, without anything else to occupy his thoughts, he didn't have any other options but to keep at it. And eventually the encryptions became easier to crack. Until they suddenly became hard again, until eventually he became better at it, where once again they would become more difficult. Not only that, but the information on the datapads became less and less secretive. And when Prowl started telling him well done after delivering a pad with a particularly hard encryption, Sunstreaker realised that the officer had been testing him on purpose.

Still, Sunstreaker kept at it, even when he knew he wasn't delivering information any more important than team meeting times. And if that reason was because it was the only positive interaction he'd ever had with an authority figure, then Sunstreaker would never tell a soul.

One day, Sunstreaker was drinking his daily ration in the rec-room when he over head a young medic named Hoist lament to his friends about the state of his finish for an upcoming date. Sunstreaker gave the rest of his cube to Sideswipe, who eagerly chugged it down, before marching over towards him.

"I can fix your ugly finish." Sunstreaker stated. Unlike Sideswipe he didn't talk much, and growing up he'd learnt that it was best to be direct than to be kind.

Thankfully, the medic wasn't offended. Instead he burst out laughing.

"Sure kid! Go ahead!" Hoist was probably just humouring him, or perhaps he thought that letting a sparkling loose on his finish would be an interesting tale for his date.

So Sunstreaker collected his paints from his room before marching straight back to the rec-room to get to work. Sunstreaker wasn't lying when he said that Hoist's finish was ugly. Despite being a medic, was rusted and bruised from lack of care. Sunstreaker hated that Hoist obviously thought so little of himself to let his finish get to this state. Sunstreaker was no professional but he did his best to buff out the rough surface until it was smooth as a newspark's behind and cleaned the armour until he could see his own much prettier reflection. Sunstreaker mixed colours together until he got a near perfect match to Hoist's base before he etched swirls of his own golden yellow onto the mech's cheeks to enhance the glow of his eyes.

And Sunstreaker's efforts seems to have payed off as he heard that Hoist and his date became official. The medic even gave him a bag of energon treats to say thank you.

Word of Sunstreaker's work quickly spread and soon he had half of the base coming to him for his talents.

For the first time in his life, Sunstreaker felt like he had a purpose besides keeping Sideswipe alive. He tried not to let it show, but he loved being able to use his skills to brighten the light that each mech brought to the world by capturing their inner beauty on the outside.

Prowl even let him paint the hallways too. Until too many people were disturbed by his interpretation of the gladiator pits that they sent him to the base's physiatrist. But he was allowed still to paint his and Sideswipe's room.

It was small, with two twin beds bolted to each side of the room and barely enough space to stand between them. But after the streets and the pits, it was the first place that the twins could truly call their own.

At Sideswipe's request, Sunstreaker painted his brother's side of the room in a blazing red and gold. And on his own he painted everything else. He built layers and layers and layers of paintings from the city to the streets to the faces that he saw every day.

And of course he tried to paint that smile. But no matter how hard he tried, Sunstreaker could never quite capture the light of that sight.

Being so close to Praxus, Sunstreaker often found himself thinking about the sparkling. He wondered what his life was like. If despite the war, he still had to go to school, or if he found their brother to be as lovably annoying as Sunstreaker found Sideswipe. Sunstreaker wondered if they even lived there at all. And of course thought about what he would say to them if they did.

Many times Sunstreaker had entertained the idea of sneaking out to find them. Something Sideswipe was more than happy to aide with. They'd actually tried to once. But Prowl had caught them and somehow sealed all their secret exits, before throwing them in the brig for a week.

Then the Decepticons destroyed Praxus. And Sunstreaker worried that he had forever missed his chance.

The seekers came from nowhere and blow everything to shit before anyone had time to react.

All they could do was send in rescue workers as the seekers sped away.

Sunstreaker stayed awake for days, waiting for them to bring back the injured. But nobody came.

Until one did.

Once again fighting against his own recharge protocols, Sunstreaker wasn't sure if the sight was a dream. But no, there lying limp in Prowl's arms was the body of a sparkling, the dark layer of ash indistinguishable from the grey shade of its skin. The only sign of life was the blue of their eyes. But even they were so void of light that it took Sunstreaker a moment to recognise the sparkling as the one who had saved his life.

It wasn't safe on the base anymore. Everyone was being moved in the morning. But Sunstreaker had to see the sparkling before they left.

For once Sideswipe didn't tease him, instead offering to stay on lookout as Sunstreaker crawled through the rec room vents that bridged the gap over the corridor directly into the med-bay.

As he crossed the corridor, he glanced down the grate bellow to where Prowl had stationed Brawn to stand guard outside the med-bay doors. Sunstreaker resisted a snort. Prowl would be so pissed if he found out how easy it was get around their defences.

When Sunstreaker jumped down the shoot, into the room itself, he realised that Prowl was going to be even more pissed when he learnt that the sparkling had manged to get his hands on a gun.

"Where are you going?" Sunstreaker asked, so surprised by the sight that he'd forgotten the speech he had prepared to say.

In the middle of the empty room, the sparkling opened and closed his mouth as though expecting words to come out and didn't understand why they didn't. After a few more tries, he finally spoke.

"I...I-I'm going to kill them." The sparkling said, although it came out more as a question than a statement.

Sunstreaker didn't hold back a snort this time.

"Who? The guy who killed your family? Megatron? The entire Deception Army?" He said, his voice coming out harsher than he intended. What was the sparkling thinking? He was just a kid! The gun was nearly the length of his body! He could barely lift it let alone use it to take on the Deception army and -shit this was what the adults thought about him and Sideswipe wasn't it?

Sunstreaker sighed. He marched over to the sparkling, placed his steady hands over their shaking fists. He'd never felt hands so cold. Not for the first time he wondered if the sparkling truly was the living dead.

"If you go out there now," Sunstreaker said "The only the person you'll end up killing is yourself."

He pointed the gun to the ground.

"But one day you'll be able to prove that you're more than what they did to you. And on that day we can kill them all."

Sunstreaker wasn't sure what any other bot had said to him. Although he would bet money that it hadn't been to promise them future death and violence. But it was the only thing Sunstreaker had ever had to offer. He hoped that it would be enough.

The sparkling stared at him and for once Sunstreaker felt like someone wasn't just seeing him as the kid they thought he was and actually saw the person underneath.

"Promise?" They asked.

Sunstreaker squeezed their hands.

"Promise. Now let's get you back into bed before Prowl kills us both."

Sunstreaker helped the sparkling climb back into bed. They were asleep before he'd even tucked the blanket of tarp around them.

Sunstreaker gazed down at their sleeping form. They didn't look peaceful. Sunstreaker doubted that they truly ever would again. But for now at least, he was glad that they would get a break from whatever pain was currently cursing through their circuits. In that moment, he would have tried to kill Megatron himself, if he knew that it would make them happy.

But that dream would have to wait for another day.

He traced a black finger down the soft grey of their cheek, before grabbing the gun that the sparkling had clutched against their chest.

He handed the gun to a confused Brawn as he walked out of the med-bay.

Sunstreaker hadn't told the sparkling what he had wanted to say.

But he had said what the sparkling needed to hear.

And now Sunstreaker had a personal reason to stop the Decepticons. So that they would never snuffed out that light again.

#transformers #sunstreaker #bluestreak #prowl #sideswipe #hoist #grapple #hoist x grapple #brawn #transformers generation one #sunnyblue #streakstreaker #sunstreaker x bluestreak #praxus #megatron #tf prowl #tf

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askvectorprime · 4 months ago

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Dear Vector Prime, are there any Transformers who are paralyzed from the waist down and permanently use a wheelchair or other form of mobile seating? How does this factor into their vehicle mode? I wanted to ask because one of my classmates has this disability, and certain businesses aren't accustomed to someone who cannot walk (though fortunately our school has such capabilities for such people)

Dear Ambulation Alerting,

Yes, our kind understands how it is to live with these kinds of conditions. You are not alone, in this regard. Though a Cybertronian may have limited physical mobility for many different reasons, injuries sustained during our eons-long war are to blame for the vast majority of cases of paralysis suffered by our kind. Where circuit-surgery has been unable to restore motion, we have developed and employed all kinds of mobility aids, using wheels, treads, or hover-technology. I know that over the course of Shockwave’s lengthy guardianship of Cybertron, many of his soldiers came to suffer debilitating wounds at the hands of the Autobot resistance; rather than retire or recycle these soldiers, he would employ them as guards, seated in tank-like chairs to patrol the halls of his vast fortress.

Truly, it can happen to anyone. I have recollection of a timeline where Optimus Prime himself took a fusion cannon blast to the waist while protecting Chip Chase, and his backstrut was damaged beyond repair. Inspired by Chip’s wheelchair, he had Ratchet and Hoist refashion his trailer with a new secondary mode, allowing it to change into a wheelchair while he was in robot form.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that many Cybertronians do not have a bipedal configuration in the first place; some of us have wheels which we use to get around even in our primary forms. The most prominent example you will likely know of is probably Rattrap—when he was reformatted into a fully techno-organic body, his legs were replaced with wheels. Having already grown accustomed to using his Transmetal “Knievel mode”, the heroic Maximal didn’t find it too difficult to adapt to this change… which was more than could be said for his lack of weapons in this new form!

Fortunately, Cybertron is a planet where rolling is as natural to us as walking. Even the planet itself has evolved to accommodate this, with staircases being able to convert into ramps and back again. Such is the nature of a world which is constantly transforming.

#ask vector prime #transformers #maccadam #generation 1 cartoon #beast wars #shockwave #optimus prime #chip chase #ratchet #hoist #rattrap #transmetals #cybertron #anonymously20-blog

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