Some Reassembly Required
Disclaimer: For all I keep forgetting to put these in, everyone knows that these characters don't belong to me - I just make their lives a misery. Beast Machines is property of Hasbro and Mainframe, and probably a bunch of other people I don't know. That said, off we go.
And no, I did not rhyme the last sentences deliberately.
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Rain on Cybertron was a bit of a novelty.
Nobody actually knew how rain could suddenly appear out of nowhere, but then again nobody could explain what the heck bat fossils had been doing thousands of feet underground either, so it measured up. In a way.
However, the thrill of water suddenly pouring out of the sky, as thousands of Scottish people will tell you, quickly loses its charm, and most Cybertronians promptly retreated to the dry warmth of their homes at the first glimpse of a rain cloud.
Sensible, really. Which begged the question: What in the name of Primus was Silverbolt doing walking along a deserted street in the wake of what appeared to be a small tidal wave?
He couldn't have told you. He was so lost in his own dark thoughts that he almost totally failed to notice the water slashing at his face and seeping through the chinks in his armour. He was too absorbed in desperately playing and replaying the events of the past few months in his head, trying to see the points where it all fell apart, dreaming of scenarios where somehow, someway, everything turned out all right.
But they were only daydreams, flights of fancy created by a miserable fallen dreamer. Reality was all he had to work with - and reality was not the most co-operative of mediums.
He didn't know that Rattrap, Cheetor and Botanica, finding him gone, were out combing the streets for him. They didn't entirely trust his current state of mind not to lead him into doing something stupid, and going wandering in the middle of a storm probably wasn't the hallmark of mental stability either. He didn't know that, on the other side of the planet, Nightscream had crashed into a nightclub (literally) in order to retrieve the person closest to the condor's heart. He didn't know that the council spies, identifying him as the most emotionally vulnerable of the team, had several spies assigned to tracking him, and eventually bringing him before the Council on trumped up charges. In so far as that was concerned, the rain was a bizarre blessing - with most Transformers on Cybertron still not entirely sure of what to make of raindrops, even the spies beat a hasty retreat into shelter.
All he really knew, or cared about, was that he had made a royal mess of things.
Still brooding, he meandered down the street as the rain continued, relentless and merciless.
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"Nightscream! What the slag are you..?"
"It's Silverbolt. He's...not well. He collapsed the other day and - Blackarachnia, you gotta come home, now!"
Sprawled in a heap on the floor, slighly dazed, Blackarachnia could only half understand the frantic flying rodent. Her new acquaintance looked, if anything, more confused than she was, despite their obvious interest in the proceedings.
"Nightscream, calm down! What on Cybertron are you on ab... "
"It's Silverbolt," Nightscream gasped, trying in vain to recover the wind that had been knocked out of him in the collision. "He's really not well, Legs. You gotta come home - fast!"
"What, did he get sick or something? Poor little Bowser" - she couldn't prevent the trace of bitterness lining her voice - "but a medic should sort it out. Why not just get one of them instead of following me to the other side of the slaggin' planet?"
"Not that kind of ill!" Nightscream yelped. "He's not eating, he's not left his room in days, he doesn't speak to anyone...Blackarachnia, I don't know what to do!"
Her heart softened for a moment, but for Nightscream, not her sometimes-lover. "Kid, it's nice that you wanna help. But Silverbolt's a big boy now, and he's made it very clear he doesn't need, far less want, out help." A twisted smile flashed across her face as she added "Primus knows I offered enough times."
"Legs!" the young Maximal pleaded. Blackarachnia merely assisted the young, unknown Transformer to their feet.
"All right, so you're mad at him. Primus, Spidergirl, you've got every right to be mad at him. But can you honestly say with your hand on your spark, that if something happened to him tomorrow and you never saw him again, you wouldn't care?"
Bingo. Despite the fact that the question was sputtered and frantic, it froze Blackarachnia in her tracks. Of course she cared - that was what had started this whole fiasco in the first place. She cared, and (she thought,) he didn't. And there was that quiet part of her, the part that had switched sides because she'd made the mistake of falling in love during the Beast Wars, that whispered what she already knew.
He's yours. No matter what you say or do, anything that happens to him affects you. You loved him. Like it or not, you're still in love with him...
She almost snarled at that small chirp of reason, angry at her indifferent facade being shattered for the umpteenth time.
"Don't cut off your nose just to spite your face," someone said.
She whirled, looking for the speaker. Nightscream was still looking anxiously at her, and the Maximal was as confused as she was.
"Who said that?" she demanded. "And what the hell did it mean?" She turned to her acquaintance. "You heard that, right?"
They nodded.
"Who said what..? Oh forget it. Look, are you coming back with me or not?" Nightscream was at his wit's end. He had tenacity, true, but it seemed insignificant when faced with a doggedly stubborn Blackarachnia.
She dithered briefly, her need for payback warring with the need to be happy.
Aw, slaggit.
With a wry remark and a wave to her acquaintance (wondering whether she'd ever lay eyes on the kid again), she grabbed Nightscream by the collar and dragged him out of the door.
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"Where could he have GONE?!"
They'd been sloshing through the street for two hours now...even Cheetor was concerned by this point. It was freezing outside, the rain was pelting down and there was still no sign of Silverbolt.
Botanica wasn't too concerned about the weather - plants like a bit of rain, after all - but she was slightly annoyed that her conversation with Rattrap had been interrupted by an errant team member. Rattrap, on the other hand, was cold, wet, miserable and worried.
"He woulda had th' sense to stick to places he knew, wouldn't he?" he asked, sneezing.
"Normally I'd've said yes, but Silverbolt's pretty screwed up right now..." Cheetor began, adding silently Talk about the pot calling the kettle black... "He might just have wandered off. Or he could be able to remember the basic layout of Cybertron, even if it's changed since the reformatting..."
"You're forgetting something important," Botanica interrupted.
"Most likely," Cheetor agreed, resignedly. "Hit me with it, then."
"Silverbolt can fly."
There was a pause as this blatantly obvious fact sunk in.
"Ya think he could fly in this?" Rattrap wondered, squinting up at the overcast sky.
"No idea," Cheetor told him. "In fact, I'm not even sure it would occur to him to transform and fly. Most likely he's just sloped off to brood." He sighed - he had to decide how to call this, and he had the sneaking suspicion he'd regret it. "Let's go back. It's been hours - for all we know he could've headed back home by now."
Botanica nodded. Rattrap glared, but shrugged.
"You two head back. I'll catch up with ya in a while."
"Rattrap..." Botanica protested.
"Look, he could be hurt. You head back, no point in you getting soaked anymore, and see if he's there. Give it half an hour, I'll be back by then."
With that, he wandered off.
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"You do realise that there is no way on Cybertron we are gonna be able to go back home without half the population staring at us?" Blackarachnia grumbled to Nightscream.
The bat didn't particularly mind - token crabbiness was to be expected from Blackarachnia at the best of times. Now, returning well before she'd deemed it appropriate to return, he'd have been worried if she hadn't complained.
"Yeah, but we'll survive. 'Least you won't have some kid telling you you're a wimp," he retorted.
Blackarachnia choked back a laugh at the murderous look on Nightscream's face. "Let's face it kid - neither of us look particularly...well, formidable. We look as if your average bozo could snap us in two at the waist."
That had been rather irksome to her, actually. Her previous two modes had been ninja-fit, slim but not fragile. She'd prided herself on her air of menace and seduction, proof that she was no delicate little femme bot. NOW however...
It wasn't a terrible change, she consoled herself. She'd never been able to fly, and so didn't have that ability to lose as Cheetor had. All credit to Fuzzface, he'd never complained about it, but she knew only to well that the cheetah missed that particular asset of his previous bodies. Silverbolt had an entirely new alternate mode to contend with (and, she supposed, having the beast mode of a large, carrion-eating vulture wasn't doing too much for his self esteem either. His robot mode, however...). And she certainly got a better deal than Rattrap.
But she still missed some aspects of both her original and Transmetal bodies. Such as weapons.
And feet.
She was hardly about to voice her disgruntlement (on this particular subject anyway) to Nightscream, who just looked fed up. "Look on the bright side kid - you can fly, you have a pretty decent armoury by technorganic standards, and...oh yeah, you didn't get your spark ripped out like the other millions of people on this planet."
"Thanks for the confidence boost," he told her with a wry smile. "I feel so much better now."
Blackarachnia chuckled to himself. Kid's developing a sense of humour. That's progress.
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"HEY! SILVERBOLT!"
Good grief, I sound like I'm calling to a missing puppy, Rattrap thought to himself. Heh...there'da been a joke in that somewhere if 'Bolts was still the bird-dog we all knew and loved...
What had been a funny comment to himself quickly sobered into worry. Silverbolt wasn't the bird-dog of the Beast Wars, that was the whole slaggin' PROBLEM.
It bothered Rattrap far more than he'd ever let on, that his naive buddy had somehow gone Dinobot on him. Not that Dinobot hadn't been Rattrap's closest friend (though that was an ill-kept secret the rodent would take to his grave), but Silverbolt wasn't Dinobot. Yes, both were incredibly hung up on the idea of honour, but Silverbolt's had been the knight's fair-maidens-and-jousting variety. Dinobot had been a samurai, with a much more straightforward philosophy - death before disgrace.
So how ironic was it that Dinobot had died...but the samurai became Silverbolt?
Dear sweet Primus, PLEASE don't let Silverbolt do what Dinobot would have done in a scene like this...
It was a morbid though, but an all too logical one. Although, as far as he knew, Dinobot wouldn't have known romance if it had hit him over the head. It had always confused the rodent as to why Dinobot - easily the most confrontational Beast Warrior - always seemed to flee from his problems, rather than tackling them. It always led him to wonder whether Dinobot was as poker faced as he liked to seem. Like Silverbolt, there had been an unnerving, cold passion to him.
But there shouldn't have been any coldness to Silverbolt at all. The Silverbolt that Rattrap knew was a warm, naïve character…
…except that Silverbolt couldn't have been very warm standing in the rain, gazing vacantly skyward.
Torn between annoyance at Silverbolt's obliviousness and relief at his safety, Rattrap tried to calm down before he either started babbling or bit the condor's head off.
" 'Ey! Bolt! You know how worried people've been?!"
Well, it was a nice effort, anyway.
Silverbolt didn't answer. He knew Rattrap was there, of course. There just didn't seem to be anything his mind could dredge up in reply or retort. Especially since, at that moment, he'd have been hard pressed to remember his own name.
" 'Bolt, the absolute last thing we need is you gettin' sick on us…"
Could he get sick from cold or rain he wondered? In his Fuzor form, he'd been able to feel cold, but it wasn't as if it'd had any adverse effect on him…but then again, bodies that were partially organic probably had some susceptibility to chills…
"Silverbolt! Are ya listening to me? SILVERBOLT!"
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Nightscream was right. The return trip had brought them more than their fair share of odd looks and quickly shushed whispers. And that wasn't counting the ogling Blackarachnia got from male transformers who obviously really, really needed a love life.
"I hate planes," he griped. "And because of the damn reformatting, I'm gonna haveta keep using them."
Blackarachnia half-listened to his complaints, but her mind was on other things. Formulating a plan of attack, basically. What did she do? Waltz in there, acting as if she'd had a ball, as if she didn't need him? Storm in like a typhoon and demand he sorted himself out? Or wait for him to come to her? Decisions, decisions…
"…do you think you'll adapt to living on a reformatted planet?"
Nightscream was saying something, but she only caught the tail end of it. She bluffed.
"No big deal. I've never been able to travel at any great speed anyway. Spiders don't fly."
Except when they had useful boyfriends that they had no inclination to eat. And she doubted she'd be flying Silverbolt Air anytime soon. In any way, shape or form.
Ahem.
The bluff worked. Nightscream didn't notice that her mind was light years away. She didn't intend to wander off to Lala Land again though.
"So, where to from here?"
Nightscream blinked at her, disbelieving. "You don't know the way from the airport? But you came here yourself…"
"At night. And I hitched a lift." Like 'planes, taxi systems had become a necessity on the new Cybertron. "Besides, I don't know the new place too well, seeing as I left practically the instant we arrived."
Fair point. "No worries. I know the way." I think…
As they wandered off into the evening, a thought occurred to the young bat. "By the way, Legs, we really need to do something about the Elders…Have you watched the news lately?"
"Where could they be?"
Botanica checked the window anxiously, the fourth time in as many minutes. The rain was positively cutting now, slashing the view outside into water streaked ribbons.
"Maybe we should ensure that they are safe…"
"Botanica. They're fine." Cheetor informed her, have the nasty feeling that he might be lying through his teeth. "Silverbolt just acts a bit strange at times. Rattrap will tow him back, we'll yell at him and then forget this ever happened."
The plant Maximal turned reproachful eyes on the youthful "commander." "It is rather hard to ignore disaster when the evidence is strewn around you."
Cheetor bristled. "Whaddya mean by that?"
"Two crew members are missing. One is suffering from depression. At least one is sick with worry. And the Cybertronian news channel is hardly a source of comfort either."
The feline was forced to agree. It was like trying to ignore a hurricane when your house had just been ripped away around you.
Something about the whole scenario struck the cheetah as blackly comic. Mockingly, he recited
"All the Maximals sat on a wall
All the Maximals took a hell of a fall
All Cybertron's robots and all of Earth's men
Couldn't put the Maxis together again…"
It was meant to be funny. Instead, it felt as if he was playing "Happy Birthday" at a funeral. Both he and Botanica shuddered, involuntarily.
Silverbolt wasn't aware that he was moving at all until they came in sight of their new residence. Rattrap had cajoled, pleaded and yelled and eventually the condor's body had seemed to respond, although his mind was out to lunch.
It was still raining.
Finally, spark, body and mind pulled themselves back into a single unit, and Silverbolt shivered with the cold and damp.
"Ya see?" Rattrap scolded. "Standin' around in the freezing cold. Not good for a 'bot."
Wonderful, thought the rat. I'm turning into a mother hen.
The disadvantage to Silverbolt's new alertness wasn't only the physical discomfort. The aching loneliness was back with a vengeance, colder even than his rain-soaked body.
" 'Bolt?" Rattrap peered up at him, worried once more.
"Rattrap?" Silverbolt mattered hazily. "I'm…tired…"
Scooting behind the tall Maximal, Rattrap gave him a shove. Once inside, he could collapse, but not here.
"Ain't we all, buddy. Ain't we all."