This, quite possibly, is the most epic thing I have ever put down in words. I started writing this right after "The Little Details" went up and it has taken me nearly an entire year to write. This epic tops its predecessor most definitely and I honestly cried in parts where I reread this fic. It sounds scary, but I was honestly moved writing from Waspinator's point of view. This story is my baby and I worked without sleep sometimes just so I could strive finishing it. Without those of you who supported me in writing this, I would have never finished it by the New Year. Since you requested it too, yes, I will do another fic like this from Terrorsaur's point of view. I love you guys.

For everyone else, I'll give you fair warning before you read. This is not a story for the faint of heart. This fanfic contains very heavy slash, politics that involve taking away civil rights, drug references, sparkling abortion, child abuse, prostitution, gang beating, cannon death, and rape. If you are even mildly uncomfortable with any of the terms previously mentioned - mostly concerning the slash element - hit the back button right now. Those of you who plan to go along for the ride, please enjoy. For the people who already read the fic this is based on… I have a twist conclusion waiting at the end of the story for you.

As a final note, I now present "The Scarlet Star."

I thought you said forever, over and over

A sleepless night becomes bitter oblivion

Paperthin Hymn - Anberlin

When I see your smile, tears run down my face

My true love, my whole heart, please don't throw that away

Your Guardian Angel - Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

"I wish I knew how to quit you!" ~Jack, "Brokeback Mountain"

Dedicated to everyone who lost the fundamental right to marriage with the bigoted passing of California's Proposition 8.

A Sister Fanfic - Based off "The Little Details"

February 14th, 2009, just like its predecessor, "The Scarlet Star" won first place in Ultimate Evil Person's 'Best Romance Fanfiction Awards' with high honors The individual who nominated the story for the award remains anonymous.

i

My scarlet star?

…I don't want to remember but, at the same time, I do. In memory, I suppose, it would be the least I could do for him. He was my scarlet star after all and he always will be. He was a burning crimson light among the sky's dark blackness and, in my world, he was the utter definition of total perfection. Of all the stars in my sky, he burned the brightest of all and I lived for him. Functioned for him. Without a doubt, he had lived for me too… once lived. I should have realized all stars eventually die out when I had the chance. I simply made the mistake of thinking he would never burn out. By the Pitt, if only I had managed to convince him to take that spot by the CR chamber when it happened before it killed him… I supposed he saved my life, but the suffering I now face in aftermath almost isn't worth it. I can't self terminate seeing that would waste his sacrifice and render it for nothing but… Primus, I miss him so much…

I remember the whole ordeal involving him and I like the places he loved to be touched most on his lithe body. It started out like any other partnership. Simple and nothing more than trivial business.

I met him for the first time in an abandoned warehouse after Megatron had collected us - his assorted mismatched crew - for his plan to steal the Golden Disk. It was less than a mere week before the master plan was to be carried out and we were grudgingly reduced to meeting in the slurs of an abandoned Predacon shipping port that had been shut down by Maximal law enforcement. In any case, Megatron was the one who introduced me to my scarlet star. The violet Predacon approached me from behind prior to the meeting going underway and, beforehand, I was sitting alone while listening to Scrappernok and Dinominer - who eventually renamed themselves Scorponok and Dinobot once they took their animal forms - talk over possible security systems they would encounter stealing the Golden Disk. The tyrant came to a stop and tapped me on the shoulder, making me whip around to face him in surprise. Behind Megatron was a scarlet Seeker, his arms folded across his chest and his wings rigid.

Megatron's voice when he spoke, to this day, is still as clear as a bell to me. "You there, Terminator. That is you're name isn't it? Never mind that, I want to introduce you to your new partner. The both of you will be responsible for stealing our getaway ship and flying it to the archives where you'll pick the rest of us up. Anyways, this is Terrorsoar."

From the moment I met him, I suppose both of us knew something was bound to intertwine our fates. If the immediate silence that followed our optics meeting for the first time didn't give it away, the intensity of our stares would have. His optics, a brilliant scarlet that burned with a raging fire of unresolved, pent up passion, bore into my own and I was instantly lost in them. We broke optic contact eventually, though I failed to realize that I'd be lost in those same eyes forever. We were silent to each other beside that. We only spoke when absolutely needed - I told him to watch his back when we were preparing to steal the Darkside from the Maximal docking harbor and he gave me thanks - but there were no real conversations that passed between us.

Even after we crashed on prehistoric Earth - I did not realize it when we first crashed, but I know it's prehistoric Earth now-we were quiet towards each other still. I changed my name from Terminator to Waspinator and he changed his from Terrorsoar to Terrorsaur.

Despite the fact we were Megatron's only fliers and were often paired together for patrol missions, little words passed between us still. Aside the occasional pointing out of something suspicious while flying or Terrorsaur barking orders at me when we saw Maximals below, it was quiet between us. Terrorsaur was normally the stronger of us and, consequently, more dominant. While I seemed to be the more headstrong of our duo, it didn't matter in regards to finding something to fill in our wordless voids. It was still mostly silence. Back then, I presumed we could call it the silence of a flier's respect, though I was uncertain as to why we never wanted to actually converse in a conversation. I tried to start some a few times, once pointing out how pretty the ground looked below while we flew over a vast savannah, but he merely shrugged it off and said it was okay before going quiet once more. There was another time that I asked him if he ever smoked while we were patrolling further out from the base than usual. He glared at me, told me no with an insulted tone, and we accidentally locked gazes. We stared at one another for a long time before he broke the contact and he asked me to not talk to him for the rest of our flight. I didn't.

We were certainly an odd pair and I was beginning to understand why a good portion of ground crawlers back on Cybertron said that fliers were weird. I was probably no exception with my strange vocalization habits and overall behavior.

Before we crash landed and became stranded, I was as normal as any of the crew… With the exception of Tarantulus for obvious reasons, but that's because he's a lunatic. Whether my beast-mode altered my CPU programming before the crash jarred my senses, I suddenly found I could not talk in first person or without a buzz. It was horrifying when I found I had a vocal glitch but, despite several elongated rounds in the CR, the damage could not be undone. It was aggravating and, despite how hard I willed my core consciousness to match what I wanted to say with my vocalizer transmitter, I still talked like a total fool. Articulating pronouns was incredibly difficult for me and no one could really understand what I was ever talking about.

All of them except for Terrorsaur. Ironic really…

The red Predacon, if you ignored me completely, also had audible changes when we crashed. Back on Cybertron, his voice had a rasp that sounded like he had been a heavy smoker for a good portion of his life. That was the reason I asked him if he smoked during that one patrol. After getting our new beast-modes though, his overall tone had a screeched element added to it. His voice was enough to give anyone a headache and his shriek when someone scared him or shot him down was nearly unbearable. Still, he was the only one who did understand what I was saying and he often translated on my behalf to the others. Everyone adjusted to my speech patterns after awhile, but the fact remained that Terrorsaur and I were still quiet with each other. I'd thanked him for playing the role as translator, but he shrugged it off and said nothing. We were still silent.

Optic locking was another thing altogether. Even though we didn't speak openly to one another for whatever reason that made us uncomfortable to, our staring contests made up for it. Greatly so.

The small glances we shared turned into fully blow out, intense staring contests. We came into eye contact very often, habitually staring at one another like we were seeing the other for the first time in our entire existence. No one else seemed to notice - that made me thankful - but it was unnerving all the same. He could have been working at a monitor, I at a console, and I would just barely incline my head to look over my shoulder when he would look as well. It was a coincidence he would do so, almost as if a higher power made him glance in my direction, and our eyes would lock like a vice grip instantly. His optics, brilliant crimson with a burning zeal, were ones I would instantly be lost in. We usually broke the contact around the same time, but I felt as though he backed out more often. I would often both hope and dread for the next time we would have another unannounced staring bouts.

Then we tried to avoid each other completely.

I wasn't all too sure if the rest of the Predacons noticed, but I honestly didn't care. Our staring contests - if you could even call them that - finally made me loose my nerve. I avoided Terrorsaur at all costs and, almost as if he was physic, he began to avoid me as well. Even when we started the habit of purposely avoiding each other however, attempting to not to get into those staring matches still seemed almost futile. We still locked optics very often and, as a result, we both seemed to go to even more unconscious extremes to eliminate the chances completely. We flew further away from each other during patrols and I wondered if there was something we were trying to avoid about one another. It seemed like a queer thought but, then again, there were things about Terrorsaur that even I could not pin. During the new development in our 'relationship', the silence still lingered between us like a thick steel barrier.

One day however, the barrier was broken like Megatron's body when Terrorsaur tossed him over the side of a cliff. This was after Terrorsaur supercharged himself on raw energon in a drunken attempt to overthrow our leader.

Terrorsaur had approached us - being the entire Predacon fleet - while we were on one of the plateaus by the Darkside. Megatron had brought us out there to test our new defensive grid security system and Terrorsaur challenged the mauve tyrant. Megatron took the challenge, not realizing Terrorsaur's immense spike in physical power, and he was nearly killed as a result. Terrorsaur had taken command but, in the middle of giving us orders in regards to attacking the Maximals, he seemingly doubled over in pain. Despite the fact I'd been avoiding him for sometime, my spark twisted slightly in its chamber seeing the red flier looking like he was hurt. He left hastily after telling Tarantulus he was temporarily in charge. I wasn't sure why I felt the way I did but Tarantulus left before I could contemplate further. Scorponok commanded me to assist in gathering Megatron's dismantled parts so we could revive him. I only listened to the mechanic and collected our fallen tyrant's pieces in an attempt to get Terrorsaur off my mind.

It didn't work very well. I still thought about the scarlet flier when I salvaged our leader's parts. My mind was still caught up with Terrorsaur's image even when Megatron was revived.

Scorponok had filled him in on the situation after he came back online. I stood by the computer monitors watching for any sign of my red wingmate intently. I had made the scans necessary to attempt finding Terrorsaur but I accidentally found a floating mountain of energon instead. Scorponok made the connection that it was what Terrorsaur used to supercharge himself and Megatron seemed astounded when Scorponok filled him in. He also looked angered though, and even more so when the long range sensors on the Darkside's radar indicated said mountain had been destroyed. Megatron's temperamental rage seemed to peak greatly and it was something that concerned me. If one thing was for sure, it was that Terrorsaur had bitten off far more than he could possibly hope to chew.

I was worried for him. I continued to remain silent with my mind trying to piece things together as to why I felt as I did. That was until Terrorsaur returned.

The pterodactyl came from the western side of the base and swooped in, trying in his best power to keep his wings steady as he flew. It showed just how much energon he absorbed with his lack of coordination and it concerned me even further in regards to his wellbeing. The red aurora and sparking waves that once consumed his frame were gone, replaced by the shakiness, unsteadiness, and instability of someone who was coming down from being overcharged. It was painfully obvious from the shadow of the ship where Scorponok, Megatron, and I stood that he was trying his best not to drop out of the sky unconscious from the energy loss. It was then he landed in beast-mode, stumbling and nearly falling, that Megatron revealed himself to him. He stalked out of the darkness with the air of a predator floating around him.

"Well, well. Look who's back…" Megatron's voice was menacing and it hardened with every word, dripping with a silent promise that there would be much hurt in store for Terrorsaur. My spark twisted into a painful knot in my chest again and, for the first time since I could remember, I was scared. Not for myself - I was not the one in an immediate danger of being scrapped - but for Terrorsaur.

Said scarlet flier turned pale at the sight of Megatron walking towards him. Looking up at the tyrant with dull, glazed optics that reflected raw fear, he clumsily transformed to his robot-mode and stumbled backward. Terrorsaur's poor coordination made his footing fail and he stumbled. He tripped and landed hard on his back, barely managing to not hit his head against the cooled rock of the lava pits our ship had sunken into. Helpless and unable to escape Megatron's wrath, the fear that lanced in Terrorsaur's optics finally convinced me to move.

"Zztop!"

Just as our commander drew his beast-mode head back to bash Terrorsaur's head in, I lunged forward and grabbed Megatron's arm as tightly as I could before I yanked back hard.

Megatron seemed surprised, he turned to look at me immediately, and I managed to stumble forward and in front of Terrorsaur like some sort of pack animal protecting its ally. I suppose the sense here was the same seeing as I felt something for the red mech. As soon as I had managed to put myself between the two Predacons, I roughly let go of Megatron's arm. Megatron brought his hand back and immediately demanded to know why I was defying him. He screamed at me to get out of the way, ordered me really, but I stood my ground. Stupid little Waspinator had gotten in the way of his leader's plans to possibly terminate one of his own men and I was standing my ground even when our leader demanded I move. Through this, I managed to glare back at our commander with my deep blue optics. Terrorsaur had long since lost awareness behind me, lying somewhat on his side in a fetal position and trembling in the aftermath of the massive overcharge. I continued to look boldly at Megatron regardless, silently daring him to even try getting past me.

Megatron's temperament cooled somewhat. He lowered his fist and gave me the flat warning that Terrorsaur would most definitely be disposed of if the red flier even dared try pulling a stunt like he had again. Megatron gave me a stiffly said order to put Terrorsaur in the CR chamber and the tyrant turned away in a huff, Scorponok trailing behind him. The later of the two grumbled something about Terrorsaur and I being imbecilic fools but, despite the insult, it was something I found I cared very little for. I turned to look at my semiconscious partner and knelt down in front of his lightly shaking form.

I razzed and, unable to find words to address him by, I settled for the thing that came off the top of my head. "Terror-bot idiot."

With that, I hoisted him up. It took some work but I managed to get his left arm slung around my shoulder. I kept my grip on the deadweight flier by wrapping my right arm around his narrow waist. The touch would have looked gentle from an outsider's perspective, but the reality was that my grip was tight to keep him from slipping out of my grasp.

I dragged him to my room for three megacycles as a safety precaution, still uneasy about leaving him in a CR and defenseless. Megatron had seemed to calm down after I intervened with his attempted beating on the red flier but I was wary over the fact Megatron's mood swings were unpredictable. The trudge to my room was not very far - all I had to do was drag him into the base and go for about thirty yards to reach my room in the far back of the quarters hall - and I quickly entered the code for my room and dragged Terrorsaur in. It took sometime to get him on my berth and I sat on the end of it waiting for quite sometime. He groaned in his sleep every so often, but three megacycles passed and I hoisted him up again. It was slightly easier to get him to the command center with the best working CR chambers, but I dumped him in one and left with the hope Megatron wouldn't try anything. Two megacycles passed since then and I had been in the bridge when the lift to the tank began to rise.

When Terrorsaur regained consciousness, I was the first one to see him. The CR chamber platform rose to reveal the slightly shaken pterodactyl with a very prominent hangover - to an extent, I suppose it served him right - and I approached the platform cautiously. Terrorsaur glanced around wearily, trying to get a grip on his surroundings, and he turned to me when I cleared my throat. His head snapped up to look at me but it was when he realized it was me that he turn his head downcast. He had tried to not meet my eyes.

I spoke up. "Terror-bot is welcome."

"For what?" He shifted his head to look up to me, but he quickly stilled the movement. For whatever reason, he looked uncomfortable.

I razzed. "Terror-bot came back when floating mountain exploded. Was overcharged and Megatron went to slag Terror-bot. Wazzpinator stopped him."

Now it seemed I had his full attention. He looked up at me fully, looking between my eyes to continue avoiding my gaze. I stared in between his, though not without noticing the bewildered look shining within his optics. His voice was quiet. "What?"

"Wazzpinator saved Terror-bot from getting his butt kicked by Megatron. Terror-bot is welcome."

He blinked once, twice, and then he looked down and attempted to stand. He was unsteady on his feet at first but he declined help by swatting my hand away when I tried to assist him. He glanced over his shoulder towards the rest of the command center - everyone was at work, though even I noticed Megatron was glancing in our direction every few moments - and Terrorsaur mumbled quietly. "Let's talk this over somewhere more private. Your room is closest I think."

Not that having Terrorsaur in my room bugged me at all but I felt very shy about it having him in there while he was conscious. Predacons were not very sociable to begin with - we were second class citizens under the abusive rule of the first class Maximals after all - and I was very protective of my privacy. Then again, I still didn't know Terrorsaur all too well. There was still a threat that he would sabotage something of mine to maybe make Megatron point his aggressive tendencies in my direction instead of his… I suddenly found that thought to be silly a moment later. My gut told me Terrorsaur wouldn't do that.

Then I pointed out that my room was towards the very back of the quarters hall. This meant mine his was closest. He cursed quietly after I corrected him.

"…Fine. We'll head down to mine. Follow me."

He unsteadily lifted into the air and took off for the passage that lead to the hallway. I took off and followed after him. I noticed Megatron looking out after us until we entered the extra CR hold and past the medical room before we turned and corner and came upon the narrow corridor that had our assigned rooms. We passed the captain quarters flanking Terrorsaur's left - he lead the way while I followed - before we passed Scorponok's on the right and found ourselves in front of his. He entered the code on the access panel just beside the frame, too fast for my eyes to follow, and the door hissed open. He stepped in first and I followed him.

Something inside my spark shuddered. It was an alien feeling, one that made me gasp from the physical sensation it caused, but Terrorsaur seemed to think my sharp intake was from seeing the largeness of his room. "Its just a secondary cabinet quarters. Scorponok turned it down because it didn't have a big enough work station for him. Tarantulus didn't want it either, so I called it."

I could understand why Terrorsaur would have. His room was about a quarter larger than mine with a slightly larger berth by only a few inches in width. A desk sat on the opposite side of the room to face the right wall, but the window that took the space in between was huge. Its height was perhaps about the size of Rattrap, but the length stretched from the end of the berth's headrest to the edge of the desk. It was dark from the fact the sun had set a while back, but the light from the two moons shone through the reinforced space proof glass to cast its luminescence across the two pieces of furniture in a way that lit up the whole room. Terrorsaur cleared his voice and told the lights to activate. They did so immediately.

He walked across the room and sat on his recharge berth, holding his head in his hands and propping his elbows on his knees. It was obvious his headache was getting to him and I stood there stupidly waiting for an invitation to sit down. His voice was a low tenor when he spoke again. "You can take the roller."

"Thankzz," I murmured, crossing the room stiffly and taking a seat in the roller chair by the desk. I turned it around so I could face him.

Then he murmured. "What is it you want?"

"Eh?" I stared at him and blinked at the oddness of the question. It took me a moment to properly assess what he meant, but he cut me off when he presumed that I was stumped by his address.

He didn't look up when he spoke again. He continued to hold his head in his hands and he gently massaged his temples with his digits. "You know what I mean. Preds only do things for people if they want something. If you saved me from Megatron beating the slag out of me for my takeover stunt, then you must obviously want something. What is it?"

I razzed, hurt despite the fact I knew that he was right in regards to the typical on Predacon behavior. Being second class citizens, Predacons like us often had to survive off the streets for a good portion of our lives. None of us in the Darkside save for Megatron - who had become a very successful public speaker and lawyer - and Tarantulus - from only Primus knows where - had a decent living when we joined the crew. Scorponok had been living in a rescue shelter, one of very few that did not discriminate against Predacons, while Dinobot had come from an underground Predacon fighting league. As far as I knew, Terrorsaur had come from the Betacron slurs working as a part time pilot for mechanical shipping and a full time heavy loader for the machines he shipped. Myself… I would rather not talk about it. Not right away at least.

Terrorsaur cleared his throat.

I snapped back to attention and saw that he had lifted his head to look at me. His optics were wary and I quickly spoke up to fill in the silence. "Wazzpinator could see Terror-bot needed help. Wazzpinator was only one there that was willing to give it. Wazzpinator does not want…" I trailed off and thought about it for a moment. Now that I was really thinking it over, I realized the situation did possess potentially useful benefits. "…Maybe Wazzpinator have idea."

He raised an optic ridge. There was a look that flashed in his optics - fear maybe, but I was clueless as to why - before he spoke again. "What?"

I shrugged. "Maybe… maybe we'zz could watch each otherzz back? Wazzpinator could help Terror-bot get out of tight jams if he gets there and Terror-bot can salvage Wazzpinator if he blowzz up?"

He seemed to contemplate me, continuing to not directly meet my gaze, and he laughed dryly a moment later. It lacked humor, yes, but it wasn't an unwelcoming noise. He looked at the ground, shook his head, and then looked back up with a smirk. "I guess we sorta… got off on the wrong hand before. I wouldn't have avoided you so much if I knew you would ask me a favor and do something in return. You'd help me if Megs decided to chew me out?"

Simply chewing him out, admittedly, wouldn't be all Megatron would do to the red flier if the tyrant was angry enough. I just nodded and didn't voice my thoughts however. "As long as Terror-bot helped Wazzpinator to a CR chamber if Wazzpinator could not get there."

His smirk twitched at one corner, though that was it in regards to a reaction. He held his hand out a moment afterward. "Deal. So let's start over… the name's Terrorsaur."

I extended my own hand and grasped his in a firm handshake. "Wazzpinator."

And our hands, oddly enough, stayed interlocked for longer then they should have.

There was a change in the air of sorts, and we both looked into each other's face and accidentally locked eyes. His scarlet ones met mine, burning through me like a laser, before he suddenly let go. As a response, I did as well. We both pulled back in unexplained embarrassment and looked away from one another.

The deafening, wordless moment lasted only a cycle or so before I finally broke it forever.

I reached behind my head and rubbed it tentatively, buzzing nervously and razzing when I spoke. I didn't look at Terrorsaur when I said it, but I imagined he was looking at me with those strangely beautiful eyes that, for reasons beyond me, made my spark flutter in my chest when I thought about it. It was an oddly queer sensation and, to an extent, it bothered my logic circuits and made my emotion chips buzz almost annoyingly. "Zzo… friends?"

The silence was broken. Everyone noticed it.

When we went to start our duties the next morning, seemingly everyone in the control room gawked at our new behavior. We even requested to have the same shift times as one another. Though Terrorsaur didn't try a takeover attempt during the few weeks that followed, I was blown to scrap nearly everyday at some point or another. Surprisingly to me though, he held up on his half of our little deal. He would linger behind after battles when my parts littered the ground like confetti and he'd help pick me up when the coast was clear. He usually didn't wait for me by the CR chambers after the incidents but, as time went on, he would stay around the tubs more and more often to see me when I woke up. Patrols became a breeze and we'd often talk about random slag that came to mind. As time went on, the other Predacons seemed to become used to it and dismissed what we had as a close companionship.

They were right. We were becoming close. The rate of which was very quickly. Neither of us could really take the time to notice because we were still making eye contact and getting lost in one another's eyes.

Even with our 'friendship' taking to the air, we would still meet each other's optics and lock gazes. The frequency at which we did this didn't lessen, but I sometimes still got the notion that they were happening more and more often now. We would be conversing or maybe looking in each other's direction before, suddenly, I would find myself drowning in Terrorsaur's eyes like they were scarlet oceans with rip currents that pulled me deeper into their depths. He would usually break the contact, very often he did, but we said nothing to each other about it. A part of me hoped somewhat these occurrences would stop due to the awkwardness it slammed between us, but they only increased with our friendship. And our friendship was progressing very quickly.

The Darkside computers had detected a stasis pod landing in the northern most part of neutral territory. Megatron, of course, slapped a plan together moments after the pod crashed into the snowy plains. Because Optimus Primal was the only flier in the Maximal group, he would be the fastest in reaching the pod. Terrorsaur and I were sent to the Axalon to take him out before he could leave the base. Once he was down - Megatron emphasized on the word terminated, although I knew that he'd probably survive somehow with our already strained luck - my red companion and I would immediately report back to report before leaving to retrieve the pod ourselves. The rest of the Maximals would have to leave on foot, leaving maybe only one other to guard their base. That would be where Megatron, Scorponok, and Tarantulus took it over.

Which was how Terrorsaur and I found ourselves hiding behind a rock just beyond the Axalon's scanning range.

I razzed low, feeling uneasiness get to me. The sun had long since set several megacycles ago - it had also been four weeks since Terrorsaur and I had made our little deal and conjured our companionship - while peppers and crickets dominated the nighttime chorus. A wild cat of sorts roared somewhere in the jungle a little ways away, though the sound hadn't issued forth again since. Our breathing was shallow even though we knew full well the Maximals wouldn't detect us, but old habits have a tendency to die hard. We didn't want risk alerting them to our presence and getting shot at. "Wazzpinator glad he did not become cop. Stakeoutzz are boring."

Terrorsaur snorted next to me, his eyes locked on the ship's still form. "They don't allow Predacons to serve on the force anymore. Not since Proposition sixteen about three stellar cycles ago. It passed the ballot by ninety percent of the vote."

I buzzed and glanced over at him, blinking almost stupidly. I had never really kept up with our planet's politics at anytime in my life, so it never dawned on me that laws would change faster than I could keep up with.

Subsequent to the creation of the Pax Cybertronia - a peace treaty made by the Autobots, signed by them and the defeated Decepticons - the Great Reconfiguration had taken place. The change was made mainly to save energy resources by reducing the size of our kinds' trademark massive bodies, turning Autobots into Maximals and Decepticons into Predacons. The great old Cybertron cities like Iacon and Kale were built over to accommodate our new forms.

Then life turned into a living Pitt for us Predacons.

In spite of to the fact Optimus Prime had specifically put all his time and energy into making the Pax Cybertronia's focus on freedom being the right of all sentient beings, Autobot or Decepticon, Maximal or Predacon, he didn't live long enough to make sure that vision would come to light. The Swarm, a massive cloud of black mass that had been created in some freak lab accident, became a huge threat when it wiped out all the Transformers stationed on Earth by effectively eating them alive. The cloudlike mass immediately began a headlong course for Cybertron and Optimus left the planet in an attempt to stop it. Opening the Matrix ended up being the only solution, but the resulting light hitting the pure darkness of the Swarm's life source caused a massive explosion.

It became known as the day Optimus Prime died to save Cybertron. It was also the day any hope for the Predacon faction died as well.

The Pax Cybertronia, ironically, was purposely misinterpreted by the Maximal government. Freedom being the right of all sentient beings was still written in the Pax Cybertronia, true, but an amendment added onto it without Predacon citizen consent stated that 'freedom' was what laws didn't prohibit. It was a dirty move on the Maximal Elders' part but, then again, they could do whatever the Pitt they wanted to now. All because Optimus had saved all of Cybertron, the minority second class had to suffer as a consequence.

There were seven Maximal Elders in total, each representing one of the seven major cities of Cybertron, but many Predacons were upset over the fact their rights were on the verge of being stripped because of their ancestry. It was how the Tripredicus Council was created. Not that they were any help to the Predacon population of course. They didn't do anything to intervene with the bigoted and racist laws that started to pass. From the last I had kept track, Predacon and Maximal sparklings were segregated in schools.

In other words, politics sucked if you were a Pred. "Predaconzz not be police anymore?"

"Nope." My partner shook his head and looked his gun over. He checked the energy reserves for what had to be the millionth time within the past ten cycles. He was either very bored or very nervous. I could not tell which and he was talking again before I could determine. "It wouldn't have been such a landslide election if more of the Predacons had voted. There was even a criminal investigation involving a Maximal power group threatening Predacons who tried to vote 'no' on the proposition. It didn't go very far because it was disregarded by the Elders."

I made a low hiss in the back of my throat. "Optimuzz would've been upset. Prime-bot would've never allowed thizz to happen to us."

"Maybe," Terrorsaur drawled. He straightened out and his voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "Look."

I did. Standing on the Axalon's half lowered entry platform was Dinobot, hunched down low and scanning the landscape with a hard expression. I cursed softly, feeling stupid for not thinking that the Predacon tratior would be suspicious of the all too silent landscape. I held my breath and Terrorsaur did as well. After several tense moments, the ex-Predacon's eyes flashed a dark red before the lift began to rise back up into the base. After the hiss of the lift's mechanisms silenced, peepers and crickets resumed their night song without further interruption.

I muttered. "Megatron wantzz to restart Great War so we can get our freedom back… But what happen if we'zz loose?"

Terrorsaur sighed. "We go extinct."

There was movement from the Axalon's lift again and Dinobot was still on it. This time though, Optimus Primal was with him. The platform lowered to the ground completely and the ape took off into the air. Gripping our guns in a death hold, my partner and I tensed immediately just as Optimus turned so he could address Dinobot. His back was facing us.

Terrorsaur hissed. "Now."

We both fired, but the sounds of our guns going off did nothing to alert Optimus to our presence. My gun had a faster projectile speed than Terrorsaur's and, surprisingly, I hit my target head-on. Optimus cried out and Dinobot shouted something about an ambush. By another stroke of luck, I shot his rotator shield out of his hands.

"Oooooh!" I ducked back down behind the rock, my optics alit with enthusiasm, and Terrorsaur looked over at me with equally lit optics. I grinned and slapped my gun to my chest. "Wazzpinator got him!"

My partner screeched, letting a grin nearly cut his face in half. "Watch this!"

His expression suddenly darkened, his optics narrowing, and his shoulder mounted cannons unfolded to snap into a ready position. The mechanisms inside whirred and my partner stood. I was afraid he'd get shot by Dinobot due to the fact he had exposed himself - Dinobot saw him and dropped into a fighting stance just then - but my partner shot out a pair of twin blasts at Primal. The Maximal leader seemed to recover from being stunned courteous of me, but he was hit square in the chest a moment later. The gorilla mech was blown back with a serious wound decorating his chest. He still lived I was sure, but if we could hit him again…

Terrorsaur squawked, ducking back down and grinning. "Yes!"

I razzed. "Good shot, Terror-bot!"

Dinobot finally shot back.

There was a flash of green and an explosion over my head. Dinobot had shot the cliff face my wingmate I had flanking our right but there was only a small explosion. Off guard and thinking the attack was poorly calculated, I looked away just before I heard rock rubbing against rock. I looked back up at the cliff again to see Dinobot hadn't missed his intended target at all. He had been aiming for a large boulder up there in an attempt to take the both of us out. I was unlucky enough to be right underneath the damn thing.

I had no time to move before the mass slammed down onto me. Pain ripped across my now crushed body and I blacked out for two clicks.

I regained consciousness when the sound of an explosion woke me up. My sight cleared and I saw debris from the boulder raining down on me. My audios rang from the gunshot that made it explode but, either way, at least I wasn't stuck underneath it anymore. Terrorsaur had shot it to get it off me I supposed, but that was something that caught me off guard. When I was usually scrapped, Terrorsaur would retreat and wait until the coast was clear before retrieving me.

My thoughts were broken when I suddenly suffered from an energon surge. My field dampeners had been damaged and I could not withstand the energon radiation in the area anymore. With the crackling of blue electricity dancing around my frame, I struggled to move. "Oh no, Wazzpinator in trouble…"

Terrorsaur appeared over me, his optics like the stars that shined in the black sky overhead. He sounded oddly breathless, almost as if he had been scared over something and was getting over it. "We did our job, now let's go! Back to base!" He extended his hand to me, the same one I shook with him when we reintroduced ourselves to reignite our partnership. I reached out in an almost dreamlike state to grab a hold of his wrist. He grabbed mine in a vice hold as a response before glancing up over the cover we had taken. He ducked back down and braced his legs before upping the power of his antigravs so they maxed out. He pushed off the ground and leapt into the air with a screech.

"Cowards! Face me!" Dinobot's battle cry didn't fall on deaf ears and Terrorsaur had to zip out of the way of the raptor's laser fire. I razzed, gripping to my partner for dear life and still sparking from my injuries. In spite of Dinobot's furious laser fire, we managed to get out of range of the Axalon a few moments later. The nighttime song of peepers and crickets was replaced by cold evening wind rushing past our bodies.

Terrorsaur was panting, but he still had enough resolve to look down at me. "You okay?"

"Wazzpinator fine," I said. I winced from my injuries but I felt confident I wouldn't have to be in the CR for more than a few cycles to repair them. I watched the ground rush by beneath us before looking back up towards my friend. "Why did Terror-bot do that?"

"Do what?" He sounded distracted. He was looking up and away from me now.

I razzed in response. "Terror-bot came back for Wazzpinator before fight was over. Why Terror-bot do that?"

He didn't respond right away. I was tempted to press for the information I wanted, but there was an odd look in his upturned face that made my question catch in my throat. His face was serene in the moonlight, paler than usual, but his optics were enhanced by this tenfold. The white of his face outlining them made his eyes look to be an even more brilliant scarlet than the rest of his armor. Either way, he responded back to me after sometime. "…I, uh, need you for part two of the mission. No way in the Pitt I'll go alone and risk getting outnumbered by the Maximals if they show at the last cycle. And, um, it would be too risky to retrieve you later."

"But we'zz didn't destroy Ape-bot," I countered. There was no way the Maximal leader had been destroyed from the damage we did to him so Megatron, I figured, would be very upset over this failure.

He snorted. "He can go to the Pitt for all I care. You alright?"

I reminded him that he had already asked me. He cursed softly and turned away, not speaking to me until we returned back to the base.

Terrorsaur's new behavior had me puzzled. Not only had he asked if I was okay once, but he had done so twice. The thought was alien to me since no one ever honestly seemed to care about my wellbeing before. There was only one other that had, but my mother had been dead for a very long time. Then the fact Terrorsaur risked his own hide to retrieve me during a battle… It left me mildly disgruntled that I could not come to a conclusion regarding his abrupt change in demeanor. That, and the fact that I had not realized how pure of a scarlet his eyes were until now.

Upon returning to the base, I spoke again. "Thank you."

Terrorsaur didn't look at me. He slung my arm over his shoulder so I could walk with assistance into the base. I could not see his face in the dark all too well, but his eyes glowed like stars. "You're welcome."

I sat in the CR tank for three cycles before we went into the control center to report back. Tarantulus and Scorponok stood on hover pads positioned beside Megatron from an angle, and Terrorsaur and I jumped onto hover pads of our own. We brought them in front of Megatron and my scarlet partner reported back. I still had minor dents in my armor from not staying in the CR long enough to do a complete patch up and Terrorsaur was still panting from bringing me back. His voice was a collected tenor, but the tone wavered just enough to let me know he was nervous. It was something only I seemed to pick up on of course, but I felt oddly concerned over my friend's being. Protectively so, actually.

"…We hit him pretty hard, but Dinobot kept us from killing him because he knocked a boulder onto Waspinator. I had to retrieve him but we were still in danger of being overrun. We had to make a tactical retreat."

"So, Optimus Primal was not destroyed," Megatron said slowly. He had seemed surprised when my partner mentioned saving me during the fight - the way the tyrant's mauve optics lit up was an immediate indication of this - but he recovered his usual mask of composure just as quickly. He leaned back in his throne. "You disappoint me Terrorsaur, yes."

"But, we… we knocked him half to scrap!" Terrorsaur's voice stuttered ever so slightly and I could tell he was getting very fidgedy. He blinked and his voice rose to cover his mild panic. "No way he'll be flying anywhere!"

Megatron looked ready to interject, his face annoyed and his mouth twisting into an ugly frown, but I cut in before the tyrant could fit anything in. Terrorsaur had turned to look at me too, looking for my support, but I entered my input quickly. "Yes! We will beat them to the stasis pod eazzily!"

Megatron dropped the subject regarding our failure but he ordered us to carry out our second task… Going to the crash site of the pod to ensure the robot inside was reprogrammed into a Predacon. The thought of trying to reprogram a protoform miffed me, but Terrorsaur seemingly read my mind and spoke to me about it when we got outside the Darkside to fly north. "It can't be too hard," he said when we gained altitude and felt the air grow steadily colder. "Tarantulus loaned me one of his prototype chips. All we have to do is slip the thing into the programmer dock and take out the Maximal one out before the pod scans for a beast-mode."

"What if Maximals beat us to the pod?" I inclined my head to look at him.

He seemed to shrug it off. "We fly faster than they can run."

But, of course, this claim was somehow jinxed. We had reached the pod first like Terrorsaur said we would - the both of us ended up finding the Maximals at one point trying to cross a natural bridge as a shortcut to the pod, though my partner and I dealt with them by destroying their only means across the icy ravine - but the hatch was smashed in from the crash. My wingmate had tried to open the lid while I zapped at the seam with my optical lasers. The stasis pod seemed comatose but there would be no telling if it survived the crash or not unless we could get it open. Our first priority was to make sure the protoform was still alive since it would be wasteful to attempt reprogramming a dead being.

In the amount of time it took us to nearly get it open, the Maximals showed up.

Megatron had followed suit thankfully, putting the odds in Predacon favor once more, but the tide turned when our leader attempted to make the Maximals back off by leveling his dinosaur head cannon at two Siberian tigers nearby. The Maxis did back off, yes, but they did so only just long enough for Terrorsaur and I to open the pod and find it empty. The protoform had upped and left, already being a Maximal, and one of the two tigers abruptly transformed and attacked.

In hindsight, we got our skid plates handed to us on a silver platter. Our first pod hunting expedition came to an abrupt end and, to say the least, it was far from pleasant.

As soon as Megatron, Terrorsaur, and I returned to the base, the first thing my wingmate and I did was to sit on one of the overheads of the deck overlooking the lava pits below. The heat that rose from the liquid fire was welcoming in comparison to the bitter cold we had to endure for over a megacycle, so sitting by that warmth was the only part of the day I thought satisfying. Though Scorponok and Tarantulus had long since submerged themselves into CR chambers - according to Megatron, the expedition our leader lead against the Maximal base went wary just nearly as soon as it started - it left only the tyrant with Terrorsaur and me in the control center. Megatron didn't seem to be minding my partner and me though. We were to ourselves at the moment.

An aspect of our relationship that came out was that we were… being physical now.

Terrorsaur lazily leaned up against me while my arm draped over his shoulders in a comforting gesture. The whole while, the scarlet mech shivered violently from the cold invading his rather ironically cold-blooded frame. Even though my own body was more accustomed to warmer weather as well, my beast-mode could at least adapt and survive in harsh conditions. Terrorsaur's, on the other hand, could not. His pterodactyl beast-mode was extinct for a reason after all. The warmth from the lava rose upward and encased us in its heat while our feet dangled over the edge of the deck.

"That could have gone better," Terrorsaur muttered in an offhand tone.

I nodded and shuddered slightly. "At least Wazzpinator not get blown up this time. Terror-bot and Wazzpinator not have to spend more time in freezing hellhole."

He laughed, a harsh and dry sound from his rattling frame, and we sat there together for a long time. After that and as more time went on, we got even closer. Predacons usually were not ones for physical contact but we went as far as to occasionally set a hand on the other's shoulder from time to time. There would be friendly nudges and playful punches in the upper arm too, but there was still one thing that always stood out from the rest. There would be times during fights that I would go down but, before waiting for the fight to end or for the coast to clear, Terrorsaur would dive after me to get me out of harms way. His excuse for the change in style was because I was his friend and that going at the end of a fight would be too risky. Something in the back of my head screamed this was only half true. I wanted to ask him what on Cybertron he could possibly want to hide but I was afraid he'd think me annoying or inconsistently stupid. Either way, I never really got the chance.

We kept making eye contact. These times it was more intense than ever.

If it wasn't queer enough before, it certainly was now. We could be making fun of Cheetor or Scorponok for all we cared but then one of us would avert our gaze just enough that we would lock gazes. It was when our eyes would met that we would go silent, but it was also Terrorsaur that would tear his optics away first. Trying to reconstruct our conversation after these frequent occurrences was futile at most and new subject would emerge in an attempt to ignore the awkwardness of our unannounced competitions. It wasn't as if this mattered though, we would meet gazes once more later on no matter how hard we tried to avoid it.

Our silence was broken, but something else wanted to be broken as well. Something far deeper. It was something that I wanted to ask Terrorsaur about in regards to why we kept staring into one another's optics the way we did, but I thought it would be as equally dumb a question as to why he was suddenly more determined about saving my sorry hide when I was scrapped. I would have, but then Terrorsaur broke. Quite literally speaking, actually.

While I was seemingly the Maximals' favorite target for fights, I only usually lost a limb once every week or so. I could easily salvage it later and reattach it with Terrorsaur's help on occasion, but I hadn't yet suffered being blasted apart all at once. That was what happened to Terrorsaur when another stasis pod crashed down in the desert wastelands of our southern territory. The pod had come down quickly, rapidly descending through the atmosphere like a meteor - though, in hindsight, this comparison wasn't too far off - and Megatron had sent Scorponok and our new recruit, Blackarachnia, to retrieve it while putting my partner and me on standby. The tyrant had opted to keep Tarantulus at the base for reasons I could easily understand. No one wanted another potential Blackarachnia in our ranks. Considering the way Tarantulus programmed the widow's protoform, it was only a matter of whether he got his hands on another pod to do it again.

Of course, both Blackarachnia and Scorponok became indisposed of rather quickly. In other words, it was time to bring in the flyboys.

Terrorsaur and I veered off course from trying to form a perimeter around the crash site towards the epicenter of the sector. Megatron had contacted us moments before and filled us in that he had received twin distress signals from Blackarachnia and Scorponok. As soon as we entered the main drop zone, I flew ahead to see where the stasis pod was. A blast nicked me from behind before I could get far enough to even see it though. Cheetor had been hidden well in the dusty landscape and I would have never seen him if he hadn't shot at me. Terrorsaur spotted the freckled Maximal and he opened fire just as I did. The cat shifted to beast-mode when he apparently suffered an energon surge and he ran off, darting in and out among the tall canyon rocks.

Terrorsaur flew up to me and punched me in the arm. I looked to him with a questioning look and, just barely averting my gaze so we wouldn't lock optics, he made a gesture for me to go ahead so he could cut the cat off on the other side. I nodded back and went back to firing at the cheetah when Terrorsaur swerved away from me. I was in pursuit of the Maximal cat for another few cycles before he leapt over an energon geyser. I thought nothing of it - it didn't look immediately active at first glance - but then it erupted as soon as I was directly over it. Whether it was bad luck or just horrid timing was beyond me. I was unconscious from the energon surge clicks later. I regained consciousness half a cycle afterward upon hearing a loud screech that didn't sound like it belonged to Terrorsaur.

I groaned and sat up from where I was laying in the ground, glancing about wearily in an attempt to get a grip on my surroundings. My vision turned to static from the energon radiation and the still lingering surges forced me to transform. The pain of the exposure wasn't what had awoken me however. The screech of an eagle had.

Then there was another. This time louder and followed by a whoosh that carried across the landscape like a voice would echo in a cave. My radio was temporarily down - my online diagnostics told me it would reactivate in two or three cycles at most - and Terrorsaur wasn't anywhere in immediate sight. I took off into the air and flew towards the sound. My radar blipped to life telling me that the stasis pod was in the immediate area and I looked down to see the pod.

Terrorsaur stood there beside the shell, his face conflicted, while Rhinox seemed to be facing him down. "Still feeling lucky, Terrorsaur?"

My mind was wracked when I saw the pod was empty. With Rhinox's question directed towards my partner and the empty pod beside him, I came to the conclusion that the protoform hadn't been reprogrammed into a Predacon. Terrorsaur had arrived at the pod too late and, on another note altogether, had never seen the oversized falcon's shadow cast itself over him until it was too late.

The brown and tan feathered hawk, sporting a pair of calculating gold eyes, dive bombed my partner from behind and hooked her talons into his shoulders. Taken by surprise, Terrorsaur dropped his pistol and squawked just as the female launched into the air with him. He grunted and tried reaching up to grab her legs, but he could not move his arms high enough to find purchase. I stared in silent terror as the new Maximal flew towards a canyon face and, before I could scream out for Terrorsaur to get his attention, she let go and sent him smashing into the wall. Terrorsaur had seen it at the last possible click of course, but he didn't have enough time to react. The female took off into the air over the canyon edge and Terrorsaur crashed to the ground. He stood a moment later, shaking his head to clear his scrambled senses, before he screeched furiously. His cannons unfolded themselves from their subspaces, he turned sharply on his heel, and he took off after her with his guns blazing.

For the first few clicks of the fight, it was more of a chase. The femme dodged blasts my wingmate shot, flying behind several of the tall rocks that jutted from the ground to avoid getting hit, but Terrorsaur became more and more determined the more he missed. The eagle flittered behind another rock but, this time, Terrorsaur's aim was accurate enough to cause damage. He hadn't hit her directly but the pulse blast Terrorsaur fired hit the rock she dived behind. Rubble from the exploding stone hit her - she screeched in pain when this happened - and a triumphant smirk crossed Terrorsaur's features. Her edge lost, the femme flew into the air and gave another cry before diving down towards the ground again. The speed was too fast for me to follow her movements and, the way Terrorsaur stopped in midair where the female had been moments before, it appeared as if he had lost her too. He snapped his head back in forth trying to locate her, slightly flustered, before he looked upward slightly and gasped. I followed his gaze.

The hawk flew down, her figure obscured by the setting sun, and her voice reached my audios. "Airrazor… Maximize!"

In a disgusting use of human terms, the slag hit the fan.

Her body shifted and transformed, revealing her small and almost lithe body, and she propelled herself straight for Terrorsaur. Flying some distance away, I watched as Terrorsaur's own body launched itself at the femme. It looked as though they were playing chicken, but neither looked as though they were willing to back out. With a crash, they collided with one another and went into a spiraling freefall that I clocked to be ninety seven miles a megacycle. I watched horrorstruck as they fell towards the ground at an increasing velocity, both trying to more or less strangle each other before Terrorsaur suddenly shoved her off. It dawned on me that he could have crashed into the ground with her on the bottom, killing her instantly - he had the physical strength to pull it off - but he didn't. It caught me off guard that he wouldn't use such an obvious advantage.

They both swooped away from one another, Terrorsaur noticeably less gracefully than the hawk Maximal. Both were around a hundred feet from the canyon floor, putting maybe ten feet away from one another while they faced their opposing rival. Terrorsaur's cannons were still drawn, giving him an edge right away, and he fired twice. Airrazor ended up being too graceful, dodging every one of his blasts before whipping about and aiming her arm at him. A compartment above her wrist flipped open and she fired her own pulse blast. Her aim was dead accurate and Terrorsaur had no time to avoid it. The shot hit him square in the chest, blasting off his left shoulder cannon in the process, and the whiplash made him turn to her midair.

As soon as I saw his back turned, I knew what was going to happen. You never turn your back on an opponent and, as a response to seeing what was about to happen, my spark dropped.

He wasn't able to regain his scrambled senses in time and she blasted him in the back again before he could turn to face the damned femme flier. The shot sent him spiraling towards the ground and, to my horror, she open fired again with another set of weapons. Females with wrist mounted automatic missile darts, I decided then, were a very bad thing. Especially when Terrorsaur ended up getting hit by the shots with full force.

I had dealt with having parts blasted off me during a fight, but to see Terrorsaur become completely disassembled was horrifying. It had been frightening to see Megatron blown apart in a similar way when Terrorsaur attempted to take over the Predacons, but it was so much more awful for me seeing it happen to my partner. He literally fell apart and his scream was the loudest I had ever heard since I met him. One of Airrazor's shots went astray and it struck him in the back of the head, blasting it clear off his shoulders. His shriek had been instantly silenced and his battered parts smashed into the dusty ground with, to me, earsplitting thuds. The last component of his to hit the ground was his head.

I don't think Terrorsaur's scream, however, was nearly as loud as mine.

I supposed I was in shock at first, but then there was a glass shattering shriek that nearly made my own audios implode on themselves. It took me a moment to realize it was me, but I could not find myself lingering on the agonized scream I made. The sound of my deafening shriek of fear was swallowed up but the cliffs and gorges - Airrazor had long since gone back to Rhinox without seemingly hearing a thing - but I found that I did not care. I flew down towards my comrade's remains at a speed I could not keep tabs on and landed clumsily. I stumbled on all six of my beast-mode's legs before hastily transforming among the debris, calling for any help on my open Predacon frequency. I was frustrated and panicked when I didn't get an immediate response but it dawned on me that Blackarachnia and Scorponok wouldn't come to help unless the Maximals cleared out. They had sent a distress signal after all, so it was obvious I was on my own.

When I spoke into the radio though, my voice trembled. After I first noticed it, it shook even more and I shuddered all over. I was scared.

With a hiss, I deactivated the radio and felt frustrated tears build up behind my eyes. My wingmate was down, possibly dead if I didn't salvage him, and no one was answering my hails. I had every damn right to be upset since it was my only friend that was shot. I'd be on my own if he died. I knew I'd never be able to live with that if it happened, so I whipped my head around to try locating his torso. If his spark was still online, it would be there. If it wasn't…

No. I didn't want to think about that.

I turned on my heel and scanned the area, desperately trying to pick out the red and maroon speckled torso that belonged to my dismantled partner. I found it, seeing the dark black burn where Airrazor's firepower had damaged him, and I went running. I could not keep track of my own movements but perhaps I had been sprinting. I don't know and probably never will. All that mattered was my racing thoughts. He had to be alive. He needed to be. I dropped down on my knees beside the battered looking piece of my friend's body and I dipped my fingers underneath the plating. In any other situation however, it would have been borderline rape for me to do so. One's chest plate was the housing for one's spark, but the situation was too dire for me to hesitate. He had to live.

Looking at the shape of the littered body parts around me, I thought all I was going to get was a mangled interior and a wet pool of energon with no spark in sight.

But I did find it.

The glow from Terrorsaur's chest when I forced the plate open was dim, but it was there. The silverish sparking sphere of light and everything that was the essence of Terrorsaur pulsed weak with stun. Nevertheless, it still beat its steady rhythm. The spark for the most part was white but I saw specks of red flittering around the atom like center. Had he not been in shock and not in thirty different parts littered about the dusty earth, it dawned on me that his spark would have been a starry scarlet. Regardless, he was alive.

I tore my optics away from Terrorsaur's literal soul and gently closed his beaten chest plates. Making sure to strain my scanners so that they could keep tabs on his life functions, I stood and began to collect his parts as quickly as I could bring myself to. I dragged the components over to his broken upper body and, after a long list of items had been collected, I finally brought myself to retrieve his head. Terrorsaur's face was frozen in a silent, pain ridden scream that was near unbearable to look at on my part. I froze at the sheer agony plastered on my decapitated ally's expression but I forced myself to recover. After a moment of contemplating the pained features, I gently held Terrorsaur's head in my left hand while I very carefully used my other one to ease his jaw closed. The horrified and pained air that resided in the crimson flier's face was ease almost immediately despite the fact his expression remained as tense as before.

I caressed my scarlet star's pale cheek and the crest on his forehead lightly with my thumb and index finger. This was the first time I referred to Terrorsaur in this sense, nor was it the last.

I walked my friend's head back to his torso before retrieving the rest of the parts and setting them down. Recollecting his pieces had taken shorter than I thought it would - maybe somewhere under fifteen cycles, maybe slightly more - and I did a quick sweep to make sure I hadn't forgotten something important before returning to my partner's side. There would be no way in the Pitt that I could put him back together myself - I'd probably screw something up if I tried, and I didn't wasn't willing to risk any further harm onto my wingmate - so I shifted to beast-mode and stood protectively over the prone, mangled body like a watch dog. My wings and antenna went erect and I kept my scanners focused solely on Terrorsaur. His spark was still under stress so, with a determined sense of hope, I put all my focus into making sure he would survive for awhile longer. I prayed one of the others would show to help reassemble him so we could transport him back to the Darkside.

I was still scared for him, yes, so I put all of my attention in making sure nothing could hurt him anymore than the day already had. I had been so focused on him that, ten cycles later, I never heard Scorponok arrive.

Blackarachnia had been missing at the time - something that I knew would bother Megatron greatly - when the Predacon mechanic approached me from behind. The sun had been continuing its descent into the horizon, dipping behind the towering pillars of stone so they cast long, crooked shadows across the landscape. That was when Scorponok made a slight noise. I had not realized someone was behind me and, instantly, I whipped around to retaliate. A mental image of Airrazor popped to mind, making blind, pure hate rip through my systems when I viciously snarled at Scorponok. My beast-mode's muzzle twisted into a menacing grimace, my blue eyes turned to narrow slits, my mandibles went open in a deadly manner, and my stinger and wings went erect. The way I was crouched down over Terrorsaur's body, razzing and sneering, I would not have been surprised if someone mistook me for a feral animal protecting something valuable.

That "something" was Terrorsaur.

Scorponok let out a frightened shriek at my reaction, stumbling backwards on his beast-mode's legs. I hastily recovered realizing that I had snapped at him. I quickly made myself drop into a less menacing stance, feeling mixed emotions of relief, thankfulness of receiving assistance, and frustration that no one had come sooner replace the hate. I trembled slightly from the adrenaline rush I had prior and I could still see Airrazor's image flashing in every corner of my sight. Needless to say, I was sure I would loathe her for the rest of my life.

I hated her for hurting my scarlet star. Thinking about Terrorsaur in that sense still caught me by surprise but, disturbingly enough, it felt more natural this time. I was somewhat bothered by it.

Scorponok wasn't a medic but he didn't need to be told twice about what needed to be done. He got to work right away, reattaching the mangled limbs back to Terrorsaur's immobile torso. He had me watch Terrorsaur's vitals, namely those regarding the stability of his spark while he repaired him. Although Scorponok pretty much hated Terrorsaur to the Pitt and back, Megatron's second was seemingly too engrossed in his emergency repairs to care.

My show of aggression earlier had scared any thoughts of abandoning Terrorsaur well out of his head. That I was fine with, but the fact I reacted the way I had still disturbed me to an extent.

Scorponok mumbling about Terrorsaur's body miraculously not having energon surges broke me from my thoughts sometime later. He was doing the last of the repairs and I watched him as he delicately wired Terrorsaur's head back into place. These wouldn't even be close to all the necessary patch ups Terrorsaur would need of course. All the nasty burns around his back torso assured of that but at least his body being stable again would hopefully assist his spark in not burning itself out… hopefully. Terrorsaur would be agony if he regained consciousness seeing as there were still internal damages that needed to be assessed. For one thing, his neck gears would need to be repaired - by organic standards, it was the equivalent of broken - his limb joints would need to be carefully rewired and, if the pain was great enough already, it would stress Terrorsaur's spark back to the point of exhaustion, straining itself to a dangerous level once more.

The sun was almost completely down and only half a megacycle had passed since Scorponok arrived. Terrorsaur's head was almost entirely rewired so the mech's core processor could begin allowing his body to do minor self repairs. As soon as his head was completely back in place, he was thrown back into the world of consciousness.

Terrorsaur let out a scream of bloody murder.

Scorponok fell back on his aft in surprise and I was instantly shushing and coaxing Terrorsaur, stroking one of the scarlet flier's pale cheeks and the crest on his forehead. His scream wasn't nearly as loud as it had been when he was gunned down but it still held an almost hysteric air to it. The pain was there, yes, but there was also a sharp fear that went with it. As gently as I could, my spark beating in my chest erratically from a renewed sense of adrenaline, I tried to cradle his form against me. He shrieked, trying to get away from me, and it came to my mind that he was completely out of his loop delusional. He needed to get to a CR chamber immediately.

Scorponok pulled himself back up to further asses the now abruptly conscious pterodactyl but, by the time the scorpion was back on his feet, I had already hoisted Terrorsaur up my arms. I hadn't even realized I had done so until I felt my partner cling to me blindly. His entire form was shaking was and I cradled him against my chest like he was a sparkling. I had ordered Scorponok to look around for more of the red mech's parts, afraid that maybe I had forgotten something important, but then I did something I hadn't expected myself to do.

"Thank you."

I was sure Scorponok wasn't able to hear me over Terrorsaur's agonized shrieks, but the mechanic seemed to understand what it was I was saying. He nodded curtly, not putting too much of an effort into it, before he shifted to beast-mode. Scorponok had looked somewhat shocked at being ordered to do something by me, but he got to work looking for extra bits of the Predacon all the same. I'll presume it had to do with me snarling at him. Before I could see him scurry off, I had taken to the air flying towards the Darkside at a speed I thought not physically possible.

With the added roar of the wind rushing past my audios, Terrorsaur's screams kept myself from thinking. Trying to ease his obvious discomfort was near impossible considering the velocity we were going, and the fact I could not speak to him without hearing what I was saying. The sun glinted off our forms, making Terrorsaur's face look less pale than it was, but his scarlet hide was still brilliant. This was only if you ignored the hideous laser burn marks on his frame but I found myself drawn to his eyes instead. They were snapped closed while his face contorted from pain and, with a strange sense of calm, it dawned came to me that his optics were probably the same color of his spark.

Terrorsaur suddenly sobbed.

I was caught off guard by it and I stopped murmuring to him in an attempt to grip at the reality of what I'd just heard. He mewled, moisture building up underneath his optical lids, and he cried. Thin tears streamed down his scuffed features and he turned his head to bury it in my chest. He still kept screaming but I heard him bawl all the same. I was momentarily terrified that I had hurt him further - I was horrified to see his neck loll the way it had when he turned his head to face my chest - but then he gripped my shoulders hard enough to cause dents. "Oh Primus, don't let me fall, don't let me fall, don't let-"

He kept sobbing and all I could do was hold him. I kept cooing back at him, telling him that he was alright and that everything would be fine over and over, but it was then I learned three things very important about Terrorsaur. One was that my partner was afraid of heights. The way he broke away from Airrazor mid fall was a giveaway, and the way he was bawling against me while I flew back to the Darkside was another signal. Two was that it was physically possible for my partner to be afraid of something and to actually wield the ability to shed tears. The crimson flier - a now ex-Seeker at that - had always come across to me as bring near invincible. He certainly was no coward - his attempted takeover of the Predacons supported this fact - and I always saw him as being stronger than I could ever dream to be. He had as much skill as he did suave, so imagining someone like him tearing up over anything was an imagination I could not bring myself to envision.

Thirdly? I was disturbed by the fact I enjoyed having him this close to me. I would have enjoyed it more if he wasn't hurt and writhing in agony. The thought being in this close of a proximity to him made my spark do flips in my chest. I was bothered by it greatly.

His shrieks lessened in volume for a moment and he seemed to almost listen to me. I forced my thoughts aside and continued to hold him close, telling him everything would be fine and that I wouldn't let anything happen to him again. Never.

Though the southern sector was usually a half megacycle away from the Darkside, it took me no more than seven cycles to reach the base at the speed I was going. I was sure anyone in dark shuttle would be able to hear Terrorsaur almost a mile outside the ship but I found myself caring about them very little. The sun had long since set, painting the sky a deep vermillion and dark blue black. I was too busy to bother looking for any red stars in the sky. The only star I cared about at the moment was the scarlet one in my arms. I was exhausted but my speed never lessened in intensity. Terrorsaur's perfect face was contorted in a twisted combination of searing pain and fear from his apparent phobia of heights. Even though he could not see through his closed eyes, I knew he was still afraid of falling. The pterodactyl Transformer kept sobbing and clutching to me like he was going to fall and hit the ground below. He still thought he was going to strike the ground the way he did when Airrazor shot him down.

I was going to make that wrenched femme pay for this. I was going make her fall just like she had done to Terrorsaur. I would kill her too.

Through Terrorsaur's deliriousness and screeching, I was still talking through it, whispering comfortingly back to the other mech in a blind attempt to calm him. It would seem like Terrorsaur wasn't listening but, the way he tried to relax his body for succinct moments, it seemed as though he desperately was.

I entered the Darkside and I could see Megatron's form on his throne out of the corner of my vision. I paid him no heed. Terrorsaur was my main concern now. I would deal with the punishment for the failure of our mission later when my partner was in the tank. Terrorsaur's stiff form trembled and he screamed again just as I kicked the button on the side of the chamber with a forceful blow, causing the CR platform to rise. Once it was fully up, I jumped on to let myself and Terrorsaur sink into the replenishing liquid when the lift began to descend again. Terrorsaur's loud screams were reduced to nothing more than a gasp and choked sobs as soon as the warm fluid came in contact with his body. He clutched me tightly and he became silent by the time the fluid had engulfed him completely. My audios still rang but I continued to hold him in my arms. His expression went from agonized and contorted to dazed and almost peaceful. I held him close to the surface of the CR gel to watch his face.

Though now dull due to his offlining systems, his optics were still scarlet stars. I was surprised at how right it felt calling him that.

"Scarlet star," I murmured, though he didn't seem to really notice. His eyes went dark and his head began to roll back. Recharge had claimed him and I reached a hand to cup the back of his head so he would not injure it further. I kneeled down and set him at the bottom of the tank before standing back up again. I looked down at his prone form lying at the bottom of the pool, feeling a small bit of reluctance to leave poke at me, before I forcibly shrugged it off and clambered out of the restoration chamber. I dropped down beside it and looked up in Megatron's direction.

I had been expecting a retaliation of some kind, though I was pleasantly - and not so much so - surprised to not receive it. Instead, Megatron stared at me in silence as if he we noting everything I did in great detail. Little details, maybe, though I wasn't sure. We were silent, staring at one another before it became too much for me to handle. I turned and left, fearing a retribution that surprisingly never came. I wasn't questioned as I left the room but I was watched closely. It wasn't as if I cared however. I was glad Terrorsaur was safe. I turned in for the night and was unconscious before I even hit my berth. The last thing to cross my mind was Terrorsaur.

It had been two days since Terrorsaur was inserted into the CR pool and the repairs were slow going. I presumed this was because of the sheer amount of shock he went through, but I'm not much of a doctor or medic to know for sure. I was nearly always by that damned CR tub, constantly watching the reading percent of the progress he made in recovery whenever I wasn't watching his occasionally shifting form at the bottom of the tank. Almost. Considering I was now the only flier working at full capacity, I had taken up both Terrorsaur's tasks alongside my own. I didn't mind the longer fly patrol as much as the excruciatingly long monitor duties however. I never wanted to leave Terrorsaur for longer than I had to.

I went on an extended patrol that morning. It was one that stuck to my memory very clearly because it involved the first time I tried to engage Airrazor for revenge.

I had perched in a tree, resting from flying, and my thoughts had wandered back to Terrorsaur for perhaps the millionth time during that one patrol when I saw Tigertron's white framed hide run by. In the cover of the tree branches, I watched as he galloped past and I was snapped from my thoughts. Engaging him seemed like a good idea at the time - it would hopefully clear my head of any thoughts regarding my down wingmate - so I took off after the cat, not tailgating the feline so much as to loose my element of surprise. Tigertron seemed too caught up in where he was going to notice my rather loud buzzing behind him. Tarantulus came up with a saying once, being that cats seemingly never get tired of being stupid. It seemed to fit the current situation the Maximal was getting himself into. I called out my transformation code, still keeping my element of surprise for the ambush I had in store, before drew my gun. I aimed and fired. I missed ironically - my aim had started to lag since hitting Optimus Primal that one time Terrorsaur and I ambushed him - but the blast hit the ground by the tiger's feet and sent him sprawling forward… Face first into a rock. It was also oddly ironic I wasn't in the cat's position but at least I was being useful. If I killed him, it would be one less Maximal for us to deal with.

"Now, Wazzpinator says goodbye to Tiger-bot - URGH!"

I didn't even see Airrazor until she shot me.

It was a glancing blow thankfully. The shot hit me square behind my left shoulder and it sent my tumbling through the air when it knocked my equilibrium off balance. After seeing her in action for the first time and watching nearly kill Terrorsaur, for an instant, I thought I'd be just as well off as my indisposed partner. I had known it was her even before she chuckled evenly in amusement somewhere behind me, watching me fall just as she watched Terrorsaur nearly die.

I regained my balance almost immediately subsequent to thinking the thought. I was mad.

I straightened my wings and my antigravs sensors kicked back into gear, rebooting the main system when my wings caught the direction of my fall and readjusted. I had admittedly seen Terrorsaur do something similar once when he was shot. Optimus had blasted him in the wings once and sent him into a downward spiral towards the ground. To respond, Terrorsaur merely braced his legs and shifted to beast-mode, allowing his wings to pick up the direction of his fall and make equilibrium balance out again. It was a neat trick but I hadn't even thought about using it when I did. Before I knew it, I felt my face twist in an unbelievable amount of raw anger. The rage I felt when I snarled at Scorponok while protecting Terrorsaur's severed components was bad, but this was far worse.

The hate wasn't from being shot at and laughed at by the femme. The hate was from what she had done to my best friend. "Waspinator remembers Bird-bot…"

The venom in my own voice was frightening to me.

I had remembered Airrazor from the shot that hit my back. It was a pulse shot similar to Terrorsaur's, although I had immediately ruled out Terrorsaur because he was still in the CR chamber and would never shoot me in the back.

Airrazor shot down Terrorsaur with the same weapon. My anger flared violently and my vision turned red.

I whipped around, optics blazing and my whole body trembling in total anger. "Wazzpinatorwill SCRAP!"

Airrazor chuckled lightly and put her hands on her athlete like hips. The femme was so stuck up with herself that I was tempted to lunge for her and tear out her vocalizer right then and there. "I'm flattered…" Her optics sparkled as though she didn't remember what she had done to my partner. I hated her more than I ever hated anything else in my lifetime before.

I was still shaking in rage when I lifted my gun and aimed. I usually, on a normal basis, never really paid much heed to my aim because it was so bad and I knew I would miss anyways. Today was an exception however. I wanted the shot to count. I pulled the trigger and fired.

The stinger missile headed straight for Airrazor at a great speed, never once wavering in the air, I was sure he was going to kill her. I grinned maliciously in triumph, seemingly avenging my fallen comrade, but it was short lived when Airrazor swatted the missile away like it was a bug. Like it was me.

Like it was Terrorsaur.

Airrazor glared hard and clenched her fists. "But hardly impressed," she spoke coolly, her wrist mounted missile darts clicking into place.

Sucks to me, doesn't it? If you agree, so do I. My logic circuits really kicked into gear and I buzzed nervously, beginning to tremble and feebly bringing a hand to my face to protect myself. The femme fired at me twice - I heard the shots - and there was an abrupt, sharp pain in my wings. It didn't hurt all too much having them blasted off - they were humanely clean shots - but the places where they once were burned like the Pitt and I realized I didn't have anything to stay in the air with. With no wings supporting me in mid flight, I fell to the ground below. Ironically, I landed headfirst.

I had expected Airrazor to come back after me but she left me for dead the same way she did Terrorsaur. I wasn't nearly in bad of shape mind you, but I was still stuck. I razzed. The Primus damned mouse that was chewing on my antenna was doing nothing for my pride either. "Wazzpinator hates Bird-bot…"

I felt horrible about more or less failing Terrorsaur. It took me twenty cycles to get my head out of the dirt and a little more than a megacycle to walk back to base.

By the time I finally got back to the Darkside, I was deadbeat exhausted. I wasn't all too heavily damaged but I had a very annoying limp alongside with the fact my wings were completely gone. It took me so long to reach base because I had to constantly shift to beast-mode and crawl due to the energon surges I got as a robot. It wasn't any faster crawling about on six wasp legs than it was walking on two. I felt miserable, keeping my head down as I struggled to get back to Predacon headquarters, and it felt like my spark had broken into several pieces. Not nearly as many as Terrorsaur when he was almost killed, but it hurt all the same. The fact I could not avenge Terrorsaur greatly bothered me.

"Waspinator!"

My hearing wasn't broken though, and I heard Terrorsaur call out for me as clear as day. I snapped to attention hearing his voice cut through the air and I looked up. I stared back at Terrorsaur when our eyes locked.

He stood thirty or so feet from me across the lava field - the patch we were standing on was hardened rock, so we were in no danger of the lava flows - and we found ourselves instantly engaged in another one of our staring matches. His scarlet optics were intense while he stared back into my own blue ones. I was the one who broke the eye contact. I lunged for Terrorsaur, sprinting the entire distance between us aside how tired I was, and I wrapped my arms around the red flier's neck when I reached him. I buried my face against his shoulder and savored the feeling of his form pressed against mine. It was still slightly unnerving for me to enjoy being in physical contact with Terrorsaur but I could not bring myself to care in the slightest. Terrorsaur was alright. That was all I gave a damn about right there and then.

Terrorsaur seemed to recoil slightly, taking a step back when I swung my arms around his neck and held him. He seemed to hesitate but, after a moment, he wrapped his own arms around my upper torso and buried his pale face against my own shoulder.

We had been physical with one another before, but this was something new all the same. We stood together like that for sometime and I felt Terrorsaur caress the spot where one of my wings had been shot off. I was caught off guard by the touch but then I realized I was tracing my fingers over the nape of his neck. That was a place where Terrorsaur's head had been blasted off his body.

We broke apart, both with some reluctance and relief. A strange look had passed over Terrorsaur's face, indicating some form of discomfort, and I wondered if he was maybe feeling the same things I was. Terrorsaur smirked at me lightly and turned away to walk back to base. I followed after him, though we went in silence. Another issue altogether, we also avoided optic contact.

…I had to stop this. Whatever it was that was going on between us, I had to settle it. It wasn't as if I knew what if was for a fact but we had to face it nonetheless. I stopped walking dead in my tracks.

Terrorsaur turned back to me when he heard me stop, raising an optic ridge at me. There was a poorly hidden look of concern in the other Predacon's optics. "What is it?"

I had taken to looking to my side, purposely away from Terrorsaur and his scarlet optics. If I had my wings, they might've been erect with the nervousness I could feel radiating off my body. A phrase that I wanted to say came to mind but I suddenly felt my spark skip a beat knowing what it meant. After an agonizing moment, I sighed lightly and swallowed hard. My fuel pump pumped faster and my spark skipped a pulsation. "…Terror-bot want to go with Wazzpinator to mountain in sector Tanna-16 to watch sunset? Izz pretty-"

To be blunt, it was more or less the equivalent of asking someone out. I felt stupid for saying anything a moment afterward.

Terrorsaur smirked, his lips curling up slightly and his optics narrowing playfully just out of my line of immediate vision. "Why are you asking me?"

I wasn't sure of what else to say. Words wanted to formulate in my throat and they did, but they broke apart before they could be voiced. I wasn't even sure why I asked him to go with me in the first place. We were friends - two of them getting ridiculously close I'll admit - and I told myself that repeatedly in my head. My mind reeled slightly and, for whatever reason, the mere term 'friend' didn't seem to fit anymore. It in no way felt right like calling him my scarlet star.

I continued to stare off to my direct left so I did not have to look at Terrorsaur head on. I thought I might have stood there forever and Terrorsaur abruptly smiled at me. I saw him make the facial expression just out of the corer of my vision and he reached forward to ruffle the top of my head like I was a sparkling. The touch made my face grow hot under the plating despite myself. His hand lingered.

"Consider it a date."

And my spark leapt in my chest.

We went back inside and I sat in the CR tank for several cycles so my wings could regenerate. When I reemerged, Terrorsaur was waiting beside the tank for me. With my wings back, we went to the command center and both asked for a leave to retire to Tanna-16. Megaton really didn't have much of a say on whether or not he could keep us in the Darkside - we were not on duty after all - so he let us go. We still had a curfew to abide to though and, seeing the time it was then and the time we needed to return, we had about five megacycles to ourselves. Because Tanna was on the furthermost section of our territory, it took us maybe twenty cycles to get there.

Tanna-16 had a huge mountain in the center of the sector and it was the most gorgeous organic paradise I had ever seen. I had first caught a glimpse of it while Terrorsaur and I were on patrol. He didn't seem to care much for it but, when I went on patrol alone one other time, I saw the area while the sun was setting. It was stunning and, admittedly, I had to cave and say that the little dust ball we found ourselves on was not nearly as bad as I thought. The grid was surrounded by a forest and was complete with a large lake that rested at the foot of the main mountain. Without a doubt, it had the best view of the sunset you could ever see. While the Maximals were more eastward and got an excellent view of the sunrises, our territory was more westward. This gave us the best view of the sun's setting.

Now that Terrorsaur was really seeing it for the first time and not just glancing at it, he seemed to see how beautiful it was too. We both hovered above the sector and he let out a long whistle. He said nothing more than that, apparently lost for words.

I buzzed. "Wazzpinator likes it."

He grinned. "I do too. C'mon, I bet I can out fly you down to that lake!" My scarlet star stopped flapping his wings and he dived downward. I wondered why he didn't seem to be bothered by the fact the ground was rushing up to meet him - he had given away that he was afraid of heights beforehand - but he pulled up well before he hit the lake's surface. He flapped his wings and landed in the tree overlooking the water. He squawked, shifted to his robot-mode, and he called out for me when he saw I didn't follow. "Hey! What are you waiting for, an invitation!"

I snapped out of my thoughts. "Wazzpinator coming!" I flew down to the tree overlooking the pristine lake, smelling the fresh water as I landed on the branch next to Terrorsaur. The wood groaned beneath us slightly from our weight, but my scanners indicated that it would be strong enough to hold. I stayed in beast-mode.

Terrorsaur was grinning and his scarlet eyes were bright with mirth. "Slowpoke."

I snorted and swatted his arm with a spindly black wasp paw. "Wazzpinator has faster reflexes."

"Say that to the shots you could not dodge when you were blown to scrap."

He laughed and I laughed too. Before I could keep track of my movements though, I pushed Terrorsaur off the branch. I had expected him to retaliate and fly back up but, somehow, I managed to catch him too much by surprise. He fell into the water with a loud splash, making the surface of the lake sparkle and ripple in the sunlight like a glassless mirror. I chuckled evilly - a playful evil snicker to clear things up - and laughed as Terrorsaur came back up to the surface. He flailed about and shifted to beast-mode in an attempt to get out of the water. It was comical to watch but, after a few clicks of flapping his wings erratically, Terrorsaur shifted back to robot-mode when his systems adjusted to the shock. He glared up at me, optics dark and narrowed, and I stifled laughing for a moment when I thought I truly upset Terrorsaur.

He smirked at me.

I gulped audibly and backed away from the edge of the branch. Terrorsaur's smirk broke out into a wide grin and he suddenly sank out of view. I peeked over the side of the branch apprehensively to look for Terrorsaur. I only screamed in surprise and lost my grip on the branch when Terrorsaur erupted from the water. He flew up behind me and yelled playfully in my audio receptor.

"AIRRAZOR'S A GLITCH!"

I screeched in surprise and I lost my grip on the branch. I fell into the water with a loud splash before I could get my wings to work. The water wasn't cold but the general shock of falling into the lake made me shriek with surprise anyways. The survival instincts of my beast form kicking in, I flailed around violently and I was sure I looked utterly hopeless in the eyes of my partner. I saw Terrorsaur out of the corner of my vision smirking down at me in the branches before he leapt up, twisted around in the air, and dived in after me. His form was perfect when he did so. He hit the water headfirst and the splash it produced was enough for me to determine exactly where the surface was. I flipped around and finally managed to shift into my respectful robot-mode. The ripples on the lake surface turned calm and my scarlet star didn't immediately resurface. I looked around for him, squinting in the water around me with a slowly rising sense of panic, but then he erupted from below the surface. I shrieked in surprise when he jumped on me and pulled me under. The gesture wasn't malevolent though. It was playful. We proceeded to play wrestle about in the water like sparklings.

For a moment, I forgot we were soldiers. For a sweet while, there was no one else beside me and Terrorsaur. A hideous green pauper and a gorgeous crimson sun.

Diving in and out of the water, wrestling about, and even diving to the bottom, we occupied ourselves with the sparkling lake until we dragged ourselves out suffering from intense water log. Completely spent, we both collapsed on the shore lying side-by-side in the late afternoon sun. Terrorsaur lay on his stomach beside me while I shifted onto my back and I stared up at the sky. The sun itself was appealing to look at if you died down your optical sensitivity - you could even see specks of solar flares if you focused carefully enough - but the fact it was not a deep red like Terrorsaur did not make it as attractive. Occasionally, I pointed out clouds to him when I thought they resembled something. One of which was Megatron's damned rubber ducky - which Terrorsaur sniggered at - but he stopped giving me feedback after sometime. I eventually glanced down at him to see he had fallen in a light recharge. His mouth was slightly ajar, his face relaxed and optics dim.

I could not help but compare it to his features when Airrazor took him out of the air. He had looked horrified and in agony with his face contorted in a fashion that tore out my spark. Seeing him sleeping there at that moment though, I could not believe how aesthetic he was. My spark thrummed at the sight that made my face flush and I realized that I loved him.

The inner confession made my head reel.

I smiled at him - don't ask me how with the style of my jaw, it would be far too difficult to explain properly - and I had to get up to clear my thoughts. I shifted to beast-mode and, like I had done when Airrazor took my wings just earlier that day, I crawled about on the ground towards a bushed area. I was sure my buzzing would awaken Terrorsaur if I stayed too close. I figured I'd let him get some sleep.

Did I love him?

It was something I knew I was going to have to face. I'd been in love before once - when I knew a femme on Cybertron who was orphaned and homeless like I was - but it was not nearly as strong as it was with Terrorsaur. I knew something had been off when I met him, so perhaps it was a sign that I was going to fall head over heels for him. I don't think I can properly explain, I apologize for that, but he made my spark do things when I looked at him that no one else caused. It had skipped a beat when I saw him in the warehouse on Cybertron for the first time and it still continued to do that even after we became wingmates. When I started to avoid him, I felt empty. When we became friends though, the emptiness left and built up to where I found myself attracted to him. So did I love him? Could I?

Would he feel the same way?

I doubted it. I knew I wasn't the prettiest light in the box and no where near the brightest one either. Why would he ever want me? Scorponok was far more attractive than I was - smarter too - and Blackarachnia was practically an interface toy just screaming to be played with. I wasn't anything truly amazing in my eyes. I was clumsy, needed to have jokes explained to me, had terrible luck, and I was just plain hideous. Why would someone as perfect as Terrorsaur ever want me?

The thoughts were frustrating but nevertheless short lived when my sensors detected a large hare hiding in bushes. It dawned on me that Terrorsaur, after being in the CR tank for as long as he had, would probably be starving. It was something to get my mind off of either way, so I let my wings and thorax go erect mechanically. I usually hunted from the air but I still didn't want to risk waking Terrorsaur up. I dropped my antennas, wings, thorax, and I crept towards the bush. A large one by normal standards, it was an old jack rabbit that was completely oblivious to the fact that he was being hunted. For an instant, instead of a small mammal unaware of its oncoming end, I saw Airrazor and the way she looked so coy. I hissed spitefully and I let my antennas twitch before I lunged.

For a split click, all I saw was Airrazor. It wasn't a proper way of getting revenge but it was enough to satisfy me.

I jumped on the rabbit and pinned its frail form to the grassy ground. Caught off guard and frightened for its life, it kicked out its hind legs and slammed its foot into the side of my face. The blow was carried out with enough force to momentarily stun me, but I wasn't going to let it get away. With a muted razz, I bit into its hide with bone crushing force. The invasive and coppery odor of blood invaded my olfactory sensors and it set of my instincts tenfold. I jerked my head to the side, thrashed the small thing back and forth, and I bit down hard. Its bones snapped under my maw like twigs. The hare thrashed, grunting and making rasping noises when I broke its back.

Airrazor's image vanished and was replaced with the image of the rabbit once more. I snapped its neck and killed it before it could suffer too much longer. I wouldn't have wished the old animal more harm and I could not do as much as to kill it the way I would Airrazor if I ever got my hands on her. I pulled away with the large rabbit in my jaws. I randomly presumed it had already been dying from age since it didn't put up too much of a fight.

When I returned to Terrorsaur, I dropped the rabbit down just as the red mech was waking up. He was sluggish and looked like he had forgotten where he was. The sight of me seemed to bring him out of his daze - I swore he flushed a light pink for a click, though I was entirely clueless as to why - before he glanced down and noticed the bloodied old hare. By the look that passed over his face when he glanced back up at me, he knew I was offering it to him. His eyes were stunning scarlet stars.

He sat up and shifted to beast-mode. He eyed the dead organic for a moment before he shyly inclined his head to me just barely. His voice was a mere mutter and would have been almost entirely inaudible if I didn't strain my hearing. "I could use some help with this…"

I dropped my antennas apprehensively and could not find words to respond beyond body language. After a click or two, I slowly took a step forward and took a part of the rabbit's leg in my mandibles. Terrorsaur took a hold of a shoulder with his upper beak and, like two predators sharing a single prey, we tore it in half. We ate it in silence, messily mind you, before we retired back to the water to wash the blood and bits of fur off. Terrorsaur perched on a small boulder, dipped his beak into the water, and he brought it back out before running his claws over the length to get the blood off. I tried to do something similar but, courteous of my idiocy, I accidentally fell into the water again.

Once that was taken care of, we took to the air and headed for the actual mountain that sat in the dead epicenter of Tanna-16. The sky had turned a deep pink that changed to an orangey red where the sun was positioned. We circled it twice in the air before we found a suitable spot to land on a ledge at the entrance of a cave. We were about two thousand or so feet up from the ground.

Then sun was starting to descend in the distance and, although not a full sunset yet, it was still stunning. The sky was painted hues of orange and pink and the landscape below was caught in the colors. The lake shimmered a sparkling carroty yellow and the treetops in the forest glowed a light ginger. Terrorsaur shifted to robot-mode with a whistle and he commented to me that it really was a pretty sight. I buzzed, somewhat flattered by the remark, and I sat on the edge of the cliff. Terrorsaur seemed a bit apprehensive - he would deny it, but I was sure it had something to do with his fear of heights - but he sat himself next to me regardless. He was still apprehensive and I saw him nervously peek over the cliff's edge to judge the height. He sat closer to me than you would usually sit next to someone.

Just as Terrorsaur was uneasy about the height, I was somewhat tense with Terrorsaur so close. I attempted to brush it off like it was nothing but, nonetheless, my fuel pump throbbed anxiously. We sat in silence for a few cycles before Terrorsaur said something inaudible to my audios. I asked him to repeat what he said.

"I said thanks for inviting me out here."

"Oh. Well… thankzz for coming with Wazzpinator."

We went silent again, watching the sun set in the distance, and that seemed to the end of it. The silence continued on for a few more moments and I found it relaxing to a degree. The burning sun of a star continued to descend and it turned from a golden orange to a brightening light red. The sky changed with it, turning the pinks to orange to a deep scarlet red. The clouds were stained pink and a flock of birds flew underneath them like black blots on a canvas. Terrorsaur shattered the silence when he spoke.

"You know Waspy, you were right when you said that cloud looked like Megatron's rubber ducky. I swear, there is nothing more deformed or ugly in this entire universe. Why the slaggin' Pitt does he even keep that thing!" Terrorsaur cleared his throat and screwed up his face. "My name is Megatron, yesss. I love acting stupid and talking like a total idiot who pretends to be smart. I like to snuggle with my rubber ducky because it is squeaky, floats on water, and has a no CPU processor just like me! Rubber ducky, you're the one! You make bath time lots of fun~!"

Whether or not it was Terrorsaur's expression, his voice impression of Megatron, or his absolutely horrendous singing, I burst out laughing. I fell backward, held my sides, and nearly cried because I was cackling so hard. I swear that my sides were going to explode if I hadn't stopped myself when I had. After sometime, I found the strength to sit up again. There were tears pricking my optics and I forced myself to be reduced to random, irregular giggling. Terrorsaur smiled at me and I smiled back at him. I turned back to the sunset snickering every so often.

Something drastic changed.

An unseen force in the air shifted and I was sure I would've broken out into gooseflesh if I was organic. It was as if the energy around us grew both hot and cold at the same time. It confused me but I attempted to brush it off even when my spark felt as though it skipped a beat. My field of vision had drifted to Terrorsaur again, intending to ask how he had found out about Megatron's rubber ducky - I had seen the tyrant squeaking it once, though I was sure I was the only one who saw - but I stopped short when I noticed Terrorsaur looking straight back at me. The red mech's scarlet optics were enhanced with the red glow of the setting sun as he and I made eye contact. The rather laid back feeling I had just clicks before faded and my expression went neutral like his. The air shifted again, turning warmer, but the intensity of our stare increased to the breaking point. Whatever it was between us that wanted to be broken was an inch, perhaps a millimeter from being shattered forever. No more than three clicks ticked by but neither of us had said or done anything.

The barrier was suddenly shattered. It would remain broken forever.

Terrorsaur very, very slowly leaned forward several centimeters. This movement was just barely noticeable unless you were really paying attention. I recoiled somewhat, unsure of what he was doing right away, and the upper part of my left wing twitched nervously.

Then it dawned on me. I was too shocked to realize I had leaned forward myself as well.

Our faces remained neutral and I returned the gesture. I leaned forward somewhat before I could bring myself to fully understand what I was doing, bringing my face closer to the pale one of my wingmate. Terrorsaur tensed visibly, the muscles of his beast mode's wings and other organic patches tightening to bring themselves closer to his body so they stiffened against his frame. What was going on now became inevitable and I found myself, to my own surprise, not taken aback.

The gleaming, scarlet star of a sun cast itself over us. Our shadows trailed out behind our seated bodies as long, tall silhouettes against the steep rock wall of the mountain. Our frames were engulfed in the fiery brilliance of the sun. We knew this, yes, but we ignored it. Nothing mattered now except for the intense look we gave one another with our not so silent silence. Our actions spoke louder than anything and it wasn't quite silence anymore. I edged even closer not feeling as apprehensive suddenly, my large blue optics gazing back at the suddenly very hesitant optics of Terrorsaur. We were inches apart, literally breathing on each other as the sun continued it's decent into night. It was then that I offlined my optics, letting my mandibles part just barely. I heard the light rattle of armor as Terrorsaur shuddered ever so slightly. I activated my optics just scarcely to see he had dimmed his own without turning them off completely. He was nervous, possibly afraid to an extent, but he leaned forward even further regardless. His lips parted and he tilted his head to the side somewhat. I deactivated my optics once more.

…I kissed him.