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brandwhorestarscream · 2 years ago

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Can we please see TFP Cryptoid Seekers (Jazz EQ Event). Like, I want to know how it would go with them. Especially with the whole "rouge Starscream" concept. Does the team all go to refuel, only to all get paralyzed and knocked out like Jazz was, waking up with the insatiable hunger. Or does Starscream find their base by parental will alone. Or even, does the whole Jazz but Team Prime thing happen, no one knows what's going on, then a fully developed seeker emerges. Please. Would you write this as a fic.

(Fun fact. My question mark is broken, so a lot of these periods are actually question marks. Sorry!)

Hey anon! I had a lotta fun with this one, but this is meant to serve only as the first part. Second part will be God Knows When, so I hope you'll enjoy this in the mean time!

Anyway, I hope ya'll enjoy this blurb of Starscream's terrifying cryptid hellspawn terrorizing the autobots

It was, like most things these days, the rookie’s fault. Smokescreen had come waltzing back into base, strutting like a peacock and proudly showing off his haul, arms stacked high with the weirdest energon containers any of them had ever seen. Perfectly spherical from every angle, and scans revealed they held within them the highest possible quality, packed to the brim with the maximum potential energy-per-ounce. You’d be hard pressed to find anything like this on Cybertron save for within the Towers, and Ratchet was quick to seize them all for the emergency cache. Saying they ought to save it until someone needed a life-saving surgery and the nectar of the gods would aid in their recovery. Or, alternatively, if they took another turn toward unfortunate famine, those weird energon pods could tide them over for quite awhile.

Desperate to taste such a high quality treat, Smokescreen had eagerly offered to go get more. Stealing from Starscream was child’s play when he was otherwise engaged halfway across the continent with the autobots and decepticons, especially when he had the phase shifter. Optimus had forbid it, though–the window of opportunity had closed.

Starscream was very clearly incredibly upset about the loss of his fuel stores–Smokescreen had reported at least 30 of the weird orb-pod-things, and had gotten away with a total of 11. The seeker clearly knew they were the culprit, and had reportedly razed no less than seven government facilities in the last week.

“That stuff must be good if he’s this crazy about it,” Smokescreen had sighed wistfully after Fowler stalked away, demanding Optimus do something about the rogue jet. “Hey, doc, you sure-”

“Yes I’m sure!” Ratchet snaps from nearby, not even bothering to turn around. “Don’t even think about it, kid.”

He had whined about the unfairness of it all, but obeyed. The only ones amongst them that had ever had the privilege of such high quality energon were of course Optimus and Ultra Magnus, but they were in no rush to consume it, either. Ever the models of self control.

Three weeks after they’d put the special fuel in storage the normal-grade stuff was starting to run low and they had to raid another mine. It was profitable, but only barely, the spoils only requiring a trio of mecha to unload it into the energon vault. With the two youngest attending to their human companions’ and Ratchet fixing a minor wound on Arcee’s arm, only Optimus, Magnus, and Bulkhead were present when the orbs they’d stolen from Starscream suddenly exploded.

The detonation was obnoxiously loud, easily heard from everywhere in the base, a perfectly synchronized explosion of all 11 at once that brought the both of them running. As they approached the door there was the unmistakable sound of bodies hitting the floor, and before them all three lay splayed out unconscious. There’s energon everywhere, glowing sharp cyan splattered on the walls, slathered upon their bodies as Ratchet rushes to check on them. They’re all fine, not bleeding, no wounds, but the energon they’re covered with is exceptionally viscous, almost slimy, and has the strongest paralyzing agent Ratchet has ever encountered. Just stepping in it steals the function from his legs in less than half a klik, and it falls to Arcee to hoses the area down and get the contaminated stuff down the drain.

The three main victims don’t stay unconscious for long, only a few megacycles. Ratchet works over them furiously, flushing their systems when he realizes the paralyzing agent is one of those annoying topical creations that can absorb through the mesh and penetrate directly into the mainlines. It’s wasteful but necessary, and thankfully, they’re ok. They’re back on their pedes before nightfall, and the scans come back clean.

The only problem is their fuel gauges.

Ratchet wakes the whole base pounding on Optimus’s door at some odd hour of the morning, using his medical override when it doesn’t open fast enough. The Prime is unresponsive in his berth and the vital sign monitor on the medic’s arm is beeping urgently.

“Get me energon, now!” he barks an order at the nearest autobot. “He’s dropping into stasis lock.”

“What?!”

Bumblebee returns in record time and Ratchet immediately sends him out for more as he sets up for an emergency transfusion. He’s mumbling feverishly to himself as he scans the larger mech; it shouldn’t be possible. He had to have ruptured something internally while he was resting to have his energon levels dropping that fast! His sparkpulse was dangerously low, and his energon level was less than 5%. There was a breach somewhere in his body, there had to be.

The scans all come back clean. All of his fuel tubing is intact. His internal processing system is perfectly pristine. There’s no report of any obstructions, no weird fuel demands anywhere else. It’s like-

The vital sign monitor wails on his arm, and Ratchet swears. “Bulkhead!”

It’s no small feat getting the three of them into the medbay when they’re all unconscious and can’t walk. As soon as he finishes transfusing one another’s monitor goes off, and the scans are useless. They all come back the picture of health, there’s nothing wrong with them! Pulse normal, all internal organs functioning optimally. There’s no leaks, no breakages, no nothing. The fuel is entering exactly where it’s supposed to, it’s staying where it’s supposed to. The only explanation is that the weird decepticon fuel-weapon thing. Their metabolism has skyrocketed to unmanageable levels–no sooner has the fuel entered their tanks is it being digested. It’s like it’s just vanishing, evaporating. It’s going in, it’s not leaking anywhere, but it’s somehow not reaching the rest of their bodies.

Honestly, it’s a brilliant weapon.

“...we need more energon,” he announces hollowly after half a megacycle of adrenaline fueled rushing. “They’ll starve by sunrise if we don’t get more.”

Of course… he could cut off the supply of one to prolong the other two. Obviously Optimus would be the first he’d preserve, but how to choose between Bulkhead and Ultra Magnus? His mind scrambles between them, weighing the pros and cons, which would be more of an asset on earth and thereafter-

“More energon, got it,” Arcee is already taking charge, jabbing a finger at the door and ordering the two younglings, “Bee, Smokescreen, with me. We’ll be back, Ratchet.”

After a solemn moment, he nods. “I’ll leave it to you, then.”

…

Three sleepless days later, their plight ends at last. They’d done nothing but feverishly hunt for mines and steal as much energon as they could, quickly bringing it back to base, rinse and repeat without rest. They’re all ready to drop and can barely soldier ahead when finally, finally, Optimus Prime opens his optics and sits up on the medical berth like he hadn’t just been in a starvation coma for the last three days.

“Ratchet,” he says, very quietly. “I am going to vomit.”

“Wha-”

He leans over the side and wretches, violently, half-digested energon and internal fuel-tank acids splashing onto the floor. Ratchet backpedals in surprise, but he’s not done, clamping one servo over his mouth and stumbling out of the berth to make a dash for the sinks but it’s no use–his legs are wobbly from lack of fuel and use alike, and more vomit splashes through his fingers despite his best effort, and he stumbles to his knees. One servo planted on the floor and the other still trying to hold it in, he heaves once, twice, and hacks out a sheet of clear, slimy sludge.

“Optimus-” Ratchet wrenches his servo down from his face–last thing they needed was their leader drowning himself on his own purged fuel! “Stop, stop, just let it come-”

An earth shattering clang and Bulkhead rolls right off his berth, and is still laying, dazed, on his back when he starts violently gagging too. Ultra Magnus is the last one up, and at least has the decency to apologize for throwing up all over the slab he’s just defiled.

The stench is unbearable, the metal tang of energon mixed with hydrochloric acid and there’s no containing the mess–the scanners don’t give any sort of indication as to what’s going on, why they’re suddenly so violently rejecting the fuel their bodies had been so desperate for just minutes ago. The vital sign monitor suddenly wails and Optimus chokes grandly, clawing at his chassis–and Ratchet sees that something has jammed his primary fuel tube. It’s such a large obstruction that it’s crushing his aeration tubing and causing it to collapse. In response his core temperature is rising dangerously quickly, vents gushing and labored as his body hitches and rolls, trying to get it out and gagging grandly.

He’s choking, and his system’s are in a frenzy, red light blaring in his vision and emergency messages flooding his HUD.

“On your back!” Ratchet orders, shoving him down and turning him over. If it doesn’t dislodge itself in the next 10 nanokliks he’ll have to open him up to remove it surgically. “Arms down, down! I need-”

The monitor blares again and Ultra Magnus starts choking too. Bulkhead is right behind him. Slag, slag, slag-!

“ARCEE!” he yells aloud and into his comms, praying she’s still on base. He’s going to need someone else’s hands if he’s going to help them all-

Optimus makes a strangled, wheezing noise, and his back bows off the ground, servos scrabbling at his throat. His pedes dig at the ground as if struggling for traction, and without warning a tiny, flailing arm reaches out of the Prime’s throat. Ratchet recoils in horror with a strangled, “By the Allspark…!”

Tiny claws dig into his bottom denta, and a second servo reaches to join them. Optimus rolls onto his side and purges again, and out of his mouth falls an honest to Primus sparkling, dripping energon sludge and shaking itself off, rolling over in the puddle of sick and rubbing it’s face into the ground, whining loudly.

It’s a wiry, gaunt little thing, with a sunken, too-thin face and what are definitely wing nubs beginning to furl out and harden on it’s back. Optimus stares at it, open-mouthed and speechless, for a solid five seconds before wretching again.

There’s more than one!

The sparkling bumbles clumsily out of the puddle and glances around, before promptly throwing it’s helm back, unhinging it’s jaw, and letting out the loudest, most unholy sound Ratchet has ever heard. The walls shake, he can feel the floor vibrating beneath his pedes with the force of the soundwaves the newborn is making. It’s high pitched, and shrill, and horrible, echoing and wailing like the worst kind of alarm. It runs away from him when he makes to pick it up, hoping to… he doesn’t even know what, and skitters under the nearest berth. It starts up screaming again, louder this time, and at last Arcee stumbles in through the door, clutching her helm.

“What is that?!”

“No time!” he can barely hear himself over the noise. “We need-”

“RATCHE-E-ET!” Bulkhead bellows like the world is ending, and the sheer terror in his voice draws the medic over. There’s a sparkling hanging half out of his mouth and he’s struggling to yank it out at the same time there’s a horrible grinding sound from his midsection, and something punches outward and straight through his plating. It’s a tiny pede this time, a tiny thruster, and within seconds the hole is torn open larger, bent inward and stretched further, and the upper half of another horrifying little abomination pops through. It wriggles, twists, and promptly tumbles down his midsection and onto the floor. It runs off too, a sibling in hot pursuit, joining the screaming one under the berth. Bulkhead is bleeding profusely from the wound on his midsection as the hellspawn join their sibling in the ungodly shrieking, and somewhere in the room, glass shatters. The soundwaves are so powerful they make the medic’s servos shake as he’s scrambling to stop the bleeding. It goes all the way to his primary fuel pump, and he realizes with horror.

The little parasites must have been in those spherical energon pods, and had anchored themselves within their bodies to steal energon and continue development. The first few had crawled out the way they entered, but the others-!

Bulkhead wheezes and collapses backwards, unconscious as his fuel tank is punctured again and another sparkling punches through, a bit further north than the previous two. Ratchet tries to grab it but it’s slippery, and no sooner has he wrapped one servo around it has it sunk it’s razor sharp, serrated denta into his finger and torn off a chunk of his mesh. Swearing in pain, he drops it, and the little hellion bounces off his knee and onto the floor, rolling thrice and having the audacity to hiss at him before scampering away. This one doesn’t go under the berth, though: it makes a beeline for the console and is immediately starting to scale the perfectly vertical surface to get halfway up the wall. It shimmies up the wall like a god damn gecko and disappears into the rafters. To make matters worse, it starts screaming too.

Smokescreen had brought in 11 of those energon pods–eggs, they were eggs Ratchet had by now realized–and that meant 11 tiny, Unicron spawned parasites trying to violently escape their unconventional hosts’ bodies.

He had just barely stopped Bulkhead from bleeding out when Magnus threw up two at once, a pair of twins, and his midsection suddenly bowed outwards and an unholy screeching trio burst out of him as one. Five in Magnus, three in Bulkhead, that left four for Optimus. He was the only lucky one, as all four of the sparklings had decided to exit the way they entered. There was severe damage to fuel systems all around, cracked and shredded tubing and wounds in the mouth from the babies’ sharp claws, but they were going to live, thankfully.

There were 12 in total, and after getting a good look at them their parentage was unmistakable–even if they hadn’t known Smokescreen had stolen them from Starscream, they were all in his spitting image. The same sickly thin frames, too-small arms and legs and papery wings, sunken faces and optics far too big for their helms. Mouths full of several rows of curved, knife-like denta with jaw strength great enough to bite through an adult mech’s armor plating. And if that wasn’t enough to confirm it, the screaming set it in stone: the windows had long since shattered in the wake of all 12 voices hollering as loud as they could. They didn’t even seem to be all that distressed: there were no tears, no sobbing, just insistent, never ending wailing like those earthen emergency sirens. Only Starscream’s spawn could ever be this loud.

It took them over two megacycles to round them all up and get them out of the medbay so Ratchet could fix the non-lethal injuries in relative peace. They couldn’t make a decision on what to do with them all until the three unwitting incubators had a clean bill of health. Ratchet knew Optimus would want to do the right thing: return them to their mother. No wonder Starscream had been going crazy for the last month, it all made sense now, and he surely wouldn’t rest until he found his wayward offspring.

Keeping the twelve of them in the main room wasn’t too difficult, so long as the doors all stayed closed. Resisting the urge to strangle them, however, was much more difficult. Within 2 kliks Arcee was ready to power up the ground bridge and go dump them in the wilderness somewhere. The little hellspawn were borderline indestructible, as all sparklings were by earth standards. More than once one had fallen more than fifty feet from the rafters to the floor and had done little more than wheeze a few times before shaking themselves off and scurrying to climb back up.

She’d never seen a baby seeker before. No one had. The snobs never came down from Vos before the war, and no one was having sparklings in an active warzone.

Or, well. No one smart was.

Regardless. She’d never seen a seekerling before, and she honestly wasn’t sure if they were all this crazy or if they were so messed up on account of being Starscream’s spawn. It wasn’t just the screaming, no: it was the way their jaws unhinged to stick things in their mouths. It was the way their helms spun 180 degrees to look at things, it was the three-to-four rows of denta they all had. It was the way they flickered in and out of existence, some kind of unstable camouflage/invisibility, it was the way they climbed the walls and were hanging upside down from the ceiling while never letting up the ungodly wailing. They were only about human size but so loud they could be heard more than a mile away.

A fact evidenced by Agent Fowler’s sudden arrival. He couldn’t hear them, but they could hear him, barely. Informing them that the sparklings were causing a serious, dangerous disturbance in radio communication, and were to be moved offsite, underground, immediately. Arcee didn’t have it in her to argue.

#brandwhore writes #cryptid seekers au #second part involves the sparklings eating a bunch of government agents cuz the us govt is a little bitch #jk it's because they're chock full of tasty iron and other elements and the babies are hungry #i hope you guys enjoy starscream's crazy adorable little parasites as much as i do #when he gets them back he'll be cooing about how adorable and precious they are meanwhile everyone else is deeply disturbed

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