#Zett Oakwell

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 21: Close Calls

“Do you mind explaining yourself?” were the first words Zett said to her since his return from school. She had barely even heard him come into the room before his school bag went flying and his eyes held such disapproval that she felt like Skywarp was the one lecturing her for messing up during a training exercise.

“Hello to you too,” Starlit hummed, resting the back of her helm against the wall behind her, trying to ease her processor back into a more agreeable state. After not having tasted energon since before leaving Cybertron, her tanks needed time to adjust to a suitable energy source, especially since one of the cubes she grabbed was most likely high-grade that some bot had forgotten to label before she grabbed it. “You’re home early.”

A whole three hours early.

“Don’t spin that on me. You were there, weren’t you?” he asked, but she didn’t answer. That seemed to encourage the human to believe his point, one she couldn’t argue against even if she felt up for it. He let out a breath, similar to how she let out air through her vents, but there was no particular sound to it, just him breathing louder than usual. “Why’d you do it, Starlit?”

There was no use denying it. She was there even after she rejected the idea of coming up with a plan to do what she did anyway. That had been because she didn’t want to get him involved with the actual story, but he had to have seen her at some point to waltz in and start accusing her. When he saw her though, she didn’t know, nor did she ask. She was already in enough trouble as it was.

The thought alone of getting in trouble with a human was pretty entertaining, given the circumstances, but she kept that opinion to herself. She doubted that he would see the humour in the situation.

“Why do you think? In case you forgot, I need this stuff to survive, or do you plan on explaining how you have a giant corpse in your home?”

His lips parted, but there was no sound, at least not for a while. It wasn’t until he looked to the side that he spoke again, saying the one thing that he meant but she knew to be untrue. “I could have helped.”

She could have protested for hours about how he couldn’t – wouldn’t – help if he knew what – who – she really was. She only nodded her helm, giving her systems time to accept the fuel source coursing through her, if they didn’t choose to backfire and eject it. So far she managed to keep it down, even with its potency.

“Why did you run? It was like you didn’t want them knowing who you were.”

“I’ve told you before, remember? Besides, it was your idea to try and steal it in the first place.”

“That’s not-” Zett began defending himself, but quieted when he saw her servo lift from the floor. Slag, it felt heavy.

“Listen kid, we can argue about this back and forth all day, but that cube I just drank really messed with my systems, so before you start lecturing me about what could have gone wrong or right, how about you just let me enjoy myself for once?”

Zett fell quiet for so long that for a moment she thought he was going to lash out at her, but surprisingly he held up his hands and backed away a step as if accepting the possibility of a semi-intoxicated transformer getting annoyed enough to step on him.

“Fine, but we’re not dropping this. Least of all, I’m not, got it?”

She only waved her servo at him in a shooing motion before her optics dimmed, her frame having decided that it needed more re-adjustment than she originally thought. She heard the door open and close, but not before a long pause in between. With three cubes of energon sitting beside her, she knew she only had a while until she needed to strike again, and this time, she couldn’t afford to be spotted, by anyone.

Transformers Generation One, Skywarp, Cybertron and energon © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 13: Arrival

This was a bad idea. This was such a bad idea. Such a bad idea. Such a bad-

“Hey Zett, are you okay?”

Hearing his name, Zett nearly yelped in Carly’s face that had somehow during the bus ride gotten right across from his. The way she tilted her head, letting her blonde hair falling free from behind her shoulders wasn’t helping his current situation at all.

“Y-Yeah. Fine, fine, just totally fine!” Zett responded, shifting some in his seat when he noticed the rest of his class staring at him as if he had just jumped up from his seat and performed some kind of dance. The realisation of that made him sink down in his seat, silently begging for it to swallow him in.

That seemed to convince Carly enough to turn back in her seat to continue talking to her friends. It was kind of strange not seeing her boyfriend next to her, something one of her friends had asked her about earlier. She only said that he was already waiting for the bus at the Autobot base.

Ever since a week ago, Zett hadn’t spoken to Starlit again about the whole energon situation but considering how she had refused to explain her reasoning, he doubted that she wanted to talk to him in the first place.

He had tried talking to her again in the days that passed by, but she hadn’t given him a single reply that consisted of at least one word. With her lack of words, he knew she was still angry at him, but it still hurt to not even receive an acknowledgement.

It wasn’t until this morning that he’d gone to tell her he was off to school, as usual, when he received no response at all. At first he thought he’d been too late and that she was no longer functional, but her frame was omitting a soft buzzing hum, something he had come to identify as her placing herself in temporary stasis to try and conserve what little energon she still had left.

He’d been relieved when he realised that she was still very much alive and breathing, but the situation had only succeeded in strengthening his resolve. He was going to help her, even if she hated him for it.

Breathing out a sigh, Zett looked out the window, watching the road signs they were passing by. He had never travelled up the road before but if he could memorise the route, then maybe he could think of another way to convince Starlit to get help from the Autobots.

His memory was never the greatest, so he made notes along the way, passing it off as just scribbling down notes for a test when one of the other students gave him a questioning look when they spotted the notebook in his hand. That seemed to provide enough of an excuse for the other to simply shrug and continue talks of the upcoming football game.

The drive up to the inactive volcano that served as the Autobot base took nearly an hour, but once they arrived, Spike was already standing outside next to a yellow Autobot that Zett had often seen whenever Spike got a ride from the school. It seemed like the Autobot was fairly shorter than what Starlit was the first time he saw her. Ever since that day, he hadn’t seen her stand so it was a little hard to determine how tall she would have been compared to the bot.

There was another bot standing on Spike’s other side, this one nearly twice, if not three times, the yellow one’s side. He had seen him on TV enough times to know that his name was Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots. Looking up at him, a wave of intimidation flowed over Zett, one he hadn’t felt around Starlit or the yellow bot.

“Greetings. My name is Optimus Prime. This is Bumblebee, and I’m sure you’re all aware of who Spike is.”

The introduction was so formal that Zett overheard one of the other students stifle a chuckle. It was a temptation to join them on it, but basic manners that his mother had taught him from an early age kept him from doing so. He wasn’t certain if he should thank or be annoyed at her for it. He chose the safe option and nodded his silent greeting with some of the other students.

The teachers moved to the front of the gathered students, giving them the basic reminder of keeping their hands to themselves, raising their hands to ask questions and to not cause any trouble for their hosts.

Looking up at the two Autobots, Zett knew that there would be more awaiting the students inside. The question was how he was going to get to the energon storage and sneak a cube or two out for Starlit. Sure, she’d get angry at him for doing so against her wishes, but what right did she have to starve herself just because her pride would get a little hurt from asking for help for once.

A week of planning hadn’t given him an idea as to what to do to help her, but if it came down to it, he would risk everything to do so.

Transformers Generation One, Carly Witwicky, Autobots, Spike Witwicky, Bumblebee, Optimus Prime and energon © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 12: Rejected

“Okay, so I think I might have an idea,” Zett said as he pushed a row of papers from one of his school notebooks across the old wooden table set in front of Starlit. He had taken to calling it their ‘strategy table’, something the Cybertronian had chuckled at, but he didn’t care. He was glad to see her smile.

Most would have found it funny that he was trying to get a giant robot to show emotion, but as Starlit had so gently reminded him on more than one occasion, she wasn’t a simple robot. She was a being with emotion, thinking capability and expressionistic when she wanted to be.

He figured her smiling around him meant that she felt comfortable enough to show at least that level of expression around him. Her smile didn’t feel like it was forced around him, not like the smiles his family and fellow students gave him when he passed by. Those were obligated smiles. This one was genuine.

“Yeah?” Starlit hummed from her spot leaning against the wall. Her energon level had dropped thanks to her little excursion without him the other day, but he found himself unable to get annoyed by it. Spending days cooped up in a garage with no idea what was happening on the outside? It was enough to make anyone – or bot – nervous enough to want to get out once in a while, especially on a technical alien planet.

He liked spending time indoors and away from large crowds, but even he needed to taste some fresh air once in a while, that and his job required him to physically take a step out of the house.

The thought of pushing her to ask the Autobots for help had been a pressing issue considering how the femme’s frame was reacting to its low energon intake but something he had learned about the femme within their first week together was to definitely not push her into a corner.

She hadn’t gotten violent with him, at least not to the degree that would physically cause him harm, but her tone of voice had suggested that she wouldn’t hesitate to leave if he were deemed a possible threat to her. He wondered if she still felt the same way but kept his thoughts to himself. She had stayed despite threatening to leave. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

“Mhm. Thanks to the principal pulling some strings, and… a few other people, our grade is taking a field trip to the Autobot base next week.”

That got the femme’s attention, judging from how fast she nearly slammed herself away from the wall. Her tone made her surprise quite clear. “What?”

“You heard me,” Zett said, finding a grin on his face the moment he saw the femme’s surprise showing clear on her face. “I’ll be able to go to the Autobot base and with any luck, get you some of that energon stuff you need.”

The way she looked at him, he was certain that she was going to grab and swing him around like he was some doll in a human girl’s hand, praising and thanking him for his help, but what happened instead was something he hadn’t been expecting whatsoever.

“No.”

His face must have fallen judging by the glare she seemed to give him from behind that big red visor of hers. He had thought of asking her once if she had anything behind them or if she could see without the visor’s help but considering that she hadn’t taken it off in front of him, he hadn’t pushed the subject.

He knew humans with glasses were usually sensitive when it came to matters discussing their eyes, so he figured her situation to be the same. The thought of blind Cybertronians existing was an intriguing thought but was probably just as invasive as it would be asking a human with glasses the same thing, so he kept quiet about it.

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

“Exactly what I said. No.”

“Why? If it can help-”

“It’s too dangerous.”

That caught him by enough surprise that he thought he had forgotten how to form words, snapping free from his thoughts. “How can it be dangerous? They’re your allies, aren’t they?”

The glare she seemed to have beneath her visor intensified to the point that Zett felt his feet instinctively back away. He trusted her enough to know that she wouldn’t attack him. She wouldn’t. Not her.

The way she leaned back against the wall told him all he needed to know. She was done hearing of his plans before he even had the opportunity to tell the whole story he had in mind.

He sighed, looking back at the rough sketches he had drawn up based on what he overheard one of the kids that had snuck into the base before tell one of their friends. The layout had seemed simple enough, but then again they were alien robots. Their base couldn’t be that easy to access, which was why he had originally been surprised when his teacher told the class about the upcoming fieldtrip in the first place.

‘A show of comradery to strengthen human-Cybertronian relations’ had been the official reason the teacher gave them. Most of the students had been so excited about the possibility of seeing the base that they hadn’t thought twice about questioning it. He on the other hand had felt an uneasy twist in his stomach.

“Starlit-”

“I told you no. Get that through your head already,” she said, turning her head away from him. A thought to retort crossed his mind but he kept it to himself. Instead, he grabbed the papers and turned to leave the room.

He knew asking her to go along with it was a long shot from the beginning, but he had at least thought that she would have heard him out about it. Before he left the room, he paused to look back at her, but she hadn’t done the same.

Without another word, he closed the door and headed towards his bedroom. No one but him and Starlit were home, so he could turn his tape player as loud as it could go and not have to worry about anyone complaining about the noise.

One thing he had noticed that both he and the femme had in common was their interest in music. He hadn’t gotten the chance to introduce her to a variety of it, but from what he had played for her, she had expressed interest in, but right now he didn’t feel the need to share the sound with her.

Grabbing a set of earphones, he connected them to the player, his thumb caressing over the play button as he looked to the papers in his fist. He knew he shouldn’t push her about the subject, but the fact still remained that without that energon… He shut his eyes, trying to keep the thought from his mind.

The crumpling of the paper in his hand was the only sound he heard as he opened his eyes and glared straight at the reflection the mirror gave him. If he lost her, then he would lose the only friend he ever had.

Transformers Generation One, Autobots and energon © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker's Triangle: Chapter 11: Temporary Solace

“Star? Hey Star, where are you?” Zett asked, looking around his family’s garage. At first it felt like a waste of time trying to search anywhere besides the square parking block right before him, but it wasn’t impossible for a giant robot to just disappear either, was it?

The garage wasn’t all that big, so the fact that she had just gone missing weighed on Zett’s mind a lot more than he felt comfortable to admit to. His mother hadn’t found out about her, had she? No, that wasn’t possible. If it were, he was certain he would have heard her screaming all the way from his school.

Had her friends come by to pick her up? No, it couldn’t be that either. She would at least have left a message, wouldn’t she? But how? Her hands were far too large to hold a simple, human pen. Did she even know how to write the language? How she even knew how to speak it in the first place still baffled him.

Thinking about all the questions he still had that were left unanswered, Zett slid down against the wall closest to the door, his hand travelling through his hair. A couple of seconds later, a honking sound outside the garage door pulled him from his thoughts.

Getting to his feet, Zett hesitated before he pressed the button next to the door, watching as it retracted back inside to show the black with dark green decorated decals waiting patiently for the door to rise high enough for it to drive in and park exactly where the robot from another planet had stood that same morning when he went off to school.

Once the car drove into the spot, Zett blinked, watching as it shifted and detached and latched back together into the femme he was keeping hidden inside. With the garage door rolling shut behind her, Starlit pushed herself up onto her knees and looked over to Zett with her visor hiding her eyes like usual.

“Where were you?” Zett asked once he got his voice back from staring at how casually she had gone in and out as if she wasn’t the one that had asked to be kept hidden and for him to collect oil because she couldn’t get the fluid she needed to survive on her own.

“Uh, I went out. What does it look like?” she said, sitting back, picking at some mud that had gotten on her arm, probably her right front door if he watched her transformation right. He thought about asking if something like that was private but considering how many times he had seen both the Autobots and Decepticons transform on the TV, he supposed it wasn’t as private of a matter as he thought it to be.

“Without telling me?”

“Well…” she trailed off, as if realising it for the first time since she left.

“How long have you been gone anyway?”

She took a moment to look at the clock in the room, and after another moment of silence, answered him. “Five hours.”

“Five hours?! Where did you even go for that long?”

“I don’t know. Exploring? It gets boring being stuck in here for so long, you know.”

“Well that’s totally not hurtful,” Zett said with a sigh, looking to the garage door once more to ensure that it had shut. The last thing he needed was a nosy neighbour coming by, asking for him to explain the extra-terrestrial guest he was trying to keep secret. “Why didn’t you wait for me? I could have gone with, show you the sights, that sort of thing.”

A faint whir sound alerted him that she had blinked. He didn’t know when it happened, but after some time he had come to identify the soft sounds her frame did in response to certain things. He had identified her blinks, sighs, and frustrated groans, at least he assumed them to be groans.

She went quiet for a while, tilting her head to the side, much like a curious deer though he doubted comparing an alien robot to an ordinary earth deer was anywhere near the same thing.

“Did you want to go with?”

Zett found himself shrugging in response as he slid his hands into the pockets of his faded red hoodie. The fact that the colour hadn’t washed out into a pink-ish hue still amused him.

“I don’t know.”

“You had school, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but-”

“That you needed to attend, correct?”

“Well, yeah, but-”

“So you couldn’t avoid going?”

“I mean, it’s not exactly like that.”

“Then what is it like?”

Zett groaned, looking up at her. “You know, you’re the last robot I ever thought would take attending school seriously.”

“Uh, transformer, not robot. There’s a difference,” Starlit corrected, receiving a defensive lifted hand in return. “And I don’t. I used to hate school.”

“Wait, pause and rewind. Robots, uh, transformers, have schools?”

Starlit nodded, shifting her weight some as if to try and get comfortable in the spot she had chosen for herself. “Of course we do. What? Did you think we just came into the world knowing how to walk and talk and all that?”

“Yes. No. I mean… I guess I don’t know. I thought you were just kind of programmed to know things.”

This time Starlit shook her head, the action causing the wires at the back of her head to shake slightly, almost like ribbons. Big, metallic ribbons. “We are born, usually from mating, but sometimes not in such a nice manner.”

“Mating… you mean like animals?”

“Animals?”

Zett found himself smiling some. For a transformer that knew quite a lot, it was still amusing to find out that she didn’t know as much as he thought she did. Considering that she had been cooped up in a garage without the sight of any animals since she first regained consciousness, he supposed that it was to be expected. He pushed himself upright.

“Tell you what, I’ll go get my biology book and teach you. In exchange you can tell me how stuff works on your planet. Deal?”

The smile that crossed her face ensured him that he had definitely said something that had put the femme more at ease around him. After millennia of being stuck on the ocean floor, she must have felt lonely enough for any acknowledgement of her kind to be a comforting subject. Plus, he had noticed how curious she got whenever he mentioned teaching her more about the world she currently lived on.

“Deal.”

“Great. And another thing.”

“What?”

“Next time you decide that you’re bored of staring at four walls, you’re taking me with you, even if I’m at school, okay?”

Her smile only grew. “Okay.”

Transformers Generation One, Autobots and Decepticons © Hasbro

A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © FangWolfsbane

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker's Triangle: Chapter 08: Energised

“Ugh! Now that’s disgusting,” Starlit groaned as she set the oil barrel back down. For weeks her human helper, Zett, had been trying to get her as much oil as possible. It didn’t compare to energon in terms of taste, but at least it got her through a total of three day cycles, or just days, as Zett called them. It helped when she didn’t consume it all in one go.

It took a while to adjust to the different timing of the planet as well. The only way she could really keep track of it was by watching the planet’s sun rise and set. She didn’t have much to entertain herself with either and sitting in a garage all day didn’t do anything to relieve said boredom.

Zett tried helping when he could by keeping her company and telling her about his homework assignments. Personally she didn’t deem that as satisfying, but Zett had claimed that it was a requirement for his species to progress in their version of an academy, so she simply let him work through the mathematical equations and language barriers.

At one point Zett had asked her to help him with the former, claiming that her robotic architecture would allow her to do so. What Zett hadn’t counted on was the vast difference in their species and mathematics. The mutual experiment had ceased within the first ten minutes.

Adjusting to the new method of measuring time was also rather difficult at first, but Zett had provided her with a desk clock that had helped her get into routine. But routine could only do so much to help her through the day. She was getting restless and needed to get out. When she first mentioned that to Zett, he suggested that they visit the Autobot headquarters, an idea she had shut down without hesitation, still claiming her former reason of not wanting her old comrades to see her in her current, sorry state. Zett had bought it the first two times, but she knew he wouldn’t keep buying it for much longer.

She hated lying to the boy, but if he found out that she was allied with the Cybertronians that were on the opposite side of the ones he and the rest of the planet believed to be their protectors, he wouldn’t hesitate to call them in and have her dealt with. Granted, given what she physically was, she might be treated in a kinder manner, but she’d be a prisoner of war nonetheless, and there was no way in the pits of Kaon that she was simply going to stand by and be treated a certain way based on her frame’s construction.

Looking to the black liquid as it sloshed around in the barrel, watching as it lapped at the edge. It wouldn’t spill. She had drunk past that. Zett was still at his school and wouldn’t return for another three hours.

The door that was keeping her inside was locked, but she had seen Zett open it quite a few times that she knew it stalled when rolling down in the corner. A better choice would have been to wait for Zett’s return, but if she stayed within the small room any longer, she knew she was going to end up losing it.

Raising herself up on her shin plates, Starlit reached out and slipped a digit beneath where the door stalled, gradually slipping more in until she heard the faint click as the door unlocked. A quick drive through the city couldn’t hurt, could it?

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 06: Intelligence Recon

There she was, standing barely a few feet away. All he had to do was take a step closer. Just one step. Just… one.

He couldn’t do it. Taking that first step nearly had Zett running for the hill, asking his new robotic friend to run him over. That was why he was originally going to try and talk to her, for her. Carly. One step. One single, solitary step.

Watching her shoulder-length blonde hair flow over her shoulders, Zett shut his eyes. Lately Starlit Meadow had been asking him to procure energon for her, some strange substance the Decepticons were constantly after, in order to survive. Starlit had been rather tight-lipped about the whole reason why she needed the pink fluid but had eventually caved enough to explain that it was a transformer’s version of food. Food that was hard to procure.

That was apparently the reason why the Decepticons wanted the fluid so bad, which he supposed made sense. If food was even scarcer than it already was, Zett didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if his own species turned against one another to try and obtain even a scrap to eat.

His offer still stood to let him ask Carly for an Autobot to drop by his house to take Starlit to their base so that they could get her the energon they needed, after all, the government did supply it to the Autobots in exchange for them protecting the planet from the Decepticons. Though could it really be deemed protection if they were just trying to feed their own troops? Probably, if it wasn’t for the added pinch of world domination. Yeah, that was probably why the Decepticons were shunned by their Autobot brethren.

He knew all it would take is simply mentioning to Carly that he found a giant robot on the beach, and everything else would just fall along in place like a puzzle. But Starlit had asked him not to. He still didn’t understand the femme’s logic about not wanting help from her companions, but he supposed pride played a role in it as well. Heck, if he was badly injured, he probably wouldn’t want his friends to see him like that either. That was if he had friends to begin with.

Feeling that fact settling in, Zett took in a deep breath. Starlit had begun to be less responsive to his questions about her home planet, claiming that it was due to her not wanting to waste what energon she had left, saying that it was surprising that she had any left considering that it had been approximately four million years since the Autobot ship crashed into the planet. He would have questioned the reality of it, if that wasn’t what the Autobot leader, Optimus Prime, had confirmed on TV once shortly after their discovery at the oil plantation Carly’s boyfriend worked at.

Thinking about Spike Witwicky had Zett curling his hand in a fist, shoving it into the pocket of his jeans the moment he saw Carly and her friends giving him a funny look for staring at them as long as he did before filling their circle again, giving him sidelong glances. There it was. Calling him the creepy kid because he didn’t have the guts to go up to one girl to ask her for advice on helping a friend who needed it.

Zett was about to turn and walk away, grounded in place only from the thought of how much Starlit was probably suffering from hunger by now, when he heard Spike approaching the row of lockers, greeting Carly with a kiss. His cheeks reddened out of anger, though he supposed that dating someone came with the automatic right to publicly display affection for each other. He just wished it wasn’t in front of him.

He wanted to turn and just run off, thinking that he could just apologise to Starlit for still not getting her any real help when school ended. But she might not have that much longer. Thinking it through, Zett grit his teeth, hating how cowardly he was being. His cowardice right now could cost someone – even if she was a robot – to lose their life. He didn’t want that on his conscious. Not under any circumstances.

If he didn’t have the courage to ask Carly, then he’d simply have to ask Spike instead, after all, he was one of the first humans to make contact with the giant visitors from space. It was almost a wonder reporters weren’t following him around all the time.

The longer he waited, the longer she suffered. The question now was how he was going to casually bring up wanting to know how to get energon without raising any suspicions. It wasn’t like he could just walk up to the couple and start demanding answers. He’d gotten so lost in his contemplating that when Spike’s hand landed on his shoulder, Zett nearly jumped off the floor like a startled mouse.

“Hey, Zett right? You alright man?” Spike asked, his face almost unreadable. His lips were smiling but his eyes… they were giving him the creeps. It took nearly all Zett’s self-control to not smack Spike’s hand away. Starlit was the reason why, at least, that’s what he convinced himself.

“Uh, yeah. You’re Spike. We, uh, have English class together,” Zett said, trying to hide a cringe over his own response as he held his hand out, watching Spike shake it in a firm hold. A warning. Carly probably told him he’d been watching her earlier. This was Spike’s way of reminding Zett that he had missed the time frame to try and gun for Carly when she was still single. Fair enough.

“Oh yeah. You’re always sitting off in the corner, napping.”

Zett had to force the chuckle from his mouth. So Spike knew who he was. That made things a little easier. Spike parted his lips, probably to warn him to stay away from Carly and her friends before Zett interrupted him. He didn’t need a reminder that Carly wasn’t interested in him. She had a boyfriend, and despite how much he disliked the guy, he respected her choice, even if he wished the roles were reversed.

“Hey, you’re always hanging out with those robots aren’t you?”

Spike blinked, not having expected the sudden change in whatever topic he had been planning to open with. He probably thought that to be the reason why Zett had been staring at his girlfriend, and in a way, it was true, even if there was an accompanying reason alongside it. His shoulders relaxed, no longer deeming Zett to be a potential threat.

“You mean the Autobots? Yeah. Every chance I get. Why?”

“I’ve got a couple of questions. Say, if you can, can we meet up at lunch so I can ask you?”

“Sure, but, uh, you don’t really seem like the type to really be into that kind of thing.”

“Oh, it’s not for me. A friend of mine has a really big interest in robots, especially aliens. A real geek, you know?”

“Well… I guess it’s okay. Will she be joining us?”

“Ah, she can’t. She’s… in the hospital – out of town! I kind of want to do this for her, as a favour. She’s been really down in the dumps lately.” Literally.

Spike’s face softened, buying his story hook, line, and sinker. “Oh no man. That sucks. I’m sorry.”

Zett nodded his thanks. “So, is it okay with you if we get together to talk?”

This time it was Spike’s turn to nod, his expression an almost one-eighty compared to when he first clapped Zett’s shoulder. “Of course man. Any time.”

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker's Triangle: Chapter 03: Discovery

“Hey Zett, haul your ass up here and get this job done!”

“Yessir! Be right there!” Zett Oakwell called up to his superior, or at least that’s what the man seemed to believe himself to be. Waiting until the big, burly man moved out of sight, Zett kept his lips pressed into an all too friendly smile he had years to practice into perfection. The moment he lost sight of the man, so did his lips lose their form.

A sigh rattled through Zett’s ribs, his hand reaching up to rub his palm against his diaphragm, trying to quell his true thoughts on the man who barely paid him the minimum wage for working on the construction site their company had been asked to clear. It didn’t help that they were the only two on site either. Everyone else had claimed that they were all ‘too busy’ to help with the clearing. He hoped they all got some form of pain in their backsides as karma for leaving him as the boss’s sole lapdog.

Looking around the site, Zett took a moment in to get a good look at the small beach that had been used as a dump by the locals. He could feel his hand curling into a fist as his anger swelled up once more. There were plenty of trashcans around the city, yet people still chose to walk along this very beach and just let their refuge flitter to the ground without a second thought.

Zett wasn’t an eco-warrior, or any kind of activist, but it still pained him to see how little humans thought of the only inhabitable planet they had. Talks about travelling to distant planets to live on them instead had crossed over the radio a couple of times when he walked past the boss’s office, overhearing all the excited chatter about the possibilities. Sure, send humans to another planet so that they can destroy that one as well. Those had been his thoughts. No one had asked his opinion on the matter, so he never gave it, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t have an opinion either.

Personally, he felt like no one ever really bothered to talk to him unless they needed something. That’s the way it always was. At home, at school, and even at work, so he simply chose to keep his mouth shut and pick up whatever he passed, throwing away the trash the cause of the problem chose to ignore.

The sunlight bounced off the slow approaching waves, lapping ever so gently at the shore as if tentatively testing its safety. The sight of a small crab scuttling in the distance was at least something that brought a smile to his lips. It almost looked like the crab was trying to play a game of tag. Nature’s refuge workers his teacher had said during a field trip when he was in the seventh grade. Zett took his hardhat off in respect for the crustacean, the same sunlight bouncing off his neck-length black hair, before turning on his heel and heading towards the boss’s temporary base of operations for the hotel they were tasked to build. Another refuge for the litterbugs too lazy to walk a couple of steps to the nearest bin.

“You wanted to see me, boss?” Zett asked upon entering the office, his brown eyes scanning the room. There wasn’t really much to look at. A wooden desk painted blue in the corner with a heap of bills for equipment, a cold cup of coffee and a pen verging on the edge of toppling off the side. The chair that was supposed to be nearby stood off to the side, acting as something for his boss to lean against as he studied one of the blueprints plastered against the wall. A quick once over told Zett that it was for the seventh floor. He hadn’t bothered to ask how tall the hotel was going to be. He only cared about how much they would get paid by the end of it.

If the pay-out were as good as he was hoping, he’d have saved up enough to put in a deposit for his own place once he graduated from high school in a couple of months, possibly scraping by with his sloppy grades. As long as he passed and could move out, then he was happy. Everything else could wait.

“Yeah. You don’t mind working extra shifts, right?” his boss asked, not even having the decency to try and look at him as he asked. Coming from the man before him, Zett knew it wasn’t a request as much as an order. If he refused, it would simply be cut from his check, not that he’d receive any extra payment for saying yes in the first place. Zett made sure to hide his curling fist on the inside of his hat, flashing a crude gesture to the otherwise rude man.

“No sir,” Zett hummed, forcing his lips into that same, earlier, all too eager to please smile that he hated so much that he felt like he could hurl at the mere thought of doing it.

“Good. I need you to work overtime tonight. Get this area clear by tomorrow morning so that the boys can get started. We’re behind schedule as it is.”

‘We wouldn’t have fallen behind in the first place if ‘the boys’ had bothered to show up in the first place,’ Zett snapped back, mentally of course. No way in hell was he going to keep his employment if he dared point out the reason for their falling behind. At least this way, he wouldn’t have to worry about going home and getting chewed out by his poor biology class test results – if his school bag had been left undisturbed where he had taken to hiding it beneath his bed.

“Sure thing.”

“Good. Remember to lock up when you’re done.” And just like that, the boss dismissed him, already grabbing his own jacket as he hurried out the door towards his waiting car. Watching the rear lights of the old clunker turning the corner, Zett waited a couple of seconds before slamming the protective headwear into the sandy floor beneath himself as hard as he could, sliding his hands through his hair shortly after as he screamed his frustration to the distant sky, his seemingly only companion as of late. A million stars, none of which probably even knew his name, much less about his existence. It made him wonder if anyone – any thing – knew that he too, had a life. At this point, there was no chance in hell.

***

Hours of hauling trash from one end to another had Zett sweaty, moody, and frankly, tired. A church bell in the distance told him that it was three in the morning. By this time, the headlight he’d wrapped around his forehead had lost its life, and of course his boss hadn’t bothered to leave a spare behind, so Zett continued working in the dark, knowing fully well that in a couple of hours he’d be forced to work alongside the same men who left the grunt work to him. The only comfort he gave himself was that he’d probably earn a couple of muscles from all the heavy lifting. The small bulges in his arms acted as reassurance.

He had been warned, multiple times before, about paying attention to where he was walking when doing his work, so the moment his foot hit something hard, Zett only had enough time to yelp out his surprise before crashing face-first into something solid.

A crunch of bone informed him that he’d officially broken his nose, his salt-stained hands flying up to try and cover it before the bloodbath begun. He knew it was an overexaggerating on his part, but it still hurt. For the first time in eighteen years, he’d broken something that most guys his age hurt during physical fights. He nearly laughed at how lame his excuse would be if someone cared enough in the hallway to ask why his skin had turned purple and blue. If he were lucky, he could convince them that he’s gotten it the same way as most guys his age tended to break their bones. Maybe he’d even be lucky to impress Miss Perfect, Carly.

He didn’t quite know why she was the one he wanted to impress, chalking it up to his DNA telling him to be the typical kid falling for the most popular girl at school only to be ignored like a poster from the drama club requesting new members. He nearly felt giddy at the thought of finally, possibly one-upping that other guy that always hung out with her. Spike… something. He didn’t know much about him, except that he had some association with robotic aliens from some other planet. Maybe those aspiring astronauts had some point to their Earth-eviction plan.

The first couple of months after the robots – Autobots, if he remembered right – no one could stop talking about them, until everyone got used to their existence. Sometimes when walking past a car parked off on its own, even he attempted to strike up a conversation with it in the hopes that it would respond. It never did.

Groaning, Zett pushed himself out of the salty water, keeping his hand pressed to his nose, trying to ignore how sensitive it was. Looking down, Zett leaned in for a closer look to see what he had tripped over. It was definitely something big, painted black with green streaks and purple markings. He frowned, leaning in for a closer look. From what he could see, it looked like one of those giant Autobot robots. Although this one seemed to be, well, dead.

How long had it been laying here? From the gleam of the armouring or whatever it was that they called their… skin, it seemed the robot had been abandoned. Sliding his hand up the side, he felt a couple of bumps and dents. Whoever this robot was, they sure had seen better days. From what he could feel, it felt like a female version. That alone was enough to cause his cheeks to heat. The closest he’d ever gotten to the females of his own species was talking to one of them with an occasional glance at their cleavage or other… assets when passing them by. Who knew that his first time touching any kind of female would be a robot? Not that he would tell anyone about that.

“What happened to you girl?” Zett asked, as if expecting a response. The head seemed to hold some kind of helmet that flowed into cables that he supposed was their version of hair. A visor like the ones that firefighters wore on their helmets covered where he figured her eyes were. Did Autobots also have eye problems? A pair of wings jutted out on either side, making him think that she had probably transformed into a plane or something similar. Judging from her slim figure, probably a jet. From what he could see, there wasn’t any rust, luckily.

The best course of action was to probably to talk to Spike at school and tell him about his discovery. Even better, he could go to Carly’s house and tell her personally. The grin that had appeared on his face at the thought fell. Not only was it way too early in the morning to drop by for a ‘casual visit’, he didn’t even know where she lived in the first place. He sighed once more, turning himself around as he sat down on her leg, running his free hand through his hair.

“Just can’t get a break, can you, Zett?” he asked himself, staring at his reflection in the water that wasn’t even visible. He frowned, kicking the back of his heel against the leg. So much for finding a giant robot that he couldn’t even use to impress the girl he liked.

A soft whirring sound buzzed through his ears, causing him to sit up. The robot wasn’t radioactive, was it? His head slowly turned towards the robot’s face, her visor lighting up into a soft red glow as a pair of even redder eyes locked onto him in what he instinctively knew was a warning.

“Oh boy.”

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker's Triangle: Chapter 05: Adjustment

The drive back to the squishy being’s home had been strange. First Starlit Meadow had learned that Zett’s species were known as ‘humans’. Adjusting to driving on the pavement road wasn’t all that different from Cybertron, which in itself was a release, but after being forced to stay in her newly scanned alternative mode in what Zett called a ‘garage’ was beginning to get on her nervous system.

The first couple of nano cycles had been fine, but after awakening out of what she could only assume had originally been stasis lock, hunger had begun to gnaw at her. She didn’t know how long it had been since she had consumed energon and sitting in this human’s ‘garage’ was working her up more than she liked.

When she had first tried transforming back to her bipedal mode, he’d asked, no, begged, her not to, claiming that he didn’t want to risk her being found out. The thought of that was annoying enough, but she chose to take his word for that. She had to stay out from underneath the Autobots’ radar, at least until she could figure out what to do next.

Zett had a point in her staying in this ‘car’ mode that he’d called her current form. She didn’t have a reflective surface to overlook her said car mode, but from the Earth vehicle she had scanned, she could assume that her frame had followed its usual protocol to turn her into an exact copy of her scan, save for the colouring. No matter which form she took, her colour scheme always stayed the proud black and green she had known since the moment she’d first learned the name of her two colours.

Every morning Zett came into the garage, bid her farewell to attend the Earth version of an academy, then he’d return at night after attending to work on the site he’d found her at. She wasn’t sure if Zett was keeping her a secret from the Autobots like he had promised to do but considering that she still remained incognito in the small, cramped wooden room, she could only assume that he did. Even if the Autobots had won the war against the Decepticons, there was no chance that they would simply leave a stray Decepticon out in the open. They would have dealt with her, one way or another.

Each day that passed, the only indication of time passing being Zett’s visits, seemed to take longer and longer. At first she had planned to wait, to lay low to try and come up with a plan, but her tanks were churning, demanding to be filled. When she had requested Zett bring her some energon, he only looked at her like she had lost her processor. She hated that look. It was the same one Astrotrain had given her once when she had snapped at him to keep his servos to himself when he thought she’d give him what he wanted because she was the only Decepticon femme at base. He had backed off, only after she had to show what her arm blades were capable of.

She should have checked them, ensured that they were still locked firmly into her arm plating, but that would require transforming, something she didn’t have the energy for. Whilst waiting on Zett to return, babbling on and on about how his day was, she took stasis naps in an attempt to conserve what little energon she still had within her. she contemplated forcing herself back into stasis lock to try and conserve more but thought it to be useless. If she did that, she’d be nothing more than an average car, as Zett put it.

She didn’t tell Zett about her thoughts on conserving what she had, but when he told her that not everything moving on the road was an Autobot or Decepticon, questions had popped up one right after the other. She must have spent a good amount of time asking him about his planet, which Zett had decided to sum up for her through video files he called documentaries and homework.

Earth was strange. There was no doubt in her processor about that, but the way Zett spoke about it, Starlit Meadow couldn’t help but find it interesting. She missed Cybertron, just like any other Cybertronian that had possibly gone off planet at some point in their functional life, but there was no use in longing for a planet she had no hopes of returning to. If she ran out of energon, then she definitely didn’t have any hope.

Letting her processor wander, Starlit Meadow felt ashamed of herself for not noticing that Zett had returned, rolling up the metallic garage door as he did. Usually the wide door made enough noise for her to at least be aware of his presence, no longer detectable by the systems she had forced herself to shut down in an attempt to conserve what she had.

“Hey Star. How are you holding up?” Zett asked as he rolled the door back down behind him, a rusted maroon coloured barrel beside him. From the sound of it, there was something inside, possibly a fluid of some sort. It stunk.

Shifting her sideview mirror, she caught sight of the human. If it weren’t for the concerned look on his face, she would have laughed, if she could manage more than a dry chuckle. He must have noticed her eyeing the barrel with her mirror when she didn’t respond because the next moment he was pushing it over towards her, leaving behind a steel-curling screeching noise as he did. She would have scolded him for it, but only watched instead, her curiosity getting the better of her, especially after what he said next.

“I brought you a little something. A little pick-me-up if you will,” Zett said once he had the barrel right beside her. “I know its not exactly that energon stuff you need, but I figured that since you’re, well, a car-”

“Transformer,” she felt herself correcting before her CPU registered her words as they played through her radio. An interesting device, one that she had thought about using to try and contact her old teammates but absolved from in case the Autobots were monitoring radio frequencies.

“Right, sorry. Anyway, since you won’t let me ask someone for help, and said that your kind needs this ‘energon’ stuff to survive, I might have had an idea. You see, when the Autobots set up base here, the government let them have stuff like oil and that kind of thing, so maybe it’s the same thing? I don’t know exactly, but this is the best I could think of,” Zett rambled on, barely able to keep her attention as he scratched the back of his helm, no, head, he had told her when she had asked about the strange covering he called ‘hair’.

“Get to the point,” she said, groaning inwardly upon realisation that she might have used the energy she needed to talk where she could have been conserving it.

“Hn? O-Oh, of course. I, uh… do you remember when I found you almost a week ago?” he asked, taking her silence as confirmation. “Well, I found this old oil barrel and thought that maybe you could… you know, drink it?”

“Oil?” She would have arched an optic ridge at the strange word if she had been in her other form.

“Yeah. I know you said you’re not a car, but it is still something cars use to get around. I thought that maybe it could help, at least until we figure out a way to get you some energon.”

She went quiet once more, this time for longer as her thoughts ran through her processing unit. Finally when she spoke, her voice was a bit more strained than she would have liked.

“Why are you doing this?”

This time it was Zett’s turn to go quiet. At first she thought that she might have fallen into stasis lock and was merely imagining his presence before his hand touched her side window. Her mirror readjusted itself so that she could see his face a little clearer. Due to her lack of fuelling, her vision had resorted to its basic function, making her see everything in a dark red hue, and not the once bright colours everything had originally been when she first onlined on this planet.

“Because… you’re my friend,” Zett said, a small smile spreading across his lips as his hand moved over her red-tined window, brushing away a spec of dust that she’d previously ignored. “That and you looked like you needed help. Something tells me you’re the stubborn sort that even if I went to the Autobots and told them were you were, you’d be out of here before we make it around the corner and the only way I’d see you again is when you come to kick my ass for it.”

She didn’t bother confirming or denying his assumption, leaning more towards the former guess herself.

“Anyway, I know its not the energon you need, but maybe it could help. From the looks of it, no one’s going to claim it anymore either. It’s probably been abandoned for more than a year already.”

Letting a sigh reverberate through her systems, Starlit Meadow put the last of her reserve tanks into forcing herself to transform into her bipedal mode. Usually when a protoform went through their very first transformation, it tended to hurt, only because their joints and mechanisms weren’t used to the process. After at least a stellar cycle of practice, the pain faded, never to be felt again, except apparently on a near empty fuel tank.

When her doors had shifted into her arms and her back end of her car form returned to a pair of legs, Starlit Meadow hunched over in the garage, the wooden building feeling even smaller than before as her hunched back touched the ceiling. How humans could stand living in such small spaces, she didn’t care to know, even if it was big compared to them.

Looking over to the barrel, she wasn’t all that keen on tasting this thing Zett called oil, but considering her situation, it was either go to the Autobots and hope to be helped or swallow her pride with the oil and hope for the best. This time she chose the latter option.

As much as it pained her, Starlit Meadow was relieved to see that at the very least, she still had the blades on her arms, something she had ever since Megatron first found her. The relief she felt was comforting as she used the one on her right to slice the top off the barrel.

The liquid inside was thick, and black, not at all the bright pink she was used to seeing in cube form whenever rations were divided up amongst her former team. She tried ignoring the smell as best as she could, wishing she’d chosen to disable her ol factory sensors as well.

From the corner of her optics she knew Zett was watching her, anxiously awaiting her reaction. She hesitated then tossed back the thick liquid in a big gulp, nearly gagging at the taste. She nearly snapped at the human that he was trying to clog her fuel lines when her tanks grumbled with the need to consume more. Before she knew it, she had swallowed half of the barrel’s contents. It wasn’t energon, that much was certain, but it was still comforting, filling.

“How is it?” Zett asked, taking a step towards her, although judging by the smile on his face, he seemed to be pretty well informed that his decision might have just helped her after all.

“Horrible,” Starlit Meadow admitted, finding a smile on her own lips as she looked down at the human, watching his facial expression fade at the realisation. Before she knew what was happening, she found her servo reaching over towards him, taking a gentle hold of the shoulder that she could crush so easily with a simple flick of a digit. “But… edible, as you humans say.”

Zett’s smile returned to his lips, the moment a pair of words she thought she’d never ever say again crossed her lips.

“Thank you.”

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker's Triangle: Chapter 04: Meeting

Warning: Gender misappropriation!

Screaming. Pain. Cold. Heaviness.

Those were the first memories that surfaced the moment her optics onlined. At first everything seemed like a blur that cleared within a few nano seconds. The space above her was dark, a beautiful midnight blue that she hadn’t seen since before the Decepticons boarded the Autobots ship, the Ark.

Something lapped at her frame. Something cold. In a way it was strangely comforting. At least she knew now that some senses were still functional. Shifting her optics, she took in more of her surroundings. A night sky on some distant planet, probably. An organic planet from the feel of it.

In the distance a couple of buildings stood tall. Strange, they all seemed like they were only tall enough for a bot to go into, but barely move. Perhaps her perspective vision was malfunctioning. She’d have to ask Shockwave to take a look at it when she got back to Cybertron.

Turning her optics a bit further, she saw him; something she could only describe as an organic, for lack of better vocabulary. His helm was a similar black to her own. His optics however, she had never seen the colour as an optical variation before. Optics were usually either blue or red, sometimes green, yellow, and orange, even purple if you were lucky enough to come across a bot with those coloured optics, but brown? She would have marvelled at the sight if the organic didn’t yelp and scramble back in surprise after registering that she had onlined.

One moment it had been standing upright, the next it fell back in the fluid she was laying in. She would have found it funny if it weren’t for the splitting processor ache she currently had. Groaning from the discomfort, Starlit Meadow moved her arms, bending them at the elbow joints to push herself upright. She must have crashed and gone into stasis lock the moment they entered the planet’s atmosphere. Looking at the rest of her surroundings, she frowned. Where were the rest of the bots? The Ark? The Nemesis? Surely the ships couldn’t have crashed too far away, could they?

“Where… where am I?’ she asked, her optics drifting behind the visor she never removed from her helm, not unless Shockwave asked – well, more like ordered – her to when he had her do one of his tests that required looking at her optical sensors.

“At the beach,” the strange organic piped up. Starlit Meadow blinked, her attention snapping to the strange creature. From the low depth of what her auditory sensors picked up, she would have classified the creature as a mech, but considering that it didn’t seem Cybertronian, or technological in any form, she held off on her data analysis.

From what she could see, the creature did have some similar mode to it. It had what seemed like peds, legs, a torso, a surprisingly flat chassis, arms, a neck and a helm, the latter of which seemed to have moveable strands. She would have called it fascinating if it didn’t seem so easy to… squish.

“The… beach?” she repeated, finding the most surprising part that this creature was capable of speech, even more so a language native to Cybertronians. Granted the language she currently spoke was the secondary one on her home planet, yet most found it easier to communicate in the language, and thus Cybertronian as a language had drifted off into more of an ancient language, one only the old and rusted really communicated in.

The creature nodded, cupping its servos in the fluid, and holding it up towards her, some of it dripping back down through any gap it could find between the creature’s digits. “Yeah.”

Not really understanding what it meant, Starlit Meadow looked to the fluid and copied the creature’s action, watching another organic swimming about like a sharkticon within the fluid. The organic within the blue-ish fluid seemed far more worried about being held by her than it did about her worrying if it might try to tear her apart. Lowering her servos back in, she watched it swim off. Out of the two organics she had met so far, the far smaller one seemed to be the smarter, or at least less curiouser of the two.

“Beach,” she said once more, committing the word to her memory banks as she focused her attention back on the creature, “tell me organic, which planet am I on?”

This time it was the creature’s turn to repeat her words with an oddly shaped optic ridge. “Organic? I’m not wheat you know.”

“Wheat?” Starlit Meadow frowned. She had heard of planets with pretty ridiculous names before, but this one took the high grade energon right off the shelf. “What a strange name.”

The creature shook its helm. “No, no. You… ah, you’re on a planet called ‘Earth’. And my name isn’t ‘Organic’ either. It’s Zett. Zett Oakwell.”

Under different circumstances she would have questioned the creature’s need for a name but considering how similar it was to her in terms of frame building, she supposed it wasn’t really all that surprising. Where the rest of its appendages were though, she didn’t know. She wasn’t going to ask either in case it – in case Zett – became offended by her misinterpretation of its frame like she had done with its planet.

Earth. Zett had pronounced it to sound like ‘erf’, but the name seemed to be easy enough to remember. Zett didn’t take its optics off her, save to temporarily shield its optics behind a layer of whatever metal its protoform was covered in. She hated it whenever Shockwave probed and prodded at her, so she spared Zett her curiosity in trying to feel the texture of his protoform, the little she could see of it. The armour Zett wore didn’t seem all that strong either, but if Zett wore it, then it must probably provide some form of protection, shock absorption at the least.

“Hey, what’s your name?” Zett asked, sitting itself up by crossing its legs beneath it. A sitting position she herself was familiar and quite comfortable with. She copied it, her movements sending a small wave of ‘beach’ crashing into his chassis.

“Starlit Meadow.”

“Heh,” Zett smiled, revealing a set of dentals that seemed divided with small lines in between, unlike the straight line of metal that Cybertronian dentals consisted of. “Your name is kinda funny.”

Despite the lack of some of her vocabulary, she knew enough to know what the word ‘funny’ meant. Her frown seemed to be enough to encourage Zett to be wary of their obvious size difference.

“Ah, sorry. Sorry. I just thought you’d, you know, have a cooler name or something like the rest of the Autobots.”

That caught her attention.

“What did you say?”

Zett’s optics rolled on their white canvas-background. “Yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to make fun of other people’s – or robots –”

“No, not that. What did you say about the Autobots?”

“Uh, that they have cool names?” Zett said, not sounding as certain of itself as it eyed her before something seemed to dawn on it. “That’s what you are, isn’t it? An Autobot, right?”

Naturally her first thought was to protest the very thought but if Zett knew about the Autobots then that meant that it possibly knew more than she thought. Was this Earth some kind of remote Autobot planet that she didn’t know about? The energon in her fuel lines went cold at the thought. If the Autobots had claimed the planet, then what did that mean for the Decepticons? Were any of them even still online? How long had she been in stasis?

Perhaps if she went along with Zett’s assumption, she could try and find out more about just what the Autobots were up to. If she were lucky, she could stay under their radar until she could plan her next move.

As much as it pained her, Starlit Meadow nodded. “Yes. I’m… an old friend, that got lost on the way here.”

That seemed to be enough to convince Zett of her story. Zett nodded as well and got onto its peds, the fluid they were both sitting in clinging to its armour, absorbing into it. “I’d offer to take you to them, but I don’t know where their base is. I could ask Carly though…”

She had to stop Zett. “No! No. I… I’d rather not have my… comrades see me in this state.”

“Why?’ Zett questioned, arching that strange optic ridge once more. “They could help… repair you, can’t they?”

Well Zett wasn’t as ignorant as she originally thought. She couldn’t reveal too much in case Zett struggled to keep information private. She’d only give the basics, enough to get information of her own.

She sighed. “Technically, yes, but you see my… components are slightly different to theirs. I just need somewhere until I can collect my thoughts. If the Decepticons find out about me, then my mission would be compromised.”

“Mission?” Zett’s optics temporarily covered themselves with their strange, elastic protoform stretching over their optics. She tried not to flinch at the sight. “You mean like a secret agent?”

Perhaps Zett was as ignorant as she originally thought. “Yes.”

“I guess that makes sense. Alright, but we’ll have to get you out of here first. Someone might see you out here. Do you think you can transform?”

She would have questioned how Zett knew about her ability to transform, but then again, the Autobots were apparently something this Zett and Carly seemed to know something about. Pushing herself up to her full height, Starlit Meadow took some pride in how Zett gawked at her height. Usually she was one of the shorter bots when comparing herself to her real comrades, so to have somebot – someone – looking to her as if she were as big as Primus himself, well, she’d be lying if she said that she didn’t feel somewhat happy about that.

“Give me some space,” she said, and once Zett was out of the fluid, she looked around for something on the planet to try and scan. She would have gone with the last form she could remember scanning, but she needed to stay stealthy. In the distance she watched a four-wheeler racing past on a distant road. Concentrating, her optics memorised the vehicle’s form, her processor putting the image to the rest of her frame.

Another groan escaped from between her lips as the stiffness in her frame worked on transforming for the first time in who knew how long. Within a matter of nanoclicks she was driving out of the fluid and onto the strange, crunchy surface beneath her, the metal that used to serve as her wheels now some strange, squishy substance, but enough like the metal she was used to in order to try and keep control of. With her optics connected to the headlights at the front of her new form, Starlit Meadow looked to where Zett was standing, mouth agape. She didn’t like the look she was getting.

“What?”

“You can turn into a Porsche? That is so cool!”

She supposed Porsche was simply the form of the vehicle she had scanned. She only hoped that the Autobot she had scanned hadn’t been aware of what she had done. It could also have been the name of the Autobot she copied. Why Zett referred to them as an object, she didn’t know. Perhaps Zett didn’t know that Cybertronians had subsections within their species.

“Lead the way.”

Zett’s optics did that temporary protoform shuttering once more. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

Those words were enough to cause her to worry. She had been inside other Decepticons before when they transformed into their alternative modes before, but they had all been bigger than her. She, on the other servo, had never had another bot within her, sitting or standing.

“I have to let you inside me?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Ugh.”

[fang-wolfsbane]

Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 19: Infiltration

The thing that she found most irritating about her ability to shapeshift into any alternate mode was that she couldn’t use that same ability to change her appearance into that of another bot to make infiltration easier.

She never had a problem with her fame or build, in fact, she found that she rather liked it, but it did come with its disadvantages. That was to be expected, Shockwave had told her once. She hated that he had been right.

During one of the tests he constantly put her through back on Cybertron, he had her try to imitate the builds of various bots. She hadn’t succeeded at even one. Their alternate modes had been no problem, but their bi-pedal frames had been a different story entirely.

When she originally asked Megatron what the purpose behind the idea was, he hadn’t really told her much, save for hinting that he intended on using her for nearly the same purpose as she was trying to do now: infiltrating the Autobot base to gather energon.

The thought alone was irritating enough to make her hesitant about carrying out the mission, even if it was just for her own wellbeing. She couldn’t help but wonder, if she had succeeded during those tests, would she have had enough experience to know exactly what she needed to do?

She doubted it. If she had passed the tests, she would have been ordered to stay behind on Cybertron, working under Shockwave’s command, trying to gather the remaining energon from the few bases the Autobots still had left.

Thinking back on it now, maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad. At least then she would have known where most bots were.

Brightening the intensity on her visor, Starlit used the red light to guide her path along the vents she was currently scuttling through. Luckily for her, Earth’s defences hadn’t evolved to Cybertron’s level, leaving the vents pretty much exposed. It was almost ridiculous, though that didn’t mean that she wasn’t grateful for it. This way she didn’t have to worry so much over her own safety.

With all the mini bots they had around, she would have thought that the Autobots would have ensured that the vents were smaller, at least human sized, but from the look of it, they hadn’t expected to be snuck up on by the Decepticons, much less a femme Decepticon.

As she crawled along, she didn’t have a clue where she was going, save for a slight cool breeze. When it came to energon storage, it didn’t need to be stored under any specific temperatures, as long as that temperature didn’t reach a boiling point, so that left the most logical choice the coldest room on base, thus the reason why she followed the breeze.

Voices echoed through the vents, causing her to constantly pause her exploration to try and determine how many potential enemies she would have to face if she were somehow found out, as well as to listen for anything that might be of use to her. So far? She hadn’t heard anything of value.

The latest gossip on base seemed to be about their human guests, something she already knew about thanks to Zett. If she succeeded, she planned on thanking him for the heads up. If she survived.

“I still say it’s a stupid idea,” one of the mech’s made clear his distain about letting humans into their base. She didn’t blame him on that front. Even if they were humans, they were a security risk, especially if one of them planned on getting inside the way she had done.

She was extremely glad that the plating holding the vents together was strong enough not to creak beneath her weight. Given that most of the mechs on the base were physically bigger than her, she supposed that they needed to make the vents strong enough to hold the bigger weight in case of maintenance situations. She silently prayed that today wasn’t one of those days.

“Oh come on Red Alert, it can’t be that bad,” another mech said, the sound of their peds alerting her that they were walking in her direction. She went still, waiting on them to pass.

“How can you say that Inferno?” the first mech, Red Alert, asked in a bit of a huff. Listening to their names and voices, she didn’t recognise either, which meant that they couldn’t have been high on the ranking list, at least not to the point she had heard of. Who knew, maybe they had recently gotten promotions, or maybe they were new recruits.

“Not every bot – or human – is out to get you, you know,” Inferno hummed.

“You can never be too careful.”

‘You can say that again,’ Starlit thought to herself, waiting on their voices to disappear into the distance before she continued her descent. At some point she had lost track of how long she had been in the vents, until she heard an all too familiar voice telling her exactly where she was.

“Uh, yeah. You say energon is like your lifeblood right? Your food and everything, but how long can you really go without it?”

Bingo.

Transformers Generation One, Shockwave, Cybertron, Megatron, Autobots, Decepticons, Red Alert, Inferno and energon © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Starlit Meadow and Zett Oakwell © Fang Wolfsbane

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Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 18: First Step

When she arrived at the base, she knew that if she were caught in any kind of manner, then not only would her secret be exposed, but Zett might never forgive her for lying to him. He was a human. Why would she have to care about how he felt over her lying to him?

Back on Cybertron, she had lied various times to get out of doing chores or to explain why she was late for something. Not once had she felt guilt over doing that, in fact, there were times where she felt like the mechs had deserved not to know what she had really been up to. They hadn’t earned her trust, not like the human had anyway.

Letting air filter through her vents, Starlit winced at the feeling of guilt weighing on her chassis. She tried shaking the feeling, convincing herself that it was in-line with what Zett had originally proposed they do. She had declined his plan because she didn’t want to risk his safety. Her own was inconsequential. If she got caught, the worse would be interrogation and possibly execution for being a Decepticon, but the humans might see Zett as a traitor to their kind and do far worse to him, to his family.

She had no memory of her own family, but from what she had gathered over the years, they had practically been non-existent in the first place. She didn’t even know if she was originally from Cybertron in the first place. Sure, most bots came from their home planet, but there were still other planets out there, other galaxies that had inhabitants similar to their own.

Once during one of the tests Shockwave ran on her, she had asked him if he knew of any possibility that she could have been an off-worlder. He had said that it was definitely a possibility, but that he had never heard of a bot that could do what she did. He had theorised that she had been modified from an early age, or possibly an artificial creation, but she had shut off the feed to her audio receptors, refusing to listen further.

Even if she hadn’t been born on Cybertron like most, she still lived there. She still drank, laughed, and fought on the planet. It was a place she considered to be home, even if the Autobots were set on chasing her and the other Decepticons away.

She was going to return to the planet one day, whether the Autobots approved it or not, but for now she was going to survive, no matter what it took. She could have tried to get in contact with the Decepticons, but she didn’t know how to go about that in the first place. She didn’t have any communication devices on her, and there was no chance that her comm.-link was still functional. That had been the first thing she tested ever since she had a moment alone in Zett’s family’s garage.

How long had she hidden out there? Other than Zett, she never really heard other human-like voices. At first she thought that they all sounded similar and that’s why she never heard much of a difference, but because of the radio Zett had put in the garage, she knew that they sounded different, just like members of her kind.

It was strange each time she recognised some form of similarity between the two species. Biologically they were so different, and yet at times, so similar. She wondered if Shockwave had the opportunity, would he try to study them or simply view them as pests? Possibly the latter.

Looking out to the Autobot base, Starlit felt her tanks churn from hunger. Oil was all good and well but it wouldn’t sustain her for much longer. If she hoped to make it out to either side, she needed to survive, no matter what it took.

Transformers Generation One, Cybertron, Decepticons, Shockwave and Autobots © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane

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Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 17: Lifeblood

Rows and rows of energon stood in front of Zett, their bright pink glow almost blinding. Most of the other students either went ‘oooh’ or ‘ah’, but not him, and neither of the three humans that had made the Autobot base their daily hangout.

If it wasn’t for the fact that he got to see Starlit every afternoon after school, then he might have felt more envious towards the other three teens. He knew it was unreasonable, but there was still a hint of jealousy on the subject. He only got to hang out with one, while they had multiple.

As Jazz explained the many properties of energon, Zett couldn’t help but wonder if the other teens didn’t perhaps, on occasion, receive academical help from the giant robots from outer space. A part of him knew to doubt the possibility, because what could aliens possibly know about a human teenager’s homework? Considering all their good grades as of late, possibly more than the humans themselves. That or the teachers were simply too terrified of receiving a surprise visit from a transformer for giving one of their friends a bad grade. The thought of Starlit doing something like that on his behalf had him stifling a snort.

“Oakwell, did you have a question?” one of said teachers asked, looking to him with a sceptical arched brow. Zett had to cough to try and regain his composure as he looked back up at Jazz, nearly having to bend his neck back further than he was comfortable with. Yup, there was no denying it. He was definitely taller than Starlit.

“Uh, yeah. You say energon is like your lifeblood right? Your food and everything, but how long can you really go without it?”

Whether the question caught Jazz off-guard or not, he didn’t show, only tilting his head some as if in thought. “That’s a tricky one. I mean, if we don’t get regular refills, we can go on for a short while, but if it gets too long, we can go into stasis lock – a sort of coma, if you will – which keeps us online – alive – for a while, but if it goes on too long without any refills, then there’s no way it can end well.”

“You mean you could die, don’t you?”

Jazz’s fingers snapped on the topic as if to say bingo. “That’s right.”

“Have you… lost a lot of bots because of it?” Zett hesitantly asked, thinking that if he hadn’t found Starlit on the beach that day, would she have died once her stasis lock failed? A grim look filled the full mouth. The glare Spike gave him made him understand that he had crossed a clear line. Zett was about to tell Jazz that he needn’t answer, but the bot surprised him.

“I have. A lot of us have. Ever since the war broke out between the ‘bots and ‘cons, energon has gotten so scarce that we needed to leave our home planet to find some more. Some we lost to war, others to starvation.”

Zett lowered his head, his cheeks flushed in embarrassment over not having thought his question through before he originally asked it. “I… I’m sorry.”

Jazz only gave him a pitying smile before he returned his attention back to the other teenagers. “Right, whose ready to continue the tour?”

No one answered, but they moved as one out the only door to the room, Zett being the last one out before Jazz, silently casting one last glance to the fluid that could save his friend’s life. The only problem was that he had no idea how to get it to her.

Transformers Generation One, Jazz, Autobots, Decepticons and energon © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane

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Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 15: Seek And You Shall Find

“And this is the control room, where we use our very advanced satellite Teletraan One to keep an eye out for natural disasters and stuff like that,” the Autobot second-in-command, Jazz said as he led the group of students into what seemed like a command centre.

The tour had probably lasted for what Zett could account to be an hour, which probably meant that they would be recalled back to the bus to go back to school and resume the rest of their classes for the day. He thought about how to postpone that particular annoyance from happening, but it seemed that one of his classmates had a similar idea.

“Excuse me, uh, Mister Jazz?”

“Just Jazz is fine, or lieutenant, if you prefer,” Jazz smiled, his voice seeming to purr the very words out of his mouth. He sounded a lot like someone you could listen to for hours on the radio and never get bored of. He was sure Starlit wouldn’t mind that, at least.

It was surprising to find out that the other Cybertronians weren’t as hard up about their titles and ranks and all that like he originally thought they would have been, but then again, neither was Starlit, although he figured that she was a little more… unique than her male counterparts.

His classmate smiled at the reassurance. “If an incident were to happen, say, all the way on the other side of the planet, and your satellite picked it up, how long would it take you to get there to help?”

“Hm, that’s a pretty good question. You see, we try to have as many bots out in the field for just such an emergency. We take shifts to patrol the areas and trade off regularly so that none of us get too tired or overworked. Even transformers need some R n’ R, ya dig?”

He hadn’t originally planned on asking anything, but if he didn’t take advantage of his current situation, then who knew when he’d be able to gather any kind of useful information? He hadn’t gone all the way to the base just to look around at alien tech like everyone else. He rose his hand.

“You said R n’ R, does that mean you get tired like us humans?”

The look Spike gave him was annoying enough to give Zett the urge to stick out his tongue in retaliation, a lot of good that would do, but as far as his classmate knew, Zett Oakwell was nothing more than an average high school student curious about how the giants from outer space worked, or functioned, to be precise.

Jazz nodded his head. “Pretty much, yeah. You see, just like you humans need food, we Cybertronians need energon.”

“Energon? What’s that?”

“Well, it’s kind of an energy substance, kind of like our type of food. That’s originally the reason why the Decepticons are always trying to take over power stations and such. Unlike our home planet, Earth has a lot of natural resources that can be converted into energy. After that happens, we drink it and get a kind of… energy boost.”

“Can you show us what energon looks like?”

The rest of his class gave him questioning looks, almost as if they knew his exact reason for asking all his questions. The quiet kid in class suddenly acting curious? Yeah, he couldn’t blame them for their suspicion. Instead he only frowned at them.

“What?”

Jazz on the other hand wore a thoughtful look. After exchanging a look with another bot nearby, Jazz inclined his head. “I guess it couldn’t hurt, as long as you all promise not to take them, alright?”

The interrogative looks subsided once everyone heard that their tour would be extended, with permissible nods from the teachers accompanying them. Zett inhaled as he walked with the crowd, trying his best to memorise the route. He still didn’t know how he was going to get the cube, much less cubes, out of the base and to Starlit. Perhaps if he were lucky, Jazz would be encouraged by his curiosity enough to explain the entire process of making it. He doubted his luck on that matter, but followed nonetheless.

Naturally because of his far taller size, Jazz reached the storage room first, patiently waiting on his human tourists to catch up. Once they did, Jazz tapped in what seemed like a code, and with a soft hum, the door separating the two rooms hissed open, revealing the contents safely guarded on the inside: big, transparent boxes filled with a pink fluid. Energon. All he needed and then some.

Transformers Generation One, Teletraan One, Autobots, Jazz, Cybertron, Spike Witwicky, Decepticons and energon © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane

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Transformers Generation One: A Seeker’s Triangle: Chapter 14: Where There’s A Will

He wasn’t going to be happy with her, she knew that much, but frankly, at the moment, she didn’t care. As much as she hated to admit it, Zett had been right. She needed energon, and soon.

The oil he managed to sneak her from who knew where got her through a couple of days at best, but she was a Cybertronian, she needed energon. It was either that or going offline. There was no way that she was going to go offline because of a simple energon shortage. It was too disgraceful, too… pathetic.

On Cybertron it hadn’t been unusual to come across the frame of a bot that had gone offline because they hadn’t gotten enough energon to survive, but it also hadn’t taken long for Cybertronian vampires to start feasting on the corpses either. She didn’t know if Earth had any vampires, but she would rather rip out her own spark before she let herself fall prey to a vulture.

Zett hadn’t said a word to her that morning but about ten minutes after he left, she had forced herself to transform into her latest alternate mode and followed behind the large yellow four-wheeler called a school bus.

When the bus first stopped to let its occupants off, she thought that the flat-looking building was the Autobot base. Further observation had revealed the building to be the school that Zett always complained about.

It wasn’t until about an hour until Zett and other human children climbed back into the bus. Starlit knew there was a chance that Zett might recognise her since he had seen her in her alternate form for months now, so she scanned the nearest vehicle she could find. It was small, and ridiculous in terms of form, but she grit her dentals and went with it. If nothing else, at least the smaller form consumed less of her remaining fuel.

Whilst following the bus, she made sure to keep a fair enough distance so as to avoid attracting attention. As much as it annoyed her, all those spying assignments she had done in the past were coming in hand quite nicely.

She paused. Funny, she couldn’t remember how she knew what to do when it came to acting covertly, yet she knew how to do it well enough that she could follow the bus in a near perfect manner.

Unable to shake her helm in her new form, Starlit let her processor wander, trying to remember who had originally taught her the techniques, the methods, but no bot came to mind. She eventually decided that there was a possibility that her CPU was damaged far more than she originally thought. It bothered her, but there was nothing she could do about it at the moment.

Energy was her current priority. Whether she succeeded or failed, she was going to ensure that she got at least a drop of that delicious pink fluid, even if it cost her more than she was willing to pay.

She refused to go offline.

Transformers Generation One, energon, Cybertron and Autobots © Hasbro A Seeker’s Triangle, Zett Oakwell and Starlit Meadow © Fang Wolfsbane