Chapter Text
A/N: 'aight a few things before we start:
-THIS FIC CONTAINS MEGASTAR so if you're not into that ship PLEASE DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE and read something else
-my story-writing skills haven't improved since like,4th or 5th grade so...expect this to be a really shitty fic
-this is just a silly one-shot that's its own thing and does not take place within the AU that i planned
-expect OOCness everywhere
-hopefully this doesn't turn into something i regret writing and cringe at when i look at it again in the future
-straightstreak doesn't have a finalized design yet lol
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it was just another day out in the desert of jasper,nevada. the sun shone as bright as it could be,it was hot,and straightstreak is checking his shuttle's engines while trying to ignore the heat and intense light.
'doesn't seem like anything's wrong...wonder why it conked-oh'.
turns out there's some gunk stuck a little far back in the engine. straightstreak had no idea how the gunk got there. he's checked everything and there're no leaks and he doesn't recall anything nesting in there. what he does know,though,is that it'll be a bitch to clean up.
'ugh...i'm not doing this right now. i'll wait 'till temperature doesn't feel like a smelter'.
***
'primus,this thing is beyond a bitch to clean up' straightstreak thought while trying to reach the smaller masses of gunk that had gotten stuck in other parts of the engine after the main mass got removed.
'how long have i been at this,anyway?'. he checked his chronometer to find out he's been cleaning his shuttle's engines fooooor
5 hours. 5. fuckin'. hours.
straightstreak sighed. "looks like i'll be stuck here for a while..." is all straightstreak said before he packed up his cleaning supplies and equipments and heading back into the shuttle.
"sorting my cleaning stuff~,out in the middle of nowhere~,in my busted shuttle~,hope nobody finds me do do doo~"
5 minutes later...
"there! all done! now for a break".
straightstreak went to his quarters,proceeded to threw himself onto the berth,grabbed the remote and turned on the holoscreen to watch some gobots.
"heh. at least this country's entertainment's great. maybe being stuck here isn't so bad,after all".
***
they're gone
they're gone
how nobody in the nemesis noticed,no one knows. many suspected airachnid was involved in his dissapearance in some way.
what's worse is that scanning for them proved fruitless. so every troop in the nemesis has been commanded to upturn every stone and look in every nook and cranny for him. megatron and starscream is involved in the search,too,so this was extremely serious.
what's worse is that he's been gone for a week and nobody has even a sliver of a clue to their whereabouts. megatron's enraged by this while starscream's extremely anxious and panicked over it.
***
somewhere in the middle of the woods...
"IT'S BEEN A WEEK!! A WEEK!!! AND NO LEADS WHATSOEVER!!! WHAT IF THEY'RE DEAD?!! I'LL NEVER FORGIVE MYSELF!!!" yelled starscream as he franctically looked behind and under every rock,behind (and inside,if the tree is hollowed) every tree,only stopping once in a while to listen for any signs of them
"calm down,will you?! they're not dead! and a lead of some sort is bound to be found sooner or later"
"HOW CAN YOU BE SO CALM ABOUT THIS?! A WEEK OF ENDLESS SEARCHING AND NO SIGN OF THEM ANYWHERE!!! IT'S LIKE YOU DON'T EVEN CARE!!!"
"STARSCREAM, WILL YOU JUST-". megatron sighed. "starscream,listen,i am as worried as you are,but we have to be calm. panicking would not only get us nowhere,but it'll also attract unwanted attention so please,calm down already"
"...right...right..." said starscream,now calmed down.
***
...
....
.....
......
ugh.
this is boring.
gobots had just finished airing for the night and none of the other channels have anything good,and you could only scour the internet for so long before that too gets boring.
'fuck this,i'm going for a walk' straightstreak thought. 'but first,i'll need to grab a few things...' .
and grab a few things he did. he first went to one of the shuttle's 9 other spare quarters-which he all transformed into energon storage rooms-and grabbed 5 cubes to put in his subspace. next,he grabbed 3 (never hurts to have a backup or two or more!) spark signature maskers and a metal detector,so he doesn't miss anything interesting. after all that,he opened the shuttle's door,closing it behind him and took a walk.
"hm. quiet night".
so quiet is the night,there are no other sounds besides the sound of the wind,the metal detector's beeping and straightstreak's pedesteps. it doesn't come as a surprise,though. there aren't any trees or bushes or critters in the desert to make other sounds. straightstreak kept walking while the metal detector kept,well,detecting
stomp. beep. stomp. BEEP. stomp. BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!
"nice!"
according to the metal detector,the item it found is right below straightstreak. it was then he realized he'd been standing on something hard. the item is half-buried in the sand so it didn't need to be dug up and took no effort to be picked up.
turns out this grey capsule thing was the find of the night.
"hello" straightstreak said to the capsule "what are you?". he saw that it has a seam running along its sides,meaning it can be opened. he opened the capsule with some difficulty and inside is...
a sparkling,recharging peacefully.
"...holy shit"
well. this walk certainly took a sharp turn.
straightstreak slooooowly closed the capsule,slowly opened one of his doors and put the capsule into his cabin and securing it in place on his driver's seat using his seat belts. he transformed and drove back to his shuttle as slowly as possible so as to not shake the capsule too much. fortunately for him and the sparkling,straightstreak hadn't wandered too far from his shuttle.
as soon as straightstreak arrived to his shuttle,he put up every form of security the shuttle has and locked himself in his quarters. after he's safely in his room,he took out the capsule,opened it and gently put the still-recharging sparkling on his berth. then the panic and paranoia hit.
"okay,okay. so. you just found a sparkling out in the middle of buttfuck nowhere,no big deal. yeah. absolutely NOT a big deal,totally!" he quietly rambled to himself as he franctically paced the room as quietly as possible "the creators of said sparkling are probably definitely freaking out right now and the moment they found you-which hopefully would be never-they'd probably definitely thought you kidnapped their spawn! which is bad!".
straightstreak slapped himself on the side of his helm hard before he goes too far. "alright...alright...calm yourself,straights. panicking isn't going to get you anywhere. best to sit down and think". he sat on the floor and began thinking. 'so. i just found a sparkling. what should i do next? obviously i have to take care of it,feed it and everything. i have the resources,so it shouldn't be a problem. now how do i find its cre-" straightstreak heard something.
it's the sparkling. it's waking up. he got off the floor and checked. the little thing slowly opened its optics-its big,red optics-and lazily looked around the room,then went back to recharge. "oh thank primus" straightstreak whispered to himself. okay,back to whatever he was thinking about. what was he thinking about? oh right,how to find the little thing's creators.
' aight',now how does one find a sparkling's creator WITHOUT whatever you use to test C.N.A?.....
.......
.........
got it! their appearance!'
'their...appearance...'.
well,this is gonna be hard. sparklings are colored blobs of sentio mettalico with optics and little visible traits from their creators. sometimes,said traits aren't visible untill the sparkling got older. fortunately,this one does have visible traits.
'not like i have a choice...' he proceeded to examine the sparkling without touching it and risk waking it up 'when they opened their optics they have red optics so...red optics it is...they're faded purple...they have these three crest...things on their forehelm,each....stacked? on top of the other...now i need to examine their backside...now,how am i going to do that without waking them up?'. after a bit more thinking,straightstreak decided that there's no other choice. he caaaaaarefully lifted the sparkling and examined its backside.
'what's this? wing nubs? door-wing nubs? wing nubs,wing nubs,totally wing nubs'. whilst looking similar at first glance,should a bot look closer,they should be able to see the differences between wing nubs and door-wing nubs. wing nubs being longer than door-wing nubs
alright,examination done! straightstreak gently put the sparkling back on the berth then started going over what he examined.
'so the sparkling is faded purple,has red optics,three crest things on their forehelm stacked on top of each other and wing nubs...so far nothing ringing any bells...hmmmmmm...hmmm...wait...wing nubs...wing nubs...wing nubs...faded purple...red optics...crests...'
the realization hit him like a shitton of bricks
"holy shit,those vehicons weren't joking..." straightstreak whispered to himself.
"ho-ly shiiiiiiiiit......"
okay,now that entire thing's done with,time to figure out how to return the sparkling to its creators. 'if megatron and starscream are here,that must mean prime and his team are here,too! i could ask them for help!...but...they'd definitely give the thing to ratchet to check...and that means they'd give him a C.N.A test...and when they figure out who the kid's creators are,they'll never give him back...megs and screamers most definitely won't be happy about that and rain hell upon not just team prime but also the entirety of this planet...and probably me too...which is bad...and it doesn't seem like i can ask anybody or anybot else for help...looks like i'm on my own..."
he's delivered priceless SOMETHINGS to other people before on only wheels and pede through dangerous and barren terrain before but never a SOMEONE. well,better get prepared. being paranoid about hypothetical scenarios isn't gonna magically complete the preparations
***
great. just great. not only did they lost the specimen,they lost it in the middle of a desert. they also can't track it,meaning the tracking device attached to the containment pod is broken.
"has there been anything,ANYTHING on the specimen's location?"
"no,sir. we're still working on it"
"well,better work faster. that thing's not gonna last long on its own out there" silas said. "either that or its parents are gonna find it...." he muttered shortly after.
it's been a week and no progress whatsoever has been made on the whereabouts of the specimen.
***
' "lists are important and efficient for keeping track" my ass...this shit is beyond tedious! i can't keep track of jack-shit! it's all. just. TEXT. my right servo feels like it's disintegrating the more i write! and i can't even feel physical pain!!'
"URGH!"
he decided to just scrap the list,erase everything to use the datapad for something else and do the whole preparation without it. shit's tedious,anyway. this whole thing wasn't starting as smoothly as he had hoped.
aaaaand it looks like the road's just gonna get rougher because his frustrated "urgh" is all it took to woke up the sparkling.
he heard that noise very young cybercat sparklings make when they're waking up
the noise grew louder
it's starting to sound like the begginings of when someone or somebot is going to cry
oh no
the floodgates have opened
straightstreak panicked like never before as soon as the sparkling bawls. "SHIT,WHAT AM I GONNA DO???!!!!! WAIT,WHY THE FUCK AM I YELLING THAT'S JUST GONNA MAKE IT WORSE!!!!!!"
and his yelling did indeed make everything worse! the sparkling got scared and cried louder.
"oh shit oh fuck oh shit oh fuck what does it want?!?! uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh it's hungry! yea,definitely! oh shit,do i have a connector?! AAH!!!"
he rushed out of his quarters to the medbay that came with his shuttle as fast as he could. as soon as he arrives he franctically searched for a connector
"c'mon,c'mon,this is a medbay,there HAS to be a connector here!".
he could've avoided this whole mess if he just kept his built-in connector
but he traded his for the 2 small blasters and compartments built just for their storage and hiding in his thighs.
finally,FINALLY he found a connector,in the cabinet full of sparkling and youngling care stuff. go figure. "man,i should really label these cabinets and drawers...".
he rushes back to his quarters so fast,he left dents on the floor. no matter,he'd find a way to fix those later.
he opens his chestplate and fixes one end of the connector to his spark window and the other to the sparkling's spark window. as soon as the energy starts flowing to the sparkling,it immediately calmed down.