Chapter Text
Five Pebbles was dying. The snow seeped deep into his puppet’s joints and - on a larger scale, where he could feel it - into the trashed remains of his superstructure. His optics were clouded with frost and wear, but he did not miss the flash of green.
He sighed. There had been slugcats to travel to his superstructure after the aquatic one left with his rarefraction cell, but without power he had nothing to provide. And wasn’t that his secondary objective? To provide for his citizens and on a larger scale, provide the creatures with a way out?
“Little slugcat… nothing here… nothing left.”
The blur of green jumped into the air in front of him and started floating - or maybe it was just his warped vision?-
His thoughts were cut off by the searing feeling of ascension.
He felt as if he was floating, the strings of cycles past and future unraveling beneath him. He was everything, he was nowhere, he was-
In… water? The gentle rocking of what seemed to be a pond was not lost on him.
He groaned as he got up from his lying position, clutching his head. His fingers wrapped around stone as he pulled himself up.
Hm. Stone. That wasn’t in his chamber.
Wait, what?
His eyes shot open as he frantically glanced around. His eyesight was how it was many, many, many cycles ago, his movements felt smooth. He was in a cave. And the water was glowing.
He dragged himself onto the stone pedestal in the middle, mind still trying to grasp the exit from his superstructure.
He felt… empty. No longer did the brushing of nerve against nerve send pain racking through him. Really, he should be glad, but it felt… wrong. The pain had been a part of him for so long that without it he felt like a part of him was missing. And a part of him was missing. A majority of his body. Without contact with his superstructure, it was as if he had been reduced to his pinky toe, barely able to register anything, to think.
It was maddening.
Catching his breath on the stone altar, he decided to turn his focus to the issue in front of him. The pond water. Seeing as he hadn’t been disintegrated by the glowing water just yet, he scooped some into his hand and inspected it.
It seemed akin to void fluid, but something was off. It wasn’t golden, it didn’t melt you as far as he knew, and it seemed like water. At least he knew he retained his basic analyzing abilities.
Five Pebble’s antennae twitched as he picked up on chattering. He attempted to use his robotic arm to pick himself up-
Ah. He didn’t have his leg, the thing that held him up and was connected to his back. It’s weight was missing, so he could theoretically stand, but he didn’t have enough experience with walking to move anywhere. He just had to hope that the things that found him were sentient enough to not attempt to chomp at him.
When Twitch walked into her Birth Cave, she did not expect to see another transformer down there. Or, at least, she thought it was. It was robot-looking, so that had to count for something, right?
Twitch stopped walking, and Thrash bumped into her from behind. “Ugh-, sis, what’s the hold… up. Oh.” He saw the pink transformer. “Ohhhh.”
Twitch flew over, landing next to it. “You think it’s alive?” She poked it, prompting a staticky protest from it. “That answers that.”
Twitch felt Thrash’s confusion over their link. “Uhhh, what do we do with it?” That… was a good question, actually.
She scratched her chin. She didn’t know why humans did it, but people in movies did it all the time, so it must mean something. “Well, we bring him home to Mom and Dad, right?” She assumed it was a guy. “They’ll know what to do.”
Thrash shrugged and threw the small guy over his shoulder, ignoring the squeaks from the very angry transformer.
Once out of the cave, the duo transformed, putting pink in Thrash’s sidecar as they zoomed home.