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English
Series:
Part 8 of star followed star
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Published:
2019-01-25
Completed:
2019-01-29
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3,405
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5/5
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yet through their veil

Summary:

Five conversations that Sunstorm has (that might change things).

Notes:

The Rainmakers' backstories here are made from whole cloth and the fanon that they're older.

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

“I notice you did not say anything either,” Sunstorm told the Intelligence agent he had just barely avoided setting on fire for sneaking up on him.

Ion Storm- flame blue, ultramarine blue, and slate gray, with the longer, narrower wings of a stealth build- flicked his wings in a flier’s shrug. “The sad thing is, I like living. Megatron designed his high command to fall apart without him. It’s why he’s kept his job this long. Getting overrun by Autobots concerned me slightly more.”

“Slightly,” Sunstorm repeated ironically. He wasn’t angry at Ion Storm, mostly because Intelligence had done a lot worse than look the other way to get the things they wanted, and Ion Storm was Intelligence from pedes to wingtips. “And now?”

The blue seeker smiled, a film of vacancy over a smelting pit. “Candidates to replace him need either the sanction of the rest of high command or to pull over half of the Decepticon forces to their banner all by their lonesome. It’s possible, but it’s gonna take a special kind of candidate and a long time.”

Sunstorm gave him a sharp look. “Treason.”

“It’s only treason if you lose.” Another shrug. “Besides, you’re not gonna bother with assassination or a blaster in the back. Done out in the open, it’s just another Challenge.”

As a second-in-flight, Sunstorm hadn’t needed to worry about being challenged for place unless it was by Skywarp. The first he’d taken part in was against Thundercracker, the traditional way to advance to leader of a fighting seeker trine. Then, shortly after Sunstorm had become trineleader but before he’d been promoted to Air Commander, he’d had to fight a number of the senior trineleaders in the Air Force to prove himself. That included Acid Storm, Ion Storm’s first-in-flight and mate. They had not been inclined to take him on faith, no matter what plans Megatron had for him.

“And now I will have to worry about Soundwave. Wonderful.” Sunstorm was starting to get a processor ache. He wondered if Ion was going to report him, and if he should do anything about it.

“Don’t worry about Soundwave,” Ion Storm said, with finality. In response to Sunstorm’s unvoiced question, he continued, “He’s not gonna bring Megatron into this until the last. He is in love with you, after all.”

Sunstorm gritted, “I cannot express how incorrect that sentence is, on so many levels.”

Rolling his optics, the older seeker corrected, “Alright, he’s obsessed with you. Regardless, Soundwave was very against having you made. He acquiesced, I believe, in the hope that it would make Megatron more stable. Anything that he brings to Megatron’ll be seen in that light, so he won’t do it until he absolutely has to. At most, a vorn or so before you put it to the Challenge. As long as you keep doing your job competently, that is,” he qualified, with a performative quirk of head and wings to invite comment.

“I am not going to shoot myself in the pede for spite,” Sunstorm said, exasperated.

The blue seeker straightened with a bounce. “Good. As long as you keep that attitude, Soundwave will try to resolve things with you himself. That, I can handle.”

Clarity dawned. “This is an offer of alliance.” Ion Storm was not conventionally ambitious, or he wouldn’t be a wing-third. That did not mean, however, that he wasn’t dangerous. In fact, he was the one to look out for out of the Rainmaker trine. Acid Storm was the overhead strategic perspective, Nova Storm was the ballast, and Ion Storm was the socialite and stiletto, the tactician who accomplished Acid Storm’s overarching goals. If Ion Storm was offering, then it was safe to say that this was all sanctioned by the whole trine.

“What did you think it was? You’re already second in command. You’ve got the muscle to take and hold a throne. You don’t have the history that Starscream had, so you lack his extensive list of enemies. You’re too young now, but by the time you’ve proven yourself…” Ion Storm ticked off the high points on his fingers. “Unfortunate that you don’t have Starscream’s political experience, but you’re observant and sensitive, and I think you can be taught to lead as well as command.”

It took effort not to flush. “Should I be flattered?”

Ion Storm sighed, and said with uncharacteristic seriousness, “You need a spymaster. I’m a spymaster. I need a solid candidate to put on the Decepticon throne, or we’re all fragged. That would be you. Your age, the circumstances of your creation, your romantic history- all unfortunate, but the Decepticons are not overburdened with sane, capable officers. You and I can get people to see the obvious choice, given time to work.” The look in Ion Storm’s garnet optics was very old. Sunstorm was forcibly reminded that he was very senior, older than Thundercracker or Skywarp. He was probably very well acquainted with what happened when a corrupt leader with virtually unlimited power and no accountability whatsoever started to go downhill. It stilled the part of him that wanted to snarl at Ion Storm’s description of ‘unfortunate.’

“There is always Deathsaurus’ example to follow if things do not work out,” Sunstorm mused, tacit agreement.

“If things don’t work out we’ll be dead,” Ion Storm chirped, back to his normal self, “but you keep telling yourself that!”

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Upgrades. Sunstorm hated them, a common opinion among Shockwave-made MTOs for fairly obvious reasons. He hadn’t let Shockwave do them since he was a hundred vorns old, but the sentiment remained.

Fortunately for everyone involved, the Air Force had engineers that specialized in aerial weaponry and design on the payroll. It dramatically reduced the unpleasantness of the process. Hotlink- formerly of Nacelle’s trine, but Nacelle had been deactivated a few stellar cycles after Sunstorm had been created- was weird, but he had neither of the common flaws of the Decepticon scientist: he wasn’t a complete lunatic and he didn’t play politics.

It was probably, Sunstorm reflected as he waited for Hotlink to notice he was in the workshop, because he didn’t know that politics were even happening. The amethyst seeker was flecked with soot and grease, wings folded low so that he could stick most of his upper body into the generator he was repairing. Even knowing that the secondary effects of his outlier ability meant he could have stuck a hand into the thing while it was running and come out unscathed, seeing someone willingly hang halfway out of it was alarming.

“Hotlink,” Sunstorm said finally, when it seemed like the other seeker was going to keep muttering to himself inside the generator for some time to come. Hotlink’s spinal strut stiffened, followed by a loud clang as he hit something- elbow or helm or shoulder vent- on the inside of the casing.

“Ow ow ow ow.” Extracting himself from the machine, Hotlink rubbed at the scuff on his shoulder vent. “Oh, hi, Sunstorm. Was I supposed to meet you?”

“Maybe I should assign you an assistant to remind you of your appointments.” There was no point in trying to get Hotlink’s surviving trinemate to do it; Bitstream did time even worse.

Hotlink perked up, wings bouncing high with interest. “I could use an assistant.”

“You mean a minion. I was thinking of a secretary.” Hotlink drooped at the clarification, then pulled a datapad from his subspace and walked over to the workshop’s drafting table.

“It’s probably time to redo your armor again…” Hotlink trailed off and flicked through project files in his drafting table’s memory core. He pulled up Sunstorm’s file and confirmed his thought. “Yeah. You’re about due for a full rebuild, in fact.”

Sunstorm made a face but refrained from commenting. At least he would be well-armed for pulling stupid stunts in the future.

“At least I don’t have to worry about heat weaponry with you. I hear Shocky’s ticked about those meltaguns that what’s-his-wings over on the Autobot side came up with. Goes through tankformer armor like that.” Hotlink rapped his stylus sharply on the table to illustrate.

“Not really an Air Force problem, no.” The range on the weapons Hotlink was describing was scarcely better than melee combat, and even if Sunstorm was on the ground he was not in danger of getting smelted.

“Too bad I can’t get my hands on one.” Hotlink rested his elbow on the table, shuffling through armor composites. “How much am I allowed to up your armor weight?”

“I would prefer not more than ten percent.” Sunstorm wore heavier armor than was average for a seeker of his general height and build- he couldn’t afford not to, given the disparity between his firepower and his durability. That didn’t mean he liked it.

A noncommittal hum. “I’ll draft it out, but don’t be surprised if it’s higher.” The engineer flicked several possibles into the queue. “Anything out of order with your plasma cannons? I’ve refined the design a little more, so the next iteration should be more efficient…” He segued back into muttering.

“Actually.” The tone and the word brought Hotlink’s head up, red optics slightly wider than usual. “Would something with more stopping power be possible?”

“Suuure,” Hotlink drawled slowly, “but you know that it’s your outlier ability that makes your cannons feasible in a seeker build your size, right?”

“Then it should be possible to run other weapons off it, shouldn’t it?” Plasma was plasma.

The amethyst seeker considered that, optics trained somewhere past the ceiling. A reckless grin was starting to crook his mouth. “I’ll see what I can do,” he said finally, tapping his stylus rapidly with enthusiasm. “As long as you’re willing to put up with some testing.”

Given that his continued functioning might depend on it, Sunstorm was willing to put up with a lot.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Nova Storm punched him in the face. Sunstorm rolled with it, stepping back, then used the wider stance to swat away the next hit with his plasma blade.

Fulvous yellow, bronze, and jet- Nova Storm was almost a reflection of Sunstorm’s colors, though he outmassed the younger seeker by several tons, and was taller by about a third of a meter. He could also beat Sunstorm silly most of the time, because his outlier ability let him skim stellar coronae if he wanted to. It was an awful matchup. It was also wonderful, because Nova Storm would ignore any reflexive firestarting. Sunstorm needed to get down and do the hard-slogging work of refining his control and combat abilities.

“Stance,” Nova Storm said, and kicked his pedes out from under him. Sunstorm flicked on his antigravs to grab some space, then switched to thrusters to kick back. Seeker combat styles incorporated both elements of flight, and determining which to use at what time was a large part of gaining mastery.

Nova Storm grabbed his ankle joint and introduced him to the floor. Hard.

“You haven’t been practicing enough,” Nova Storm said reprovingly as Sunstorm grudgingly levered himself up from the ground. “Using your outlier ability as a crutch is only going to kill you in the long run.”

“Try my workload and then tell me I am not practicing enough. Ow.” The darker seeker might have cracked some of his facial struts with that throw.

“I’m sure,” Nova Storm said with deep irony, “Megatron will be happy to reduce your duties when you tell him that you’re going to kill him, so that you can practice.” When Sunstorm looked at him, he had his arms crossed over his cockpit.

“I get it, more time.” He didn’t know how he’d do it, but that was a problem for his future self. He stepped into starting stance again, plasma blade humming as he switched it back on.

“A shield, maybe.” Nova Storm indicated Sunstorm’s off hand. “You move like you want to block with that arm. There’s a few of the old knight styles in my memory banks, they might suit that better.”

A crook of a brow nearly made Sunstorm wince. The cracked facial struts theory was looking more likely. “Armored bracers, perhaps, but a shield? Very noble looking, equally impractical for a flier.”

“The bracers aren’t a bad idea,” Nova Storm said, raising his blade into guard. “But I think the old knights would surprise you.”

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

In the Harbinger’s mainframe, Bitstream was the-glitter-of-light-on-liquid. Wired into the ship via heavy hardline cables, the turquoise seeker dripped through the lines of the capital ship’s systems, reinforcing weak points, rewriting coding, and substituting the ship’s sensors for his own.

Likely frame dysphoria. Forged, Sunstorm had the suspicion Bitstream would have been a shuttle or some other kind of ship. Having pushed a seeker frame’s specs to the edge, he plugged into the immense computers that allowed ships to run and left his ill-fitting frame wreathed in high-speed transfer cabling.

In deference to that, Sunstorm hooked into the mainframe himself to communicate. Plugging in one of his wrist cables, he tugged on one of the strands of code nearby, knowing that it would get to Bitstream sooner rather than later.

Hey, Bitstream said vaguely, trickling down through the immense architecture of the virtual space. What brings you here, Commander?

Asks the person who routes most of the comm traffic. Most communications, Autobot and Decepticon, were through the dedicated communications arrays of bases and large ships like the Harbinger. The days of using mechs as communications hubs had died with the Senate. Communications specialists now did their work in partnership with external aids. I saw your trinemate the other day.

I know. Just because I’m wired up doesn’t mean we don’t talk. Bitstream wrapped silvery-bright threads around Sunstorm, brushing against his firewalls. He changed the subject. Ion’s been hanging around more. Creeeepy mech.

Personally, Sunstorm didn’t think that the one possessing a ship’s computers could talk. Creepier than Soundwave?

There’s creepy, and then there’s creepy. Ion’s at least intelligible. His processing makes sense. Soundwave’s like Kaon- who even knows what’s going on there. A pause. In the quicksilver of virtual space, with Bitstream, it was half an eternity. But you want to know if I can keep them out of our comms/consoles/files, right?

Something like that. If he was going to gather allies, he didn’t need to advertise it to all and sundry yet. Yes, he’d made a big, public statement. Yes, it would be hard to get rid of high-ranking allies like Acid Storm’s trine without doing a lot of damage to the Decepticon faction as a whole. But the best protection for smaller players would be anonymity.

Bitstream skimmed the processor thread out of him with the practiced ease of a hacker in his preferred environment. Sunstorm recoiled slightly, folding his edges in like he might his wings. Bitstream didn’t acknowledge his discomfort with more than a sparkle of suppressed amusement. As long as the traffic’s routed through the Harbinger/what I’m plugged into, I can. Killware and spyware and piggybacking, at least. Perks of not doing anything besides this, Soundwave’s waaaaay busier than I am. Nothing I can do about the more physical side though.

Ion Storm tells me he can handle that.

That old Senate spy training, I bet he can. He and Soundwave did the same job once, or so I’ve been told. Bitstream underpinned that with ‘not that I was there to see it.’ He’d been made only shortly pre-war. Was there anything else you needed?

A time machine would be nice. Sunstorm let Bitstream feel his desire to go back to the beginning and fix all of this mess, shake a few people until their processors reengaged.

You’re such an engineer. Hotlink’s the same way with problems. But would you really: trust Shockwave to make that/trust Shockwave to have that/Shockwave’s the only person who could. Bitstream compressed a whole encyclopedia of ‘bad idea’ into a few conceptuals.

Sunstorm didn’t even have to think about it. Ahaha. No.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

For all that he was the trineleader of the de facto Second Trine (Ramjet having had an unfortunate Megatron encounter about a vorn after Starscream’s death, and subsequently nobody wanted to risk a higher rank than ‘senior’) Acid Storm was extremely low key. His green and gray camouflage pattern faded into the background of any base or ship he was stationed on, he rarely made use of his outlier ability, and he let Ion Storm handle socializing.

Of course, you only had to see his outlier ability in use once to be very, very wary of him. It was slightly less impressive on planets where it rained things other than acid, but the ability to change the local weather more or less on a whim could make a campaign planetside. Especially when your trinemate could control lightning. The Rainmakers had probably accounted for a significant portion of the Autobot flier casualties early in the war. Their aerial corps had never really recovered.

He crooked a brow at Sunstorm now, setting down a pad with more of the neverending stream of datawork that went into running an army. “Sir.”

“I still do not know what you are getting out of this.” People outside the Air Force might believe that Ion Storm moved by his own whims alone. Fewer would think that of Nova Storm, but they might think that Ion Storm moved him too. “You did not support my accession, you will recall.”

“It wasn’t anything personal. I’ve never taken an Air Commander on Megatron’s say-so before, and I wasn’t about to start.” Acid Storm rested his chin on his palm. “For all that we’re a faction that wins by our air power, Megatron has been remarkably blasé about how he treats the Air Force. I don’t appreciate being taken for granted any more than you do.”

“Mhm.” Sunstorm met his optics and waited. Despite their difference in rank, Acid Storm treated like Sunstorm like he was indulging a junior aeriemate. There would be more forthcoming.

“I remember Nova, and Nominus. I pulled Ion out of a position a lot like yours, when Sentinel was still functioning. I’m not afflicted with the Autobot fetishization of the Golden Age and their Matrix-chosen Primes. They look remarkably like Megatron looks now.” Acid Storm smiled slightly. “You’re much too young to realize, but Megatron’s ‘Decepticon Empire’ looks almost exactly like Nova’s ‘Expansion.’ And if I was interested, I could have just joined him. I am forged, you know.”

“That is…not in your file.” The vast majority of Decepticons were cold-constructed, either pre-war models or MTOs. Then again, a significant portion of Autobot forces nowadays were as well.

“Sunstorm, if my file was even half accurate…” Acid Storm trailed off. “Well, let’s just say that my acquaintance with Ion wasn’t idly made. What I was trying to get at was that I didn’t sign up with the Decepticons because I wanted to slag my own planet and wipe out the majority of my species. Funnily enough, that’s what we’ve managed to do with our current leadership. Megatron’s not going to change for the better.”

Sunstorm pressed against his cheek struts, feeling the tension in his protoform. “I should just kill him and let you all pick up the pieces afterwards,” he said bitterly.

“Then we’ll die,” Acid Storm said simply. “You won’t, because you know it’s true. I don’t know if it’s a spark-inherent trait or MTO programming or something you picked up. But it’s not in your nature to abandon what you feel responsible for.”

Sunstorm pressed harder for a second, sublimating the urge to throw something at the green-and-gray seeker, then dropped his hands before he dug talons into his own face. With studied calm, he said, “Well, I suppose an MTO should not expect anything besides being made to fight for something they had no part in making. We cold-constructed should just shut up and do what we are told, after all.” The originators of that program were lucky they were in the Pit, Sunstorm wouldn’t have minded smelting them alive. He’d undoubtedly get to Shockwave.

“I’d ask if you wanted some engex with that self-pity, but you’d just set my office on fire.” Acid Storm said dryly. “Go beat on someone at the practice fields, you’ll feel better. I’ll have everything that needs your authorization sent to Thundercracker by the start of the next duty shift. Sir.”

Primus save him from meddling senior trines.

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