Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He will stand by the fact that this was not his fault.

Sure, it may have involved him, but it wasn’t his fault it happened. If you really pay attention, it was mostly Cyclonus’ fault, and by mostly he means entirely. For once in his life, Whirl is inarguably innocent. Cyclonus is the one that decided to attack the stupid space bridge, all Whirl did was his job. Isn’t that what Magnus is always yelling at him to do? He was being good!

Who attacks a space bridge with a sword, anyway? This was not his fault.

It’s not his fault that Cyclonus sliced his energon rounds in half and ignited the fuel source, or that said fire may or may not have traveled through the bridge’s machinery, or… honestly, who could have expected that it would explode inward instead of outward anyway? That’s not how explosions work! It’s like, in the name. They should call this an insplosion or something.

Anyway, it’s not his fault. Cyclonus caused the insplosion, the space bridge did some wacky stuff it’s probably not supposed to do, caught on fire in all sorts of pretty colors Whirl didn’t even know fire could be, and then. Well, then it did the insplosion thing, sucked in on itself, sort of— collapsed, but in kind of a freaky science fiction-y kind of way, and—

Oh, and it took them with it. That was a thing that happened.

A thing that is currently happening.

The wormhole feels… wrong. Bridging is supposed to be fast, near instant, warping them from one place to another before they can even really notice the vertigo-inducing swirls of color inside. This time, though, it’s anything but. There’s too many colors, moving too fast; honestly, he’s not even sure Cyclonus is even still here, unable to distinguish anything around him from the mass of movement.

And it just goes on, and on, and on. Maybe something broke, and threw him into some weird place between dimensions, like the empty space inside of walls sometimes. All Whirl knows for sure is that the longer he’s in here, the more disoriented he feels. He’s a flight frame, he’s built to know his altitude, his orientation, to shake off dizziness like it’s nothing. But right now, he doesn’t know any of those things, numbers in his head spinning like slots without end and the dizziness ramping up and up until he doesn’t even feel like he’s real anymore.

Maybe he’s coming apart at the seams. Maybe he is between dimensions, and he isn’t going to exist for much longer. Oh well.

He hopes someone remembers to put ‘stupid’ on Cyclonus’ grave.

Whirl slams into… the ground? At least, it feels like he does. He’s pretty sure he isn’t moving anymore, but everything is still spinning, still blurred, colors melting into each other and shapes ghosting into the dozens. His numbers are still ticking up and down, impossibly trying to calculate where in the frag he is, what gravity is doing, which way is up, and failing all of them.

It’s all too much, and it isn’t ending. His systems are going haywire, as confused and disoriented as he is, until they all reach a failure point together. He’s grateful for the sensation of an oncoming forced shutdown to make it all stop. The static begins to fade out as his processes all slam to an end, one by one.

Pink obscures his vision, and his consciousness shuts down.

When Cyclonus begins to drift towards consciousness, the first coherent thought he has is that he’d rather not. He’d like to fall back under, and awake again later, when his frame feels a bit less like he’s been reforged and belatedly feeling every second of it. He’s not even sure what actually happened to him; in the slow ascent of awareness, the memories holding answers are not particularly forthcoming.

What he does get is in bits and pieces, disjointed and half-written. It’s unclear which are real, and which may have been invented by a subsconscious, wandering processor while he was out. He remembers unfamiliar, but gentle voices, far too gentle to be Decepticon or Autobot, and the dull tones of colors too earthy to be any ship or Cybertronian dwelling.

Those must be dreams, rooted in fiction and concocted to entertain the unconscious mind. Cyclonus dismisses them as such, onlines his optics, and is met with those same earthy tones in the ceiling above him.

That… isn’t what he expected. He is relatively certain he’s never seen this place before, but attempting to look around and gain more information slams him with a miserable wave of vertigo. So much as turning his head makes his gyros fritz, matching the movement of his vision to a nonexistent swaying of the apparent berth beneath him. The edges of the room seem to sway, and shiver, making the increasing nausea and spinning inside his processor ever worse.

Offlining his optics makes it stop, but the sensation is slow to abate. The imaginary swaying of the berth continues, aggravating the strut-deep ache in every bit of his frame as he instinctively tenses to avoid falling from an unmoving surface. It is misery. He would much prefer to pass back out.

He isn’t so lucky. Awareness clings to him, leaving him trapped in this state of weakened misery for who knows how long. With little choice but to tolerate it and hope it goes away in time, he returns to sorting through his frayed memories, and the bare handful of details he understands as being fact.

It is unclear how he made it here. The malfunction of the space bridge is obvious, it dropped him somewhere, but the incoherent memories of voices and his particular location in a room tells him someone must have found him. Running through this line of thought in his head makes him disturbingly aware of just how little he knows.

There isn’t even a way for him to know just how long he’s been unconscious for. His chronometer has lost time, just as thrown off as every one of his other systems and idly spinning in its search for the correct time. He really does know nothing beyond the fact that he is here, someone found him, and the color of the ceiling.

And also the fact that he can’t move without making himself sick. Wonderful.

The potential for answers comes sooner than he expects. Without the familiar pneumatic hiss, it takes him far too long to identify the quiet creak and click as being that of a door nearby. A low tech style of entry that, along with the ceiling, points toward him being found by organics.

Onlining his optics greets him with the sight of a mech.

Weighed down by unfamiliar gear that Cyclonus could not begin to guess the purpose of if he cared to try, the mech is small, and seemingly doing his best to stay quiet. He doesn’t appear to pose a threat, though if he’d intended any harm, it likely would have come already.

He does something in the room, though Cyclonus doesn’t dare risk the vertigo again to try and see what. It doesn’t matter, anyway; after a few moments, it seems his consciousness gets noticed.

“Oh! You’re awake.” The unknown mech talks as quietly as he’d been moving around, keeping his voice low as if to avoid waking someone, or perhaps to avoid triggering a possible processor ache. “How are you feeling?”

He steps back into view. With a visor and a mask, there isn’t much facial expression to be conveyed, but he gives off a demeanor of being harmless and friendly regardless. At least one of Cyclonus’ assumptions turns out to be correct as well, considering the empty space on his chassis where a faction emblem would otherwise have been, denoting his absence from the war entirely.

As harmless as he appears, Cyclonus is disinclined to give him a truthful answer. “Fine.” He gives instead, bluntly, though it seems to tell more about him than if he’d been honest.

“Tough guy, huh? Well, if it gets bad, let me know. There’s nothing we can do to make the warp sickness fade any faster, but I’ll do my best to make you comfortable in the meantime.” The mech makes his way to some kind of a station in a darkened corner of the room, though it’s at too much of an angle for Cyclonus to identify what it is.

He returns with a container. It isn’t translucent, but the faint glow emanating from the open top hints toward its contents being energon. The concept of which, to Cyclonus, is currently… egh.

Thank Primus, the mech sets it aside onto a nightstand.

“It’s there when you need it, or when you think you can handle it. Though, if you don’t eat something by tomorrow, you might have to deal with an angry medic… but don’t worry about him for now, just rest up.” The mech tilts his head. “I need to get back to work, but is there anything you need before I go?”

This mech has, thus far, been much less useful for answers than initially expected. “Who… where?” As well, it seems, attempting to process thought into coherent speech is equally as difficult right now as it is to turn his head.

“Oh! Sorry! Sorry, I don’t get a lot of visitors here. My name’s Tailgate.” There’s a pause, like he doesn’t want to answer the second question, or at the very least, hesitates in doing so. “The where is a bit more complicated. I’ll explain more when you’re up and feeling better, but for now, just know that you are a very, very long way away from Cybertron. You and your friend landed here, on my ranch.”

He has two questions, one of which he’s unfortunately pretty certain he can deduce the answer for himself. The other is more interesting; what in the pit is a ranch?

The mech, unknowingly, answers the other one. Gesturing toward a spot only barely within Cyclonus’s vision, on the floor and partially underneath a computer desk, is a mass of limbs. Twisted together strangely and not remotely in the shape of a mech, he’d almost believe Whirl had gotten compressed somehow on the way here, if an explanation wasn’t immediately forthcoming.

“He… seems comfortable, like that?” Tailgate offers, apparently equally perplexed by Whirl evidently sleeping like a tied up knot. In fact, he looks at Cyclonus almost as if he expects an explanation from him for why Whirl is the way he is. When given none, he shrugs. “Anyway, I think he’s a bit worse off than you are, so let him sleep while he can. I’ll be working nearby, and I’ll be back soon if either of you need anything.”

Tailgate adjusts his strange gear, and leaves through the same door he’d entered from. He leaves Cyclonus alone with no one but Whirl for company, a fact which would be far more concerning if not for the mention of his current state. If the way Cyclonus feels is any indication, for the moment, he has nothing to worry about from his neighbor on the floor.

And with any luck, there will be a way to leave this planet before that changes.

Note to self; when moving no longer makes him want to die, kill Cyclonus.

Whirl has had far more than his fair share of benders in his existence. Whether it be from more engex than should arguably, reasonably be survivable, to getting blasted six ways to next week by more rounds and explosions than should be… well, reasonably survivable. Basically, he should be dead. Very dead! Lots of times over! But instead of getting to be dead, he’s just very well acquainted with misery.

And this misery, right now, takes the trophy as the worst thing he’s ever experienced. Okay, maybe not the worst, but he’s not going to think about that right now or ever again. Of what he is thinking about right now, it’s the worst.

A fact which he, for the umpteenth time, makes very known to the world around him. It’s not his fault said world happens to currently be reduced down to a single room and a single mech who hates him.

“If you whine one more time, I’m going over there and putting you out of both of our miseries.” Cyclonus snips at him, as if he isn’t the cause of all of this to begin with. Also, he manages to not even sound all that annoyed, even though Whirl knows he is, which mostly just manages to annoy Whirl instead. They get mashed up in a busted wormhole and he still can’t manage an emotion? Psh.

“Oh, please do. Y’know, if you can, which I kinda doubt since you can’t even do that on a good day when you don’t try to purge every time you move.”

As if to spite him, Cyclonus has the audacity to sit up. Like he’s showing off or something. “You are very well aware I am currently faring better than you.”

Definitely showing off. He’s out of reach, but Whirl tries to kick him anyway, if only for the principle of the matter. And it’s an improvement, because that much movement doesn’t make him want to die! At least not any more than usual. Too bad he can’t actually kick him, though.

Technically, they’re both mostly improving. Cyclonus can clearly at least sit up, which is so infinitely impressive he should get a medal. And Whirl, compared to the first dozen times he woke up, no longer feels like the literal dead. The piercing headaches have mostly gone away, and unlike Mr. Tall, Purple, and Weak-Tanked over there, he never had the same nausea.

But no, he isn’t doing well enough to let him outside. So what if the room still kind of ghosts into a bunch of half transparent shapes every time he moves, he can cope! It’s sort of like being drunk without the fun. And he has plenty of experience with that, he can even still shoot straight! Mostly. …ish.

Too bad the local resident of this… wherever they are, won’t let him prove it.

And speak of the devil himself. The creak of the door announces Tailgate’s return, and Whirl has exactly zero seconds to decide if it would be better to try and look as put together as possible, or as pitiful as possible. Which is a hard choice, because put together aren’t words Whirl knows, and pitiful is liable to just get him sentenced to more bedrest.

Or… floor rest. Corner rest? Whatever. Whirl likes the corner under the desk. Or at least he did, before he was forced to spend a week there. Nevermind that he wasn’t aware of his own existence for most of that, that’s irrelevant.

Anyway, Tailgate. His newest prison warden. And, so far, the most strict one yet, despite being the tiniest.

Whatever Cyclonus was going to say, Whirl doesn’t care. He still isn’t sure if he’s going for the ‘all good and fine now please let me out’ angle or the ‘look at me I’m so pitiful take pity on me’ angle, but he thinks he ends up somewhere in the middle, plunking his chin flat on the floor and looking up.

“If you don’t free me right this second, I’ll die. I’ll die right here and it’ll be from boredom. You don’t want that, right? You’d have to live with knowing I died, and you could have saved me.”

Tailgate is apparently unswayed, servos on his hips like a disappointed guardian. “We’ve talked about this, Whirl. Warp sickness isn’t like a hangover, you need to take it easy or you’ll get worse.”

All things he’s been told already, though clearly not enough yet for Tailgate to get as tired of saying them as Whirl is of hearing them. Next he’ll start citing his mystery medic as some sort of threat, like he’d be telling on a sparkling.

“If you make yourself worse, I’ll have to call— my medic back.” Right on the dot, as usual. He’s getting good at this. There’s more to this lecture, the medic won’t be happy and he’s much more strict than Tailgate, yada yada, but Whirl doesn’t care to hear it again.

Sitting upright, and totally not feeling the room shimmer into sevens for it, Whirl leers over him. “Y’know, you keep not using the guy’s name, like we might know who he is. What’s with that, huh?” Behind Tailgate, he can see Cyclonus making a face, one that Whirl knows full well is telling him to shut up before he gets both of them kicked out, and which he pretends he can’t read.

Tailgate seems to shrug off the question, leaning back away from Whirl invading his personal space. “You’ll meet him later, and it’ll go better if you don’t make yourself worse first.” But there’s a faint flash of his visor, glancing down in the general direction of Whirl’s faction symbol. Interesting.

“Oooh, so it is someone I might know?” This is much, much more interesting than sitting in the corner and annoying Cyclonus, especially because the more he pulls at this thread, the more Tailgate seems to squirm within his own plating.

On the other hand… the more he leans in, the more Tailgate leans away, and the more he can see the door. As in, the door. The forbidden door! Which Tailgate apparently didn’t get closed. Or… someone opened it. Is currently opening it. As in, the door is slowly being nudged open. Which would be a great chance for Whirl to just ignore him completely and go outside anyway, but. But.

Who’s opening it?

It’s nearly entirely instinct that moves him, barging past Tailgate without warning. He’s not even sure if either of them say anything, and if they do, he doesn’t hear it. His focus is on the door, whoever is on the other side, and keeping himself from smashing his own face into the wall because the floor looks like it’s moving even though he knows it’s not.

Whirl is prepared for a fight. He’s not exactly in the best shape for one, but he’s been worse off and lived, so whatever. He’s prepared for a fight, for an altercation with someone eavesdropping on them, someone who can’t be trusted, something along those lines, the usual fare.

What he’s not prepared for is to throw the door fully open, look down, and make eye contact with a… blob?

His thoughts slam to a halt with the same screeching thunk heavy machinery makes when you throw something into the gears, not that he’d know anything about that. It’s not very often that Whirl finds himself speechless, or utterly lost on how to react to something, or even what to think about it, but this… thing…

Whirl has no idea what this thing is.

It sort of— wiggles, swaying in place like it can’t sit still, but it doesn’t do anything otherwise. It just… sits there. Staring at him. And that’s another thing, the thing has eyes, and it’s staring back at him just as much as he’s staring at it, so it’s definitely a creature of some kind.

Which kind of makes it worse, because it looks like it shouldn’t be a creature. It should be, like, something that grows on a tree. Or something equally stupidly organic. But not something with eyes and enough consciousness to look at him.

…Are those ears? Why would a blob need ears?

It doesn’t matter. The thing wiggles again—differently—and proceeds to jump at him. He wouldn’t have even thought it could jump, but that doesn’t matter either. What matters is the thing is on the ground one moment, and the next moment it’s coming at him, like, like… like some sort of vicious beast trying to rip him to shreds while he’s already down, and if he dies to a blob he might actually be upset about it.

But it doesn’t get a chance to reach him, so it doesn’t matter if he may or may not reacquaint himself with the floor in a lethargic attempt to dodge it. Instead of sailing through the air to no doubt latch itself onto Whirl’s face, Tailgate stops it, plucking the thing right out of the air and containing it in his arms like some sort of pet, like it’s harmless and didn’t just try to eat Whirl. Like he’s used to it.

And now he’s just standing there. Holding it. Like this is fine. Like this is normal.

“What.” Whirl raises a limb, doesn’t matter which one, pointing at the thing. “Is that.”

“It’s a slime.”

That answers nothing.

Tailgate apparently sees no need to explain anything further, either. All he does is turn, still holding the thing—slime—thing, and walk towards the open door like he’s just going to leave. Like he’s explained plenty, when he definitely in fact did not explain anything!

Scrambling up in a definitely completely graceful way, Whirl follows him. Tailgate can’t really stop him from that, either, because he’s carrying that thing, and the door’s still open, and he’s still short anyway, so Whirl’s got the upper hand here. Upper claw? Whatever. Outside is right there and if that slime-thing is gonna help him get there, Whirl isn’t gonna complain.

Tailgate is, though. “You still need to rest, you know.” He points out, in that weird sorta-caring, sorta-chastising tone he keeps using for some reason. Despite saying as much, though, he mostly seems to ignore Whirl following him, continuing on with going wherever it is he’s going, and giving Whirl totally free reign to escape his prison.

What number is that now? He doesn’t remember. More importantly, he’s outside. Outside on an alien planet he doesn’t remotely recognize and has probably never seen before, but outside nonetheless, away from the stuffy air and the quiet and Cyclonus.

A horror beyond all horrors, really.

Compared to the first time Whirl was outside here, he actually gets a chance to look around this time, even despite the ghosting vision he’s choosing to ignore. It’s very… orange, here. The ground is orange, the walls are orange—because there’s walls out here, because they’re in a canyon, apparently. Which is fine, even if the sky is uncomfortably far away.

Although maybe less fine if there’s any more of those things. Surrounded by alien blobs that attack you, and Tailgate wants to make his home in an enclosed canyon? Seems like a bad idea to him, but what does Whirl know.

It’s not just some little pop up camp, or a temporary place, either. That much is obvious. There’s a pattern of bricks inlaid into a path in front of the weird, rounded little house they just came out of. Fence posts are anchored firmly into the ground, following the edges of the path, continuing on past a little staircase Tailgate is walking down.

And past that, further along the path in the direction Tailgate is going, is a handful of big, glowing… boxes? Definitely some kind of containment field. There’s movement inside of them, colors and shapes bouncing off the walls and moulding into each other, kind of like—

Tailgate stops right outside of an empty one, and tosses the thing into it, which is a pretty good hint about what’s amalgamating around inside the other containment boxes.

Which… Whirl can’t really think of a good reason to want to keep a bunch of those, so he has to conclude that Tailgate is just crazy.

“I was going to give you two more time to adjust before throwing you into the deep end,” Tailgate is saying as he wanders back, dusting off his servos casually, like he wasn’t just holding a weird organic thing or threw it into a box like something he owns. “But I guess the tabby’s out of the bag now, so… Welcome to the Far, Far Range.”

He gestures, palms open, at the land around them. Which is great and all, knowing what the planet is called, but it’s almost like he’s avoiding explaining the glowing boxes of wiggling round organics on purpose. Also, the gesture is kind of pointless, because they’re still just surrounded by orange rock and a handful of fences.

“I’m going to guess we’re a long way from Cybertron.” Apparently, Cyclonus can walk now, and followed them outside despite his insistence on following the rules before. He also looks fine, like he can stand upright easier than Whirl currently can, which just makes it feel like he was being mocking by accepting bedrest of his own without complaint. Jerk. “Based on the name.”

“Exactly! Do you like it? I,” Tailgate jabs himself in the chest, proudly. “Named it myself.”

That… that explains a lot, actually.

Specifically, if he got to name the place, then he’s either alone here, mostly alone here, or was alone long enough that he got naming rights over anybody else. Which pretty much explains the rest by boiling down into, as Whirl suspected, crazy. Nobody ends up alone on an alien planet of blobs for long enough to get naming rights without going at least a little off the deep end.

“C’mon, I’ll show you around.” Tailgate turns, gesturing for them to follow. “You probably have a lot of questions—”

Good! An opening for answers, finally! Whirl points at the contained things. “Those things. What the frag are those things?”

Tailgate looks back, looks where he’s pointing, and lights up. “Oh! Those are corrals. They’re made from low-voltage energy fields, so things can pass through to the inside, but not the outside. Aren’t they cool? Brainstorm invented them. I don’t really know how they work, but you would not believe how much easier it is to keep slimes in order when they can’t melt through your fence. You don’t even want to know how many fence designs I went through early on! I should send Brainstorm another thank you note…”

Oh, Primus. Not only is Whirl definitely not going to get any actual answers, but now that he’s not trying to be quiet for the sake of their well being, Tailgate is a chatterbox too. He takes it back; he’d like death by blob now.

Tailgate leads the way, unaware of Whirl’s suffering. He doesn’t look twice at the garden beds as he walks them past, but Whirl does. It’s all a bunch of organic plant life, though he doesn’t know what use Tailgate could possibly get from growing them. They also seem a little bit odd, like they’re just a little bit too vibrant, but he doesn’t know nor care enough about organics to know if that means anything.

The path angles up past the gardens, through a break in the canyon walls. It’s obviously a path that was already there, but there’s a change in the coloration of the walls further down that makes it look like it’s been worn away over time. Like Tailgate has walked it so many times, over so many years, that the more vibrant layer of orange rock has been worn down.

Just how long has this guy been here, exactly? And, y’know, why?

Past that, it opens up once more into a vibrant, grassy area, with even more plants than the little garden patches they just passed. There’s more of them here, but they seem to have escaped their designated areas and instead just taken over the entire place.

Oh, and there’s more of those things here. Because of course there is. And worse, unlike the ones back by the house, these ones are loose.

“I call this the overgrowth. Because, uh…” Tailgate looks around, and looks back at them, like he’d started the sentence and only realized halfway through how stupid it was going to sound. “Er, anyway. This is where most of the gardens are.”

It’s at this point that Whirl makes the realization that this is probably all this is going to be. Tailgate said he was going to show them around, but there’s not really anything to show around. This is more like a glorified nature walk, and Whirl hasn’t cared about those since… oh, right. Never. What even is the point of this?

Tailgate continues to be oblivious to Whirl’s suffering. He leads the way down into the plants, and into the things inhabiting the overgrown chaos, like he doesn’t even think twice about walking right past them. Like they’re not even there! He’s pretty sure he even sees him pet one on the way by.

“This whole place is my ranch. There’s a lot of different areas that I’ve built for different things over time, but you can see the rest another time.” Tailgate tells them, and Whirl can only wonder where he got the idea that they cared. Just wait until the poor guy finds out Cyclonus doesn’t care about anything.

“Yeah, uh, that’s great. So when can we go back?” So maybe he’s being a little bit rude to the guy that was so nice as to not let them die, sue him. All of this walking around is making him dizzy again and there’s not even anything worth seeing to make up for it. “Because I don’t know about the Lurch over there, but I had stuff to do, and someone’s gonna add more community service to my to-do list if I don’t get back.”

Oooh, that’s interesting. He kinda expects Tailgate to deflate and look sad at the disinterest in his weird little cottage life, but Tailgate instead grimaces and looks awkward. And… maybe apologetic. No, definitely apologetic.

“Well… you can’t?”

“What.”

At Whirl’s deadpan tone, Tailgate waves his servos, rushing to correct himself. “Yet! You can’t yet! Like I said, we are very, very far from not just Cybertron, but even the nearest mapped planet with any sort of familiarity with us. That’s why your warp sickness was as bad as it was, no living being is ever meant to travel as far as you did in that short of a time.”

“And that means we can’t go home because..?”

“Because we don’t have easy travel, here. We don’t have a space bridge. They wouldn’t do us much good when all of the nearest planets are too far away to be safe to travel to, y’know? But you’re not stuck here! We do have trade established with other planets and a route to Cybertron, but, uh…”

Whirl is this close to telling him to just spit it out, but at least Tailgate finally gets there.

“It, uh… it doesn’t run very often. It’s such a long distance, it takes a while to travel, and then because of that we spread them out and ship more items at once, and… well. You’re going to be here for a few… dozen… more weeks.”

Well.

Frag.

Actually, frag all of this. The glaring and overwhelming amount of orange all around is giving Whirl a headache, or maybe that’s just from the realization that he’s stuck here in the middle of actual nowhere on a rock for the foreseeable future. And he’s still dizzy! It’s a lot harder to ignore the ghosting and the duplicates when there’s not at least something interesting to make it worth dealing with.

There’s a nice, dark, quiet corner under a desk with his name on it, alone, just like he likes it.

“Whirl? Where are you going?”

He ignores him. As he goes, trudging back to that stupid little house, he can just overhear Cyclonus saying something about just letting him go, and that he’s just like that.

As if he would know. Psh.

It’s quiet.

For the first time in days, the small, cramped little room is silent. It should be calming, a break at last from the nuisance Whirl has made of himself, but it isn’t. And it isn’t necessarily Whirl’s fault, either, though Cyclonus can feel him brooding in the corner. He’s been like that since Cyclonus returned, wedged under his desk and uncharacteristically quiet.

But that isn’t what’s causing the slight tension in the air, or at least not all of it. They’ve fought enough times that he can tell the difference between his circumstantial roommate being on the verge of violence, and whatever his current mood is. Whatever it is, it isn’t being directed outward, demanding to be heard.

And yet, still, the air hangs heavy.

Cyclonus himself is not immune to it. For all that Whirl is stone-still in his corner, Cyclonus finds himself fidgeting. Though the heavy feeling of exhaustion that comes from recovering after illness clings to him, he cannot find a sense of rest. No matter how he shifts, he isn’t comfortable for very long.

He waits, and waits, to be pulled under into sleep, but it simply doesn’t happen. All that hangs in its place is that feeling of discontent, the slight tension, an ever so faint sensation of being on edge.

The room is dark. They do, usually, fall asleep by this time. Gentle edges of shadow encase every object, every shape, broken only by the faint sliver of moonlight through mostly closed curtains.

Everything about the space they’re in calls to a sense of safety, a sort of coziness. It’s a small, enclosed space, exactly like one that should bring both of them the ability to settle despite any heightened awareness.

And yet, they’re left awake.

Cyclonus knows he isn’t the only one, that Whirl’s apparent consciousness despite his stillness isn’t just his imagination, and he’s proven right when Whirl’s patience runs out. The indistinguishable mass of limbs shifts in the darkness, one yellow optic leering at him like a spotlight.

“Can you stop fidgeting already? I’m trying to sleep.” It seems that Whirl tries to inject his tone with vitriol; he fails. He just ends up sounding tired, without actually sounding like he’s anywhere near rest himself.

He’s not sure what he hopes to accomplish with calling Whirl’s bluff, since the only reaction he can really expect is to incur that same violence Whirl is currently not exhibiting. “You’re not.”

The optic narrows into a squint. “You’re one to talk.”

And that’s where it ends. No violence, no end of patience. Whirl’s optic disappears back into his tangle of limbs, returning to his stony position.

They are not yet fully recovered from their experience, it’s true. Whirl in particular, though he will in no way admit to it, still shows signs of weakness in his frame when he walks. Despite that, Cyclonus would have expected him to revert back to their usual ways, his usual reactions upon seeing him, of using everything he has to attempt to send Cyclonus back to the Allspark, no matter how bad off he is in the moment.

He expected this the moment they were both coherent.

It has yet to happen.

The silence draws on. Internally, Cyclonus’ chronometer ticks away, ever so faintly as the sound travels through his own metal. Like fingers tapping on a surface, it counts the seconds, diligently cataloguing every single moment that passes by with nothing to show for it. Nothing is happening, and nothing continues to happen, and yet… and yet it feels like it’s going to. It feels like something is coming, or that it should be.

He feels as if he should be braced for something, despite there being no signs to suggest as much. Whirl is calm, and strangely peaceful; Tailgate is, evidently so far, harmless; and this place, this room if nothing else, is free of any threat.

Cyclonus shifts, again. The berth is too soft under him, while simultaneously too hard. The shadows at the corners of the room are fuzzy, static, too visible despite being hidden in the darkness. Time freezes; or, more accurately, his chrono skips a tick, only adding to the faintly off feeling clinging to this night.

The door opens, with only the faintest, most delicate of creaks to tell on itself. It moves slowly, as slowly as Tailgate himself as he sneaks inside. A movement which freezes when he spots both of them staring back at him.

“Oh!” He almost seems to startle, like they were somehow the last thing he expected to find. Evidently because, “you two are usually asleep by now.”

Sneaking into his own home, just to keep from disturbing them. It’s… considerate.

Whirl huffs, turning to curl back up into a tangle. “Sorry to break this to you, pipsqueak, but people sleep less when they’re not mostly dead.” Again, it sounds like he intends it to be rude, but it’s missing quite enough of the usual bite to get there.

Cyclonus has nothing to add, but the berth is uncomfortable again. He shifts. Tailgate looks at him.

He expects… something. Tailgate is talkative, that much he has already learned in their short time here. But instead of chattering on as he’s come to expect from him, Tailgate stays as silent as the quiet room around them all. The feeling of something returns, cloying around them, emanating from the shadows.

And this time, Tailgate stares at them. It’s an attentive, analyzing sort of stare, one that makes Cyclonus feel exceedingly, uncomfortably seen, as if he can see right through him and everything he does not show. He’s glad when it turns to Whirl, seeing right through him instead; something which Whirl also seems to notice.

“What?” He manages to capture the vitriol this time, intonation oozing with aggression. He likes feeling seen even less than Cyclonus does, it seems.

It takes Tailgate another long few moments of contemplative silence before he finally speaks again.

“One of those nights, huh?” His voice is soft, gentle, understanding. None of which actually explains anything he’s thinking, or what he’s actually talking about. Exactly what it is he understands is unclear.

Whatever it is, he seems to think it’s obvious, or common knowledge, because he does not explain further. Instead, he turns, once more pulling the door fully open and letting the pale moonlight spill across the floor.

He gestures outside, invitingly. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

Neither of them move. In the darkness still clinging to the corner, Whirl’s bright optic narrows into a squint. “Nuh-uh. I know what’s out there, and I don’t want to see any more of it.”

Cyclonus, unfortunately, has to agree with him. The creatures of this planet are… unsettling, to say the least. All soft edges and round shapes, the very antithesis to their own being. He has no urge to see any more of them anytime soon, or worse yet, if Tailgate wants them to interact with them as he does.

Tilting his head, Tailgate sounds almost amused, without losing that gentle tone. “Well, if you want to just stay here, and keep trying to sleep…”

Despite himself, Cyclonus stands from the berth in an instant. He would much rather not return to that, in fact, even if the alternative has something to do with the local fauna.

Whirl, it seems, agrees with him. Even if he doesn’t want to admit as much. “Well if Hornhead is going, I can’t just let him have all the fun. Or let you just waltz off alone with him! Can’t be trusted, obviously. He’s a trained killer, you know? Ruthless.” The last part is stage whispered, dramatically, to Tailgate as Whirl passes him through the door.

Tailgate’s reaction is interesting. It’s obvious Whirl means it as a jab veiled as a joke, a fact wrapped up in humor to obscure its truth. And they haven’t spoken about where they came from, or about the war. Beyond being unaffiliated and assumably neutral, they don’t know anything about Tailgate’s opinion of either of their factions, or if he even knows anything about it at all. As far removed as he is, complete ignorance wouldn’t be out of place for him.

But Tailgate doesn’t linger on it. He doesn’t even seem to question it, or think twice. He jabs back, with exactly the same tone Whirl used, lighthearted and joking with an undercurrent of knowing exactly what he’s saying. “So are you.”

It is unclear if Whirl heard him, or even listened in the first place. Tailgate follows him out, and Cyclonus has no choice but to follow.

Outside, the difference from earlier this day is stark. The harsh, oppressive orange tones of the canyon walls are softened, glazed over with blue light and appearing almost purple in the dark of night. The shadows themselves are few and far between, chased away by the wash of moonlight from a very large celestial body far above.

He gets no further time to take in the rest of the environment around him. Tailgate and Whirl are already moving, along what seems to be the main path of Tailgate’s home. That thought is proven correct as they pass under a much larger wooden arch than the one from this morning, one that clearly marks this as the entrance.

Outside of it, the landscape doesn’t change much. The same orange canyons and valleys, walls and rock formations, all turned purple in the night. And it doesn’t seem that Tailgate is leading them far, likely hesitant still to exert them any more than necessary, because it’s a short walk from the entrance of his ranch that he comes to a stop.

At a wall, that is. He brings them to a wall; or, at least, a wall for him. It only goes up so far, a ledge that Cyclonus can just see over to another pathway beyond, but it’s above Tailgate’s head and fully out of reach.

Tailgate stands in front of it, turns, and points up. “Someone help me up.” He commands, more than asks. Part of him wants to refuse just on that basis, that Tailgate isn’t his superior officer and cannot command him around like one, and he has a distinct feeling Whirl is moments away from voicing that exact sentiment in much ruder words.

But on the other hand… Haltingly, Cyclonus lifts him up as told, more curious about what this is leading to than he is inclined to refuse.

It’s less trouble for both of them to follow him, barely more than grabbing the ledge and hauling themselves up. Or at least, for Cyclonus it isn’t. Whirl seems to take more effort on the lack of having servos, though he manages without asking for help and without Cyclonus offering, both of which neither of them would do anyway.

The path, at the top of the wall, leads to a sheer cliff. It continues right, hugging the wall and curving around until it opens up once more, to a widened area entirely obscured from the rest of the landscape behind them.

And in front of them, it’s open. Past the edge of the cliff, strangely pale waters shift and ripple far below, while a darkened sky of innumerable stars flicker above. They’re enveloped in shimmering waves of an aurora, blue and green hues dancing through the darkness.

Tailgate’s voice comes from somewhere beside him, reminding him of a presence he’d already nearly forgotten.

“The Far Range’s location gives it a perfect view of a lot of other planets, really, really clearly. Most of the ones we’re familiar with are too far away to see, but… it’s pretty, huh?”

Pretty feels a bit like an understatement. There’s a number of stars in this planet’s sky that he has rarely, if ever, seen at once before. It rivals the number visible within the void of space itself, a feat he’d have thought impossible before this very moment. The planet’s moon is large, abnormally large, but it does not detract from the stars themselves nor overshadow them.

A perfect harmony, despite their differences. Wordless poetry, gently shining against its black canvas.

And… and it’s quiet here. But it’s quiet in a good way, in stark contrast to the silence clinging to the house before. It’s quiet, peaceful, but it isn’t silent. Water laps at the cliff far below, the gentle sound of it bumping into the rocks that contain it. Meanwhile, above, there isn’t a strong enough wind to be heard; but it is enough to whisper through foliage nearby, ruffling tree leaves against themselves.

It’s one of the things he has, admittedly, always appreciated about organic flora. Quiet, unobtrusive, but still enough to be heard if one knows how to listen.

“Okay, so it’s a night sky, what’s the big deal? We’ve all seen those a few billion times.” Unlike the plants, Whirl is not quiet, nor is he unobtrusive. He is in fact both, and evidently far less impressed by the view than Cyclonus is.

Curious how Tailgate will take Whirl’s dismissal, he glances at their host. He isn’t expecting to spot the tell-tale visor glow of a masked mech’s smile. “You’ll see.” Is all Tailgate says, mysteriously, before sitting himself down in the grass. He seems to make himself comfortable, settling in, very clearly intending to wait for something.

There is the option of simply turning back, but he’s curious as to where this is going. Though… Cyclonus is decidedly disinterested in sitting in the grass like Tailgate seems to think they will. He finds his way to the wall behind them, leaning against it instead.

Alternately, Whirl haphazardly throws himself halfway off the cliff to sit on the edge, kick his legs in the open air, and dramatically lay on the ground when something does not instantly occur. Tailgate doesn’t comment on either of their refusals to join him. He watches, but if he is disappointed, he does not show it.

Quiet falls once more. It stretches gently, like the pause between words that could continue, but might not.

It isn’t entirely clear to him how late it is, having been confined to the indoors so much that his chronometer has yet to acclimate to the local time. In this quiet, it meshes with the sounds of the water and the trees, a gentle and rhythmic ticking that sounds like it belongs just as much as they do.

Whirl’s fraying patience bleeds over, another sound joining the others as he taps his claws on the rocks beneath him, impatiently counting the seconds. It is impressively well timed; matching the ticks of Cyclonus’ chronometer perfectly. Seamlessly, it fits into the myriad of sounds filling the night as if it, too, belongs. It’s… odd, coming from Whirl.

“Ready?”

Once again, Cyclonus had managed to nearly forget Tailgate’s presence. His reminder stills Whirl back into silence and draws Cyclonus’ attention, to find he’s glancing at them both with a kind of excitement he doesn’t hide.

How he knows anything is happening at all, is… unclear. Nothing has changed; the sky looks the same, the sounds are the same, and it hasn’t been all too long since they’d arrived. But somehow, with near-perfect timing as if he had summoned it himself, something does change.

There’s movement. A flicker that draws the optic; something at the edges of the canyon, behind the walls that surround the lagoon. A faint glow, shifting against the inky shadows as the source moves somewhere behind those walls. For moments, that’s all there is, leaving him to wonder what the fascination is with something they can barely see at all.

He doesn’t expect the wind to kick up. Seemingly from nowhere, it sweeps over the valley, buffets against him, and rattles the trees behind them, but all of that fades into the background at the sight it carries with it.

In a cascading rush, those distant lights are swept up within the wind, lifted and carried over the rock walls that had contained them only moments ago. In streams of glittering gold, hundreds of round orbs of light are flown higher and higher into the night sky above. Swirling amongst themselves in glowing loops, they are not all too far removed from the sight of practiced penmanship.

Except instead of being drawn onto paper, they’re drawn onto the backdrop of the stars, trails of gold weaving between silver sparkles of distant planets. If he didn’t know better, Cyclonus would almost believe the wind knew what it was painting; that the spreading pattern of twirls and loops across the night sky, like an intricate filigree, were intentional.

“This planet is unique. It might seem like any other organic planet at first, but…” Tailgate speaks quietly, reverently, as if he’s being careful not to disrupt the scene before them. His voice fades to silence, letting his words hang in the air just like the lights above, without crowding them with more.

The buffeting wind settles to a gentle breeze, leaving the lights suspended in their trails. They blink and shimmer, fading and brightening independently of each other, in slow and fast patterns all seemingly unique to each one.

“Most planets aren’t alive. They have life on them, but the planet itself isn’t alive.”

Slowly, the lights seem to grow larger than the stars around them; an illusion caused by them drifting closer. Now that the wind has faded, there’s nothing remaining to keep them in the sky. Without it, they fall ever so slowly, orbs of gold coming down all around like rain from the stars.

“They’re not like Cybertron. It makes us the odd ones out, y’know? Other planets are nothing like ours. They don’t have living cores, or residents that came from it directly, or continue to come from it.”

Close enough now to see the details, it finally becomes clear exactly what these lights are. Faint outlines of purple and white are just barely visible around the glow from within them, highlighting tiny little wings fluttering uselessly against gravity.

“But this planet? This planet is like ours.”

Nearly right over their heads, one of the lights—a glowing variety of slimes, it would seem—drifts down amidst them. Gently, slowly, it flutters closer and closer, casting a faint glow onto the ground as it comes near. Tailgate reaches up as it does, both servos raised high, allowing the creature to land delicately in his hold.

“They come from its living core, just like us. Out of every other planet out there, all of the ones so different from ours, from us…”

Tailgate doesn’t seem to finish the thought. He holds the slime in his servos, a radiant picture of gentle affection for the creature he has somehow found common ground with. Its bioluminescent glow reflects off of his finish, turning his white paint gold in the darkness.

It’s… something Cyclonus has not witnessed in a very, very long time. A mech so deeply fond of something Cyclonus himself simply cannot understand the appeal of, and which he has no shame in displaying and sharing despite that lack of understanding. Tailgate sits before them now, seemingly entirely unbothered by whether they judge him for his strange behaviors or not, fully confident in his interests regardless.

That thought is further proven by the way he leans forward, affectionately setting his face directly against the slime. Though Tailgate has no expression to change, the slime does, one that seems to go equally as fond as it nuzzles back. Strange, how the creature seems to know him already, despite having only just fluttered down from a swarm in the sky.

“Nobody really chooses to come here. There’s not much for us here, it’s far away from everything… but sometimes you end up here, when you’re supposed to. When you need to.” Tailgate turns his head, still resting on the slime, to cast a gentle and gold-tinged glow from his visor towards Cyclonus. “Even if you don’t know it yet.”

He says nothing more, allowing the night to fall once more back into calm silence.

Chapter Text

The world drifts in, slowly.

It isn’t like waking up from almost dying, or passing out, or any number of other situations that have knocked him out over the years. Waking up from those is slow, yeah, but they’re not… comfortable?

It’s weird.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he’s not in pain and he’s pretty sure he’s not dead, so who cares. Sprawled out, there’s a faint, residual warmth in the ground under him, and a cool breeze on his plating. Everything seems to be fine; he can pretend he’s still asleep for a while yet.

Whirl feels like he had a dream, but if he did, it’s gone now. This feels enough like a dream as it is, waking up slowly, peacefully, like he actually slept well. When was the last time he slept well? The last time he felt like he rested? The last time he woke up so— don’t think about that.

Onlining his optic brings color. So much orange, with streaks of reddish grass. There’s a shape in that grass, white and blue, not all too far from where Whirl is laying. Tailgate is out like a light, but his servo rests on the ground between them, outstretched like he’d been reaching for something in his sleep.

Tilting his head, Whirl looks up. Relative to himself, anyway, because the sky is more to his left, and—anyway. He looks up, towards the wall enclosing this area, where he vaguely remembers Cyclonus being. Not like he cares what that guy does or where he is, but he does care if he’s off gallivanting around with violence that doesn’t include Whirl.

He needn’t have not-worried. Cyclonus is no better than either of the two of them, sitting on the ground with his back against the wall, sort of slumped a bit to the side, optics dark. It doesn’t look very comfortable, but hey, Whirl probably doesn’t have any room to talk.

So the lot of them fell asleep, huh. Not something he expected to do, but… well. Even Whirl has to admit it was a nice night. It’s been… a long time since he got to do something like that. Sit around, look at something pretty, actually appreciate that it’s pretty. Like the lights back on Cybertron, during mid-year festivals, when he still—

Don’t think about that.

Whirl shoves himself upright. Naptime over, it’s time to get back to it. Whatever it is, considering he currently… does he count as not having a job at the moment? He doesn’t get to shoot anything or blow anything up right now. Well, he could, but Tailgate seems like the kind of guy to have creative punishments, and Whirl doesn’t want to risk finding out what they are just yet.

What was he thinking about? Oh, right. Not that. Anyway.

Considering how every time he’s woken up before, Tailgate has already been gone, he’s almost surprised to find him still passed out right here. But then again, it’s a particular kind of early right now. The sun hasn’t even broken over the walls of the canyon yet, leaving them in a weird morning half-light despite the bright sky above.

Somewhere nearby-ish, a rooster crows. A rooster! Or… something that sounds like one? It’s ridiculous. It sounds like something straight out of an Earth movie, some stereotypical noise meant to show the viewer time has passed and it’s morning now, or to explain why the characters all wake up right then despite not having any alarm clocks.

Imagine not having alarm clocks built in. Not that Whirl uses his, but… anyway. Their loss.

There’s a shuffle of movement next to him. As if the pure comedy gold of the rooster-thing on its own wasn’t enough, it looks like it actually woke Tailgate up, exactly like one of those characters Whirl was just thinking about. “Good morning.” Tailgate mumbles to him, only mostly enunciated.

“That’s not usually what people say to me when I’m the first thing they see.”

Tailgate blinks at him like he’s a few watts short of a full thought just yet, rubbing at his visor. “What’d they usually say?”

“Oh, y’know, the usual.” Whirl leans back, resting his head on a claw and counting with the other. “‘Who are you,’ ‘how drunk was I,’ ‘how did you get in my house,’ oh, and my favorite! ‘Aren’t you the guy on the wanted poster’?”

Halfway through, Tailgate tries to stifle any reaction, only letting out the choked sound of caught air. But by the end he’s giggling, swatting vaguely in the direction of Whirl’s face. “None of that is true.”

“You wanna bet? I do. I love betting. I’ll win this one, guaranteed.”

Something… shifts? Tailgate’s giggles fade away, and his face does something, but it’s hard to tell what it is when he has about as much of a face as Whirl does. Maybe he doesn’t like gambling. Primus, Whirl hopes not. The last person he had to live with who hated gambling was Magnus, and hooo, that was something. Though Tailgate does actually understand jokes, so he can’t be that similar.

“Well, I’ll say it again, instead. Good morning, Whirl. Did you sleep well?”

Nevermind the previous shift in tone, this one is worse. Tailgate sort of turns his whole attention on him, all genuine and like he cares or something, like he’s actually asking for the sake of asking. And he waits, quietly, for an answer, all attentive and patient. It’s weird. And uncomfortable! And weird.

“...Fine. It was, uh, fine.” Whirl throws himself upright, standing up fully as an excuse to leave this whole interaction behind. “Anyway, don’t you have, like, stuff to do?”

“Well, yes—”

Great! A perfect excuse. Whirl loves those. They’re like his favorite thing next to explosions and daydreams about offing someone, including himself. “Then let’s wake up this bad excuse for room decor over here and let you get to it.”

Tailgate tries to give all sorts of excuses for why he shouldn’t wake up Cyclonus, and Whirl does what he does best, which is ignore all of them. Is this an excuse to avoid Tailgate trying to be all genuine and nice to him? Yes. Is this also an excuse to wake up Cyclonus in the most annoying way possible? Also yes. It’s a win-win, for him and no one else.

With all the delicacy of a triple changer in a disk drive, Whirl taps on Cyclonus’ forehead like he’s trying to speak morse code directly to his emotionally stunted processor. Maybe he is! He doesn’t know morse code, for all he knows maybe he is saying something. He hopes it’s rude.

Red optics come online and glare at him. “Remove yourself before I do it for you.”

“Oooh!” Whirl looks back at Tailgate. “That one’s going on the list.”

The resulting arm twist Whirl gets for it is one hundred percent worth it.

“Well…” Tailgate looks kinda like he isn’t sure if he should separate them, or chastise one or both of them, so he seems to just choose to ignore it completely. Good move! Maybe they’ll sort of start to get along pretty okay after all. Which is to say, the two of them with him, not them with each other, because that’s just a lost cause at this point. “I guess we’re all up now, anyway.”

“See? I’m efficient!” Whirl is so helpful. Cyclonus shoves him into the dirt, which, fair.

“You’re a nuisance.”

“I’m helpful!”

Tailgate ignores them both, holding a servo to his mask like he’s thinking. Must’ve found those few extra watts, good for him. “Y’know… this is the first day you’ve both really been up and okay, so… let’s pretend this is your first real day on the ranch, huh? We can make it fun!”

Whirl isn’t sure if either of them actually share anything in common with Tailgate that they would consider ‘fun,’ so he’s not sure how effective that’ll actually be. But then again… last night was nice. He’ll never say as much out loud or the little shrimp might start to think he likes romcoms and talking about feeeeelings, but it wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening and pass out somewhere random outside. Whirl would know.

So maybe he has one or two good ideas. It never hurts to find out, right? As long as he doesn’t decide to subject them to any more of those slime things. The ones last night were fine! They were far away and not jumping at him, which he can live with. Maybe Tailgate has more of those?

“We could start with breakfast?”

Or breakfast! Even better. Infinitely better, actually. “As long as it doesn’t involve slimes.” Whirl adds, which Tailgate and Cyclonus both give him a look for, because that comment mostly followed internal thought. Woops. Whatever.

“I… don’t think slimes are edible.” What a horrible thought. That’s where Tailgate’s first thought went? The isolation on this weird rock really has done a number on him, huh. “I wonder if there are any energon slime varieties…”

Any what.

And in true Tailgate fashion, he literally explains nothing more. “Oh, well. Let’s head back, and we’ll make plans for the day after that.”

Whirl really needs to stop thinking Tailgate will ever make sense. Is this how people feel about him? He hopes so. If not, he has work to do.

Tailgate leads them back the way they came, the night before. There’s more of the slimes around, some plain looking pink ones that just sort of watch them as they go by, something which Whirl tries to discourage by leering at them. It doesn’t work. In fact, it seems to have the opposite effect, like an invitation, and Whirl just chooses to strategically put Cyclonus between him and those things instead. Y’know, just in case.

It was almost kind of lame that Tailgate kept them so close to the ranch, probably because he thinks they’re still weak, but now Whirl is grateful for it because it’s less time they have to spend walking through wild slime territory.

Apparently unable to go more than five minutes without hearing his own voice, Tailgate is filling the silence between them with his rambling once again, which Whirl does a phenomenal job of pretending to listen to. At least, he’s pretty sure he gets all the ‘mhm’s and ‘ahh’s in the right places, seeing as Tailgate doesn’t call him out for ignoring him.

As they pass under the front gate, though, Tailgate’s voice fades into the background. The sounds of static and rushing energon rise over it, burying everything else below them. Even the servo someone puts on his arm feels muted, distant, to the point he doesn’t even care enough to shake it off.

For as much as he knows, this ranch is in the middle of nowhere. Isolated and empty and far, far away from anyone and everyone else, on the fringes of the known universe where nobody seems to really go. So it would stand to reason that there’s no one else here, right? That they’re alone?

But they’re not. The ranch isn’t empty like they left it; there’s someone there, casually standing around on Tailgate’s porch like he’s waiting there, like a friendly neighbor or a delivery man, someone who looks like they’re supposed to be there.

And Whirl knows him.

He turns, with a smile that shouldn’t be there and a wave, a friendly greeting falling out of him. Like this is normal, like he’s just a regular person they’ve met in a public space, before— Before.

“Tailgate! You’re out early. You weren’t overworking and being all disgustingly productive, were you?” His voice is so bright, just like his ugly paint job that still reflects the sun in the most glaring way possible. That static is still there, buzzing at the back of Whirl’s head and drowning out everything that isn’t gold and red and insufferable. “I heard your new friends are back with the world of the living!”

Something frays and snaps. Whirl doesn’t even get to make the conscious choice to ignore his nonexistent impulse control, heated rage boiling up through his lines and driving him forward claws-first without another thought.

He hears his name from someone, and startled recognition in blue optics. They make for a great target to aim for, fueled by betrayal and the knowledge that no one can stop him when none of his governing officers are anywhere near anyway.

Whirl jolts to a stop, millimeters from making contact, through no choice of his own.

Snarling and thrashing does nothing to dislodge the grip on him, or free him from the prison of his own plating in someone’s grip. Despite the chance it gives him, Rodimus doesn’t back up, either; he just stands there, with wide optics and a haunted look on his stupid face, just barely out of reach.

“Whirl!” Tailgate is still around, somewhere. “What are you doing?!”

It’s pretty obvious what he’s doing, in Whirl’s opinion. Or not doing, thanks to what he can only assume is a purple lug keeping him from gaining just that teensy bit more distance he needs to turn Rodimus into scrap metal. He strains harder against the grip holding him back, and instead of gaining ground, he loses it. Cyclonus pulls, widening the distance in front of his claws, dragging his tantalizingly close target away from him.

Red and gold is blocked out by white and blue. Tailgate appears in his vision, closer than he probably should, leering that expressionless visor right into Whirl’s face. He’s like one of those dumb little animals that don’t have any natural predators and don’t have any survival instincts, which is… actually probably really accurate, considering Tailgate doesn’t look the least bit afraid of him.

It’s kind of insulting.

“Careful.” Cyclonus warns, because at least he recognizes that Whirl is very dangerous, thank you very much, and drags him back another bit. Though he’s not sure when Tall, Dark and Purple back there ended up on Tailgate’s side, at least he finally formed a single thought of his own.

Tailgate also ignores him, staying in Whirl’s face. “What’s going on?” He asks, not budging from his spot, and even actively leaning in the way when Whirl tries to get a look at Rodimus around him.

It’s enough to see that the supposed Prime isn’t even looking at him anymore. He’s looking down, staring at the dirt with that same sort of haunted look, like Whirl managed to hit a nerve just by existing. Good.

A servo yanks his head down, forcing him to look at Tailgate. “Not him. Me. Tell me what’s going on.” He demands, but without really making it sound like a demand. It’s kind of impressive, and really weird, how it sounds like he’s not making it an option but also not really sounding like a drill sergeant about it.

Doesn’t mean Whirl’s gonna make it that easy for him, though. What, like they’re just all going to sit around, and air their grievances, and make friends with each other? Whirl doesn’t think so. He wrenches back, pulling out of Tailgate’s grip and knocking into Cyclonus, breaking free of both of them.

It doesn’t last for long, of course. He can’t even decide if he still wants to go smash Rodimus’ face in before Cyclonus has a new grip on him, making it very clear he’ll be following no such thought. Like Cyclonus is some kind of saint now, here to protect this planet from Whirl’s destructive tendencies, like he isn’t just as bad.

“Stand down.” Cyclonus tells him, like he’s being a petulant sparkling throwing a tantrum. “Whatever your personal grievances, they are irrelevant. We are guests here.”

Cyclonus doesn’t say the quiet part out loud. The part about how they’re effectively a package deal, having landed together, and Cyclonus doesn’t want Whirl to make him look bad and get them kicked out. Which should just make him want to do exactly that, out of pure spite. Whirl likes spite.

Instead, it just kind of makes him tired. Not that he doesn’t still want to kick Rodimus half way to the next planet, but… whatever. He can do that when there’s no witnesses, he doesn’t have to deal with whatever the rest of this is. When he doesn’t have to deal with Cyclonus, too, and the cloying lethargy in his limbs from getting launched across space.

“Fine! Fine.” Wrenching backwards again, he manages to knock Cyclonus’ too-warm servo off of him. He can still feel where he was holding onto him as the sensation fades, and he isn’t a fan. “But I’m not done with him.”

Cyclonus lets him go; he recognizes that for what it is, a promise that this isn’t over, but Tailgate doesn’t. He scrambles forward a few steps, reaching out like he’s going to stop Whirl again or something. “Wait! You still haven’t explained what’s wrong.”

If Whirl wasn’t mad, that would be kind of funny. Whirl, explaining what’s wrong? With him? That would take, like, four million years. He throws a vague gesture Rodimus’ way instead.

“Ask him. He knows what he did.”

Red and gold shoulders flinch at the pointed comment, exactly the effect he’d hoped it would have. Now they can demand all their answers from him, and leave Whirl alone about it. A win-win! Mostly for him.

No one tries to stop him from walking away this time.

He doesn’t know or care where he’s going, as long as it’s away from here. Being stuck on this weird planet is one thing; being stuck with Cyclonus of all people is another. But being stuck out here, with Cyclonus, and with Rodimus? Kill him now, before he kills them first.

He doesn’t even care about the slimes at the moment. There’s a bunch around, and he’s vaguely aware of them staring at him as he passes by, but they don’t approach and he can’t be bothered to care about them right now. He’s all geared up for a fight, which is usually a feeling he enjoys, but not when there’s nowhere to put that energy.

Maybe it’s because of landing all the way out here, or maybe it’s some deeper thing about his trauma or whatever that one of his dozen therapists would be able to explain. Who cares. All that matters is that he’s stuck on some stupid planet with all of his least favorite people and some random guy who’s weirder than he is, and he can’t even beat anyone up properly because he’s puny from travelling too much.

Ridiculous.

He needs to find a way off this stupid rock. Space bridge is out, because— ugh. Even if they did have one here, he may never use one again after all of this. Which, on the bright side, is another trauma to add to his collection and freak out new therapists with. Maybe if he tries hard enough he can collect them all and actually make… something? Of himself. Nothing good, of course! But… something.

Anything.

But not while he’s out here, because all this rock has is slimes, and… rocks.

And slimes.

And Rodimus.

And Cyclonus.

Y’know what, he’s figured it out. He’s gone to the pit. He’s in hell. Died somewhere along the way, probably that damn space bridge, and now the universe is just batting him around and laughing at him. Sounds like something it would do, especially to him.

Weird that his own personal hell also includes some random short guy, but hey, who’s not afraid of a short guy here and there? They’re right in ankle biting range. He’s more mad that he didn’t get to enjoy the being dead and not existing part. That was, like, the only thing he was looking forward to!

Now what is he supposed to do? Just sit here, and look pretty? Well, joke’s on the universe. They took away his ability to be pretty a long, long time ago. Don’t think about that. Maybe he could just drown himself?

He’s not sure what dying twice accomplishes, but… maybe he’ll go to purgatory two? If it doesn’t have Cyclonus or Rodimus, it’ll be an improvement. Especially Cyclonus. If Whirl never saw him again, he’d probably get better.

As if anything could make him better.

He has no idea where he is, and he doesn’t care. Somewhere in his thoughts, he must have wandered to an edge of the water; definitely nothing relating to anything he was thinking about. But he stands on the edge now, looking out over a sea that stretches on into the horizon, with far off land masses dotted here and there in the distance.

This close, he doesn’t really want to touch it, though. There’s something… weird about it. Granted, there’s something weird about this whole planet, but the water doesn’t quite move right. Like it’s a little bit too thick. There’s something organic about it that just kind of makes him feel a little grossed out.

He can always drown himself some other day, anyway.

Away from the water, or whatever passes for supposed water on this planet, there’s a tree growing against a cliff wall. Tucked away in its own, isolated little corner, kind of like he wishes he was. There’s something poetic in there somewhere that he doesn’t care to find, but if he can’t shoot anyone or drown himself, he may as well just go back to bed.

That’s, like, a borderline healthy coping mechanism. Which, ew, but someone should be proud of him for it, or something. Flopping down into the grass below the tree is— okay, it’s more comfortable than he expected it to be, and now he can see why Tailgate picked the spot he did last night, but who cares.

It’s pretty here. The ground under him is soft, and even he has to admit how picturesque the scene he’s sitting in is. He’s probably ruining it by being in the middle of it, but for what he can see, it’s nice. All… peaceful, and vibrant, and pretty. Waves of weird gloopy water and wind and… stuff.

It feels kind of mocking, actually. Like it’s making fun of him for being the downer here, even though he has every right to be pissed off. About a lot of things! Whirl is one hundred percent justified this time. He just doesn’t want to be here. He wants to just go home.

He’s wanted to go home for a long time.

Anyway! There’s some slimes nearby. They’re not… approaching him, so that’s good. He kind of has half a mind to blast them just to make himself feel better, but as he watches them with that thought in mind, he makes a horrible, horrible discovery.

The things are close to the cliff wall, jumping at each other and bouncing off of everything around. Whirl totally, definitely, absolutely in no way notices the rocks being shaken loose above them, and most definitely doesn’t keep watching out of curiosity to see what happens next. He would never! Anyway, the rocks shift, and shift, until finally shaking loose and coming down in a rain of destruction.

At least. At least it should be destruction.

Which is to say that it’s not. The rocks tumble down, and instead of a nice fun gruesome scene of organic splatter, they just sort of… bounce off. As in, the boulders. From the cliff top. Landing on the slimes. Bounce. Off.

And the slimes don’t even seem to notice. They just keep bouncing at each other. Smiling. Un-splattered.

Whirl has a distinct feeling that even if he did blast them, nothing would happen. Which is… totally not freaky, not in the least, nope.

Is it too late to be okay with space bridges again? He can do that! Probably! If there was one! Which there’s not. Only… apparently unkillable slimes. Or at least, unsplattable slimes? And Rodimus. And Cyclonus.

“Hi Whirl!”

…And a weird short guy.

“What do you want?” Whirl does not say hi, because he is not in the mood to play nice right now, and Tailgate is probably only here to make him feel better or some other stupid sappy scrap. He’ll probably talk about how they all need to get along, and accidents happen, and he should accept others if he wants to be accepted, and blah, blah, blah.

Well, the joke’s on Tailgate! Because Whirl isn’t going to listen. Whirl doesn’t do playing nice, especially not with the other people on this planet right now, and nothing Tailgate says is going to convince him.

And… huh. He must be getting really good at ignoring people, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t hear anything. Like Tailgate isn’t talking at all. Isn’t this the part where he’s supposed to try and appeal to Whirl’s “good side” or something? Unless he just imagined Tailgate showing up, but he can’t be that far gone yet, right?

He looks over.

Tailgate is… standing there. Staring at him. Silent. Unreadable.

And holding a slime.

“What are you planning on doing with that?” Considering what he saw with the boulder, the things may as well be a weapon of the highest calibre. Which would normally be cool, if it were in Whirl’s totally existing servos, and not an alien organic blob. And especially not when it’s an alien blob being held in a vaguely threatening manner above him.

“I don’t know what it’s like out there.” Tailgate starts talking in this—oh, Primus, is that vulnerability? Gross. He sounds like he’s being all genuine and trying to connect or something, which is even worse than being threatened with that thing. “I… haven’t known that for a long time. But I know what’s here, and I know what helps.”

Helps? Helps? Helps with what?

Tailgate sits down. He’s a comfortable enough distance away, knees touching the grass without getting into Whirl’s space, which is at least kinda nice of him. It would be nicer if he wasn’t holding that thing so close to Whirl’s space, though. It… wiggles, squirming slightly in Tailgate’s arms, while it just stares at Whirl.

The thought that he’s glad Tailgate at least isn’t forcing it any closer to him only just has time to cross his mind before being immediately dashed by exactly that happening. Tailgate holds it out, toward him, over him, and Whirl doesn’t feel like he has quite enough room to cringe away into the dirt.

Should’ve drowned himself when he had the chance.

“Okay pipsqueak, real funny, ha ha, I get it. Play nice or you get the slime, lesson learned, get it away from me now.” He’s kind of afraid to move in any direction other than deeper into the dirt, because any other direction involves going past the thing currently contained only by Tailgate’s fingers. Do these things drip?

“Mmmm,” Tailgate hums. That’s a bad hum, Whirl knows a bad hum when he hears it. Primus, he was just joking about Tailgate having creative punishments, it wasn’t supposed to be true. “No.”

Okay, so there’s no getting out of this situation. Which is fine! Whirl’s had worse. Much worse! That’s kind of why he is the way he is, actually. Which, y’know what? Maybe the slime isn’t so bad. Not because it’s not bad, but because it’ll distract him from thinking about any of those other things. Which is great! Definitely great.

And then Tailgate puts it on him.

It… sits there. That’s all. It just sits there. He kind of expected it to feel sort of wet, and maybe sticky, like leaving some kind of slimy residue over anything it touches, but it kind of… doesn’t? It’s kind of warm, like most other living beings, but it just kind of feels like rubber.

And it’s not trying to eat him. Or jump at him. It’s just sitting there, looking kind of weirdly happy. And staring at him? Which is weird. All of this is weird.

He would like Tailgate to take it back now, thanks.

“Y’know, this is the same one you saw yesterday. The one that opened the door.” Tailgate tells him, because that definitely is something he wanted to know. “This one gets into trouble a lot.”

“Trouble how?” Like eating people? Which, okay, might be kind of cool. But also not something he wants sitting on him, especially after he just found out it’s apparently indestructible. Though the question makes Tailgate hold up a servo and start counting on his fingers, which is kind of hilarious.

“Breaking out of every single pen I’ve ever tried to put it in, eating all of my chickens twice, breaking into my house to knock things off my shelves enough times that I’ve stopped counting, hiding all of the other slimes’ toys in some place I still haven’t found, and figuring out how to work the teleporters to do the same things at the others’ ranches.”

Tailgate reaches out, patting the thing on the head. Body? Patting the thing in general. It seems to enjoy it, and starts… rumbling? He’s not sure why it’s rumbling and he’s afraid to ask.

“It’s called a tabby slime, by the way. I haven’t managed to think up a name for this specific troublemaker, though.”

Okay, so it’s not that bad. It’s not eating him, and it’s not slimy like its organic nature and the fact it’s literally called a slime would have him assume. And maybe the thought of it making Tailgate’s life a struggle by making a nuisance of itself is at least a tiny bit funny. Just a little.

It’s still weird.

“Well! I have work to get to. I seem to have a mysteriously empty chicken pen to deal with, so… just come back to the ranch when you’re ready, okay?” Tailgate stands up, dusting the orange dirt off his legs as he goes, which clearly is why he’s forgetting something.

“You gonna take this thing or not?” Whirl points at it, where it’s still sitting on him like it has no intention of moving now or ever.

“Nope! I don’t wanna deal with that troublemaker right now, so it’s your problem. Bye!”

And just like that, Tailgate walks away, leaving him here, trapped under this thing for the rest of eternity. Like it’s fine! Like there’s nothing wrong with this! Who cares if the apparently unsquishable thing is also apparently mostly docile, this is still cruel and unusual punishment that Whirl definitely does not deserve.

The slime wiggles. It seems to just sort of… do that. Like, passively. But then it also kind of seems to wiggle intentionally, like it’s nestling down into place on his legs, like it’s getting comfortable. It’s still more solid than he expected, holding its shape like the squishy bits are contained inside… less… squishy bits. Eugh.

Little ears flick this way and that, like it’s listening to the sounds around them. Other slimes and weird goopy water splashing against rocks, mostly. Slowly, it moves less, the ears going still, eyes drifting closed. It’s not going to die on him or something, is it?

It sort of melts into itself, flattening and sprawling across Whirl’s lap. The passive, constant wiggling settles down with it, until it’s apparently completely calm and mostly still. And then it lets out a faint, wispy sort of breath, one that repeats in a very rhythmic way.

The thing is sleeping on him. The thing fell asleep on him. Tailgate put the thing on him, and now it’s sleeping on him.

Whirl’s life is a joke. Of course, it always has been, but this is really a new level of absurdity. What does he look like, a berth? For weird, round, organic little… things?

For something sleeping on him, it sure does sleep… peacefully. Like it’s comfortable. Like it feels safe with him, for some reason. Like it has nothing to fear from him. Which is really something he should teach it otherwise, show these things he is a weapon of mass destruction and murder. If anyone could find out how to kill these things, he could. Of course he could.

But he doesn’t. He doesn’t move at all.

This is stupid. He should just go back to being angry, because he is! This world is stupid, and he doesn’t want to be here, and it’s all Cyclonus’ fault that he is, and now Rodimus is here too and he has to share a planet with both of them, and there’s no way to go back.

And the slime is still rumbling, melted over his legs, and snoring. And maybe it’s kind of nicely warm, and the rumbling is steady and rhythmic, and the weight is grounding or something. Whatever. It’s still a weird alien thing and he doesn’t like it.

He has no choice but to continue being stuck, here, under this thing. Okay, so maybe he could remove himself from this situation, by like… moving the slime, but that would require picking it up like Tailgate did, and this is far enough for him right now, thank you very much.

Nevermind that the longer he stays here, letting the thing nap on him, the more he’s forced to accept that it is actually kind of nice. Not just because the steady noises it makes are kind of calming, but also because of how it’s warm, and rumbling, and—weirdly pliable—it manages to snuggle down onto him like some sort of very effective heat pack.

And maybe it makes the aches he’s been ignoring hurt a little bit less. Whatever. Maybe he’ll just… take advantage of that, just this once. Just for a little while, just to avoid having to deal with Cyclonus and Rodimus and everything about being stuck here. Yeah! He’s just ditching work. Just avoiding responsibility, just like normal, nothing to see here.

The slime has absolutely nothing to do with it.

In the wake of Whirl’s aggression, Cyclonus finds himself watching Rodimus.

It isn’t unusual for Whirl to be angry, nor for him to pick a fight for reasons no one can understand except for himself. For as long as Cyclonus has been aware of his existence, Whirl doesn’t seem to have reasons for what he does. He’s like a combination of a live wire and a hair trigger, ready to go off at any moment at the slightest breeze.

So why, then, does Rodimus look like Whirl was telling some kind of truth? He truly does look like he knows what Whirl was talking about, what’s being held against him, and that he is equally as bothered by it. A shadow hangs over him, a downtrodden chill that might be guilt wrapping around him and entirely reversing the previously too-bright demeanor he’d held.

Cyclonus has never known Whirl’s behaviors and grudges to have a reason before. Much less a good reason, judging by Rodimus’ own reaction. It makes him wonder what it could be, and in turn, what some of Whirl’s other apparently unspoken reasons may have been.

He isn’t going to ask Rodimus. The curiosity isn’t strong enough for that, much less the fact he hasn’t even actually met this mech yet. By the way it looks like Rodimus may crumple on himself at the slightest wrong move, he doesn’t particularly want to get involved in any of that. Hopefully Tailgate will.

Tailgate, in fact, does not.

He does check on Rodimus, with all the concern and care of someone that seems to actually have some familiarity with him, which Rodimus brushes off in what seems to be an attempt to act like he’s fine. Tailgate doesn’t push it, and he doesn’t ask what Whirl meant, leaving Cyclonus without any of the answers he was hoping to overhear.

Whether or not that means Tailgate already knows what went on between them, or if he simply doesn’t feel the need to know, is unclear.

Regardless of which it is, once Tailgate has checked in on Rodimus, he wastes no time in grabbing a grey slime from who knows where and setting off in the direction Whirl went. Cyclonus has zero intention of following him, though that also means he has no other choice but to be left here with Rodimus.

Rodimus, who still looks uncomfortably sad, yet who immediately starts trying to make conversation to erase the stilted silence that hangs over them once they’re left alone together.

Cyclonus liked this day better before he was conscious.

“I’d say that went pretty well, wouldn’t you?” There is genuinely nothing he has to say in response to that even if he wanted to, which he doesn’t, because he’s quite certain that a definitive no isn’t the right thing to say in this situation. The ensuing silence in the lack of a reply results in Rodimus awkwardly clearing his throat. “Well, uh. Anyway! Guess I should probably get going before he comes back, huh?”

That would probably be best, yes. Cyclonus waits for him to leave; he doesn’t.

“I did have an actual reason for coming here, though.” Rodimus busies himself with looking through his gear—the very same kind Tailgate wears, he notices—in search of… something. There’s several clear tanks on him, the contents of which are all alien to Cyclonus. One is half filled with what might be some kind of fruit, while another is filled to the brim with what looks suspiciously like lava, and which Cyclonus makes the wise decision to look away from once he realizes it has eyes.

Apparently successful in his search, Rodimus presents another tank. It’s hard to get a good look inside before he’s twisting the top off and dumping the contents out onto the ground, unceremoniously and like this is the most normal thing to do.

What comes out of the tank is fire. As in, a viscous blob. Of fire.

It slides out of the tank slowly, like something gelatinous that clings to the smooth surface as it goes, before falling out all at once and landing on the ground with a plop. And for a moment, nothing else happens, leaving it as simply a blob of fire on the ground for him to stare at, but of course it can’t just end there. The thing turns, sliding around on the ground and spinning until he can once more see eyes on it, and it makes a strange little trilling sound as it moves.

Slowly, he looks back up at Rodimus, who is setting his tanks back in place like there is nothing out of the ordinary occurring here. And who, of course, moves on exactly the same.

“So, yeah, I’m gonna get out of here before, uh… yeah. Say hi to Tailgate for me, will you?” He won’t. Rodimus turns, prepared to slink away while there’s no one else to see him go, before pausing. “And, uh. Thanks for backing me up, back there.”

He doesn’t stick around for a response, or to say anything further, only slipping away while Cyclonus tries to figure out what he could possibly be thanking him for when he never defended him. All he did was hold Whirl back.

Nevermind. The blob is still on the ground, exactly where Rodimus left it. Cyclonus has changed his mind; being left behind with Rodimus was better than this, because now he’s been left with no direction and, seemingly, responsible for this thing.

But it can’t exactly be considered a thing when, unfortunately enough, Cyclonus has been here long enough to know exactly what it is. It’s a slime, of course, the same as apparently everything else on this planet. Why Rodimus had it in a tank, or why it’s on fire are questions he doesn’t have anyone to ask at the moment, and does not feel like he’d get an answer for even if he did.

The slime appears perfectly content where it is, or… perhaps not. It isn’t like he would be able to tell either way. But it spins in place, almost like an object floating on top of water. Simply existing; uncaring of what, entirely, is going on around it. Slowly, it spins and spins, wandering ever so slightly outward but ultimately staying in the space it already occupies.

Which at least makes it easy to keep an eye on. Not that he’s entirely sure why he’s bothering, he has no true obligation to do anything here, much less watch over some organic blob like a sparkling. If anything were to happen to it, it would be a result of Tailgate and Rodimus’ carelessness in leaving it here.

And yet.

For reasons he doesn’t care to understand, Cyclonus stays. Standing over the slime, watching it spin in circles like it’s never quite managed to form a thought in its existence. He can only wonder if it actually serves any kind of a purpose, or if it merely exists.

At the very least, it is unlikely anyone will be attempting to make him touch this creature, seeing as it is quite literally on fire. Which is likely better than can be said for Whirl, assuming Tailgate’s intentions of following him with a different slime in hand. A thought that might have been almost amusing, if not for the possibility that such an encounter will likely result in Tailgate’s immediate demise.

“I’m back!”

Or… not.

Having seemingly survived the odds stacked against him, when Cyclonus turns, it is indeed Tailgate making his way back up the path. Apparently successful, servos distinctly lacking the slime he’d disappeared with. He even appears to be in good spirits, which disproves any assumption of the type of encounter with Whirl that Cyclonus is used to.

He wonders, unbidden, how that went. Perhaps Tailgate is more dangerous than he appears. Or maybe it's Whirl who is less destructive than Cyclonus believed.

What a ridiculous thought.

Tailgate joins him, standing around the flaming slime like some kind of an absurd campfire. He doesn’t question said slime, either; only leaning to look around Cyclonus, like there would be something hiding behind him. “Did Rodimus leave already?”

“Yes.” After a moment’s hesitation, he flatly points towards the ground. “He left this.”

“Yeah, that’s what he was here for. On paper, anyway.” Leaning down, Tailgate settles to his knees in the dirt, unbothered by how close he is to the slime. He fiddles with his gear, unholstering a—gun?—of some kind from his back, one with tubes running from the back of it. It attaches to more tanks exactly like the ones Rodimus dumped the slime out of, and ones which he adjusts now, switching out a filled one for an empty one.

Cyclonus knows better than to look too closely at whatever was in the first one, now.

“He was actually here because he wanted to meet you two.”

That… isn’t what he expected to hear. Perhaps it has something to do with how Whirl and Rodimus knew each other, or something to do with the war. Cyclonus had not, after all, missed the fact that Rodimus bears the very same faction emblem that Whirl does. The one that Cyclonus and Tailgate both do not; him, by virtue of wearing the opposite, and Tailgate with none at all.

It stands to reason that Rodimus likely understands more than Tailgate does, as a result. Cyclonus narrows his optics. “Why?”

New tank effectively attached to his strange gun, Tailgate doesn’t answer at first, choosing instead to murmur in an annoying and pointlessly high pitched voice at the slime. Followed by him standing, pointing the gun at the slime, and switching on a vortex that proceeds to suck the creature through the gun and right into the tank.

Cyclonus would like to leave this planet. Immediately, if possible.

It was nearly enough to make him forget his previous suspicion, or that he’d asked a question at all, his processor instead choosing to continue to trip over the organic creature sliding through tubes like thick sludge. Tailgate answers him anyway, unaware of his internal plight.

“We don’t get new people around here a lot. It’s different, you know? New faces, a change from the mundane and the emptiness.” Tailgate gestures, servo sweeping over the landscape. “We all live really, really far apart from each other, and there aren’t that many of us here. New people are a big deal.”

Gun in hand once more, Tailgate pops the tank off of the tubing. Unlike Rodimus, he holds it up, noticeably thick glass resting on his servo. The slime is contained within, squirming against the sides in the most organic way it possibly could. Flames still flicker and curl off the top of it, despite the tank seemingly being sealed, and the places where the creature’s body press against the glass show a glimpse within.

Hot red and pulsing yellow, it looks like a jar of magma. Liquid fire, still burning without oxygen, and contained in Tailgate’s diminutive grip.

“We don’t see each other much. We’re all busy with our work, and teleporters are finicky sometimes. Rodimus used this little guy as an excuse to drop by, to see the new people for himself.” He rotates the tank, tilting his head at the slime fondly. Quietly, he adds, “sometimes, I think he’s hoping for someone specific.”

That draws Cyclonus’ attention back away from the impossible ever-burning fire within the glass. It’s spoken softly, almost like Tailgate feels a kind of sadness at the thought, though it just makes Cyclonus consider the various possibilities of who an Autobot could be hoping to see.

Especially considering Whirl's reaction to him.

“Do you know why Whirl hates Rodimus?” He finds himself asking. Hoping, that in this moment of Tailgate’s quiet contemplation, he may finally be given some straight answer. He should’ve known better.

“No. And I don’t need to.”

Tailgate turns away, walking towards his house. Cyclonus can only follow.

The door opens with a creak. The light of day cuts in through the darkness inside, showing only a slice of the interior in full clarity. Tailgate makes his way to the far corner, only a step or two away from the place Whirl likes to sleep under the desk.

There’s a place there, a stone structure on the floor that takes up the corner, like a table built into the wall. But the top is concave, and filled with ashes.

It has been a very, very long time since Cyclonus has seen a true hearth. No wonder Whirl likes the corner he does; Tailgate dumps the slime out of the tank just as Rodimus did, depositing it into the crevice just where a normal fire would go. Where a fire would warm the stone beneath it, right into the corner Whirl slept.

Cyclonus already knows the slime is not likely to leave the spot it’s been placed, and where it had spun aimlessly in circles outside, it almost seems to nestle itself into the ashes. Where before he had been entirely uncertain of whether it had been content or not, he’s struck with the realization that this time, he can tell it is. The slime is happy there, contained safely within the ashes of fires less resilient than itself.

He can only wonder why there’s a need for it at all. Why Rodimus would bring it, supposedly all this way, even as an excuse. As best he can tell, this is an arid climate, hot and dry and without need for a fire to stay within the bounds of capable functioning. He is still grasping at a hope to understand why anything here functions as it does.

“What purpose does it serve?” He asks. There is no need to specify the slime, he’s certain. Tailgate is using a metal rod to nudge more ashes over the creature, and does not look up at the question.

His voice, as he answers, is soft. Quiet, unobtrusive of the calm within the darkened house.

“Do you think it needs to?”

Cyclonus blinks. It sounds, as best he can tell, like a genuine question. Like Tailgate is truly asking just to know his answer. When he doesn’t know how to respond, Tailgate stills in his actions and looks over his shoulder, settling a look on Cyclonus that he doesn’t know how to read.

“I mean, if the slime didn’t have any kind of a purpose at all, if it was just here… do you think it shouldn’t be?”

It teeters on the line between a question and a statement, as if Tailgate doesn’t really expect Cyclonus to answer. So he doesn’t; only continuing to watch as Tailgate blankets the slime in ashes until it’s nothing more than a warm, gentle glow buried beneath grey dust.

He doesn’t know what the question means. It’s as if Tailgate is challenging him somehow, but over what, he doesn’t entirely know. There must be a reason why they are here; avoiding the war is one thing, but Rodimus is proof enough that even others like himself and Whirl have ended up here.

Why, then, are they still here?

Tailgate had said they’re busy. That there’s little time to see each other, and seemingly, a massive amount of area to cover between a far few. But why? What purpose does their presence here serve, what purpose do the slimes serve? Why would they stay here, on the fringes of the universe, for—as Tailgate seems to be implying—no reason?

Especially when, from the glimpses he’s seen, the residents here don’t seem to be entirely content with their lives. Unlike the slime in its ashes, there has been something odd about Tailgate and Rodimus both. Tailgate, who talks as if he would be talking whether he was with them or entirely alone, as if the isolation gnaws at him in ways he will not admit. And Rodimus, who is either running from something, or pretending he’s where he should be.

Why would they be here?

Why would they stay?

Tailgate leads the way back out of the house. He does not say more, and he does not push for Cyclonus to answer him or even say a word. He only seems to fall into a portion of a routine, drawn to the nearest apparent task and acting it out with a kind of muscle memory that only comes with hundreds, with thousands, with millions of repetitions.

How long, truly, has Tailgate been here?

There’s a noise. Crunching gravel, jostled rocks, unrelated to whatever Tailgate is doing. Instinct makes Cyclonus turn, guarded and ready for anything. Anything that is a threat, a danger, anything he needs to fight.

Anything would normally include Whirl. It always has included Whirl, for as long as he has known about him. Whirl is the very definition of a threat, weapons and limbs alike used interchangeably with lethal threat like he himself is a weapon all of his own.

It should include Whirl. It does.

But not a Whirl that walks up quietly—calmly—holding a familiar, grey slime, nestled in his arm and gently asleep.

Chapter Text

Cyclonus stares at the darkened ceiling. A mix of greys and browns and purples in the dark, mottled and imperfect. His chronometer ticks sluggishly in the silence, the only sound to him that isn’t the wispy air of Whirl’s slightly off-key venting or the occasional trill from a faintly glowing pile of ash.

Every other occupant of the house is at rest, drifted away into their own minds and their own dreams. Tailgate is no different, curled up on a padded bench under the window and still as the dead. Unlike Whirl, the air running through his systems is silent, his biolights dark and his white finish lit only by a sliver of moonlight.

There’s a faint shuffle, a brush of one material against another. A crack of brighter red shines from the hearth as the slime shifts, a section of ash falling away from it. Whirl does the same, moving in his sleep to press his head against the warmed stone before settling once more.

A calm, comfortable peace blankets them, burying them gently in their dreams. It does not extend to Cyclonus; the same peace evades him, his processor too filled with uncertainty and confusion. He stares at Whirl, void of any concrete feeling, left only with the fact that he isn’t quite sure what to think at all.

In the face of a war, few things hold any sort of consistency. Locations change, arrangements change. People change, over time and overnight alike, but always for the worse. Cyclonus has known about Whirl for a very long time, for longer than he cares to identify exactly, but for nearly as long as he has known the war itself.

And in all of that time, Whirl has been one of those very few consistencies.

He is unpredictable and wild and strangely hard to kill despite how little he cares about consequence. And through it all, he has always been violent. A force of destruction and disregard, ready to annihilate anything in his path and then some, whether because he was told to or simply because he wanted to. It’s how he is. It is how he has always been.

And yet, here they are. A few days into a stay on a planet where nothing is as it should be, and just like that, Whirl changes to match.

Cyclonus hadn’t even thought him capable of being gentle, calm, and kind. Much less to strange, organic little blobs that are more unsettling than they should be. Even more, in such a short time after he’d been so ready to perpetuate his usual ways, get right back to his destruction of all around him as normal.

Perhaps Cyclonus should have followed Tailgate. Maybe then he would know what he did, what happened, and why it resulted in such a change. How it could result in such a change.

Maybe it’s the planet itself. Maybe it’s the slimes. Surely, it must be something here that has some kind of an effect on the mechs here. Is it because Whirl touched the creature? Are they some kind of bioweapon, a processor-scrambling control?

It has to be. Because the alternative would be that everything he thought he knew was wrong, and that is not a thought Cyclonus is yet ready to entertain.

Rest does not come to him. Thoughts and questions swirl with each echoing tick of his chrono, bleeding the night away moment by moment. The sliver of moonlight moves over the floor, crawling across the room in the barest of increments. Whirl shifts, every so often, rearranging his limbs and pressing himself once more to the warmed rock like there is none to be found within himself. Tailgate never moves, still and silent.

Only once the light cast into the room turns golden, moving slowly across the ceiling and lighting the edges of the shadows in soft hues, does a flicker of blue disturb Tailgate’s otherwise dead stillness.

He sits up, stretching limbs that have been stone still for hours, before padding across the room on silent steps. The night is well and truly over, passed by overhead and chased away by a rancher preparing to start his morning. Gear is silently replaced onto his frame, a murmured greeting to the slime hidden in ash, and a lingering glance on Whirl’s tangled form.

His visor falls on Cyclonus next. “Sorry,” Tailgate barely whispers, adjusting his equipment once more for comfort as he heads for the door. “Go back to sleep.”

And just like that, he’s gone once again, back to his work at the earliest brush of dawn. It’s perplexing; he has done the same for every morning Cyclonus has been conscious for, as if the work waits for no one and cannot be left. Rodimus had even implied Tailgate was a workaholic, as if he believes he cannot leave it unmanaged for long.

But what does he do? What is the point of it?

It is clear Cyclonus will not be getting any rest. Not in the night, and not in the remaining tendrils of it seeping out of the early morning, either. He stands, makes his way to the door, and leaves Whirl behind to his sleep.

Tailgate has already disappeared once he steps outside. The ranch is blanketed under the early hour light, barely there and still on the wrong side of blue to fully be considered day just yet. There’s a chill, air that has yet to be warmed once again, instead clinging to dampened grass and glistening drops of water that catch the hints of light creeping in.

It’s a strange kind of peace. Sleepy, transitionary, the space between states of being. Even the slimes in the pens are settled, slow to move and less of a writhing, bouncing mess of organics and more of a mound of color. Squished together, they rest, waiting for a better time to wake.

Movement to the far corner of the main yard catches his attention. Tailgate is there, near the high cliff walls, interacting with the controls on another slime pen. Those ones are active, bouncing against their containment in an attempt to reach him, and he moves on through an arch to another part of the ranch once he’s finished whatever it is. Cyclonus follows him.

The pen, when he passes it by, has yet another kind of slime in it that he has not seen before. They’re a deep golden hue, though otherwise they look the same to him as any other. Tailgate must have fed them, because their pen is littered with pale fruits that they chase after and consume whole.

Through the arch, the cliff walls disappear. They’re replaced by fencing that blocks off a sheer drop, the ocean pushing and pulling in tall waves far below. He wonders if anyone has ever fallen, if the fence is a precaution or a result.

Another area of the ranch opens up ahead. There’s a barn, and a rounded canopy structure to act as a protective roof over what appears to be a mass of storage below it. He can get only a glimpse within the half opened barn doors, but there’s machinery inside, and something in the corner that makes the air above it shimmer like air over a flame.

It seems Tailgate only passed through this direction as a path, because only a hint of white disappearing into a cave allows him to continue following. The cave’s entrance is marked by long burnt out torches that look like they’ve been there for longer than half of the storage in front of the barn. He passes them by, stepping quietly into bluish darkness and following a winding, wandering path into the mountain.

Inside, it opens up into a cavern. Pillars of stone support a ceiling high above, while the rock floor below cascades in levels, creating a multi-tiered room of surprising natural grandeur. In the center of the ceiling, there’s a break in the rock, gentle morning light filtering in alongside curtains of draping vines.

There’s a faint glow to the walls. Purple rock with a bluish hue, and when Cyclonus reaches out to steady a servo against the surface, his fingers find grooves cut into it. They trail like those vines would if they were growing on a wall themselves, like an organic and wandering path of stony veins. A glance around tells him they decorate the entirety of the room.

Why they are here, or how they got here, are mysteries he has no way of getting answers to. If the grooves are natural, or hand carved, he cannot tell.

Stepping further inside, Cyclonus exits the tunnel entrance but sticks close to the shadows of the walls, farthest from the light pouring in through the roof. Tailgate is there, on the other side of one of the pillars, just out of the rays himself.

He is surrounded by glowing, fluttering slimes. The very same that had filled the night sky like a blanket of stars themselves, an overwhelming number of them cluster around him here in this dark cave. Unlike the others, they are not confined to a pen, and they do not aggressively pounce forward and slam into all around them.

These ones move slowly, gently. They flutter near, and bounce delicately off of Tailgate like nothing more than a leaf caught in the breeze. He reaches out, both arms at once, attempting to show attention to as many of them as he can, while some wander in an aimless float once they have fulfilled their interest in their visitor.

One such slime wanders near Cyclonus, pulsing that same on and off glow they seem to always emit. He backs away just as quickly, following the line of the wall through the shadows before the slime’s glowing light can betray his presence here.

It leads him to another cave tunnel, and with one more glance to Tailgate, he turns and ducks into it.

Why he’s going this way, or what he hopes to find, he doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand the point of anything here, but freely exploring it without a guide to dump excessive chatter on him all the while is at least better than staring at a mottled ceiling while Whirl snores.

The tunnel, like the other, winds in an indirect route. It curves right and left and right again, all while incrementally scaling upwards. Brightening morning light leads him out, over a threshold of sparse grass and onto a flat outcropping of rock overlooking the water once more.

Something tells him, on this side, this is the end of the ranch. There is another path, uneven and treacherous, that leads down towards the ocean’s surface. Small islands dot their way across the river pouring into the land, bridging the gap between here and the next mass of proper ground, but without anything built on their surfaces to imply regular use of this route. He wonders what’s over there; he wonders if it even matters at all.

There’s a sound behind him. Movement, like Tailgate followed him and he has been caught wandering the ranch unsupervised. He doubts Tailgate would mind, however. He turns.

It isn’t Tailgate.

It isn’t anyone he’s familiar with. They sit on the rock, clustered together in a group and entirely out of line of sight from his angle exiting the tunnel. Like they belong here, they stare at him like he’s the outsider, like he’s the one interrupting them. He stares back.

“So uh.” One of them says, raising an optic ridge at him. “You ain’t gonna tell the boss, are you?”

Something obvious dangles right in front of his face. The disconnect is in its location; he knows, in some way, who they are, but they shouldn’t be here and he cannot quite dig up the connection he’s looking for when they are so far removed from where he knows they should be. They don’t move from their spot, only continuing to stare at him as he stares back.

Their third, larger, curled around the other two, sets his rounded head back onto his paws with a snort. “He won’t. He isn’t the type.”

Insignias decorate their chests. Sharp, angled and familiar, it’s the same one as his. Three pairs of red optics watch him stitch together the distance between where he came from and here.

He doesn’t know them. He has never met them. And he does not listen to gossip, does not pay mind to any news that does not directly relate to himself, his superior, or the state of the war at large. He needs not know anything else to do his job. But… he remembers one thing, one tidbit of news overheard in passing, brushed off as none of his business a moment later and forgotten.

Soundwave’s cassettes went missing.

Whirl wakes up, for the second day in a row, comfortably. Which is great, don’t get him wrong, but it’s still weird. He’s going to lose his edge at this rate, go soft! Nobody talk to him about the slime incident from yesterday, that’s not relevant.

He also wakes up alone, which, rude. He doesn’t snore that loud. Or maybe they’re too afraid to wake him? If that was the case, then that’s fine. Or maybe both? Both might be fun. Then he gets to be a nuisance and a threat. Yeah, he likes that idea.

Untwisting himself from the pile of knots he’s managed to work himself into this time, Whirl finds his feet eventually. The house is definitely empty; there’s only a vaguely lurch-shaped set of wrinkles in the berth that betray Cyclonus having been there, and not a lump that would show if he was still there. And Tailgate isn’t there, but Whirl is half convinced he doesn’t sleep. Or maybe he only sleeps outside.

Maybe with the slimes. Whirl wouldn’t put it past him.

Nevermind waking up comfortably, Whirl feels… better, today. Not really about the usual stuff, you can’t fix any of that, but about the recent stuff. He’s managed to shake off all of the soreness that had plagued him, a faint echo of rumbling and warmth in his plating like it soothed away aches he’d forgotten he even had.

Weird. Anyway! Pain free and reinvigorated, Whirl is more than ready to find either food or entertainment, whichever comes to him first. He shoves through the front door, ready to hopefully make a scene and interrupt whatever the others are doing.

There’s a thud and a cut off squawk. Craning his head over the top of the door, Whirl finds Tailgate in a heap on the ground, rubbing his face. Looks like entertainment came first, and he didn’t even have to try for it. What a great start to the day. “You should look where you’re going.” He offers, very helpfully.

“I was— you—” Tailgate tries to argue, spluttering.

“Nah, you don’t wanna be me.” Slamming the door closed behind him, Whirl continues to be helpful by plucking Tailgate up by the scruff and depositing him back on his feet. He expects another attempted complaint, or maybe another infodump about slimes that nobody asked for, but Tailgate just sort of stares at the door like he’s confused. “I didn’t scramble your circuits, did I?”

“No, no, I… is Cyclonus not up yet?”

“House is empty, pipsqueak. How’d you manage to lose the shadow? I’ve been trying to pull that off for years. Like, millions.”

Tailgate ignores him, opening the door again and peeking inside like he has to double check and see for himself. Which is, arguably, understandable enough. It’s equally as likely that Whirl would lie to him for fun, or stuff Cyclonus in a drawer and then lie about that.

Look, it’s not his fault he doesn’t like his ugly face.

“I thought he was in the house with you.” He can’t really explain it, but Tailgate’s face does this, like, thing— like it scrunches, but not, because no part of his face can actually scrunch. Long and short of it? He looks all worried and concerned, like Cyclonus fell in a hole somewhere and desperately needs rescuing. “Should we go look for him?”

“Nope!” Reaching out, Whirl yanks Tailgate in against his side so he can poke at his un-scrunchable face and bestow his clearly needed wisdom upon him. “Look, that big old lug? Lemme tell you a secret.”

Tailgate stops squirming, and starts listening.

“He’s what we in the know like to call a—” He lets go, spreading both claws in front of them like he’s drawing an invisible rainbow with words on it. “—‘maximum edgelord.’ The guy’s probably off in some corner being all angsty about his life and how he hates everyone in it.”

“Isn’t that what you do?”

Rude!

“No.” Whirl returns one claw to Tailgate’s head, just a little bit too firmly. “See, Cyclonus is extra angsty. He likes to find some dark little corner to brood in, stare at the stars like they’ll figure out emotions for him, and write poetry. Poetry! Who does that? And here he thinks he’s some big tough warrior guy.”

Tailgate doesn’t seem to get the joke. It probably went right over his head, which probably happens a lot at his height. It’s almost pitiable. He squirms again, breaking out of Whirl’s intentionally annoying grip, and gives the house another worried look. “Are you sure we shouldn’t at least look for him? He could be in trouble.”

This explains why the both of them aren’t dead, kinda. Clearly Tailgate has some kind of soft, squishy, caring side where he wants to make sure everyone is okay all the time. Gross.

“Trust me on this one, that guy is fine. I couldn’t even kill him if I wanted to.” Whirl waves him off, again, and Tailgate gives him one of those weird looks like he’s seeing more than he should be.

“Have you?”

Did Tailgate, like, miss the whole mortal enemies thing, somehow? Is that a detail Whirl managed to miss Tailgate missing? He can’t remember. If it is, he’s gotta get on fixing that, preferably sooner rather than later. The idea of Tailgate assuming the two of them are—eugh—friends makes every component in his insides feel like they’ve been rearranged wrong.

Again.

“Of course I have! And believe me, he’s not going to get offed by a handful of weird little alien blobs. And if he did, I’d kill him for it, because that’s my job, thank-you-very-much.” He can see the gears in Tailgate’s processor whirring, no doubt trying to make sense of how Whirl would kill Cyclonus if Cyclonus was already dead, which makes the joke a lot less funny. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed where I live,” Tailgate throws back, dry and deadpan. Turns out the pipsqueak can handle ribbing and dish it back! Whirl likes him more by the day, which isn’t a lot, but still more than can be said about certain other people around here.

He has a feeling he could keep throwing jabs, and Tailgate would probably keep throwing them back, but that would probably only keep Tailgate distracted from boohooing about poor Cyclonus for so long, so he needs to find something else. There is no doubt in his mind that the fun police is fine wherever he is, and he really does not want to spend today playing search party for a guy who doesn’t even need it.

And with Tailgate, Whirl already knows one surefire way of distracting him.

“Speaking of where you live,” Whirl leers close, annoying and pushy as possible, eyeing the tanks full of weird alien stuff on him. He doesn’t have the slightest clue what they are, considering one is half translucent and reflecting light like some kind of a faceted gem in liquid form, but it has to be something slime related because duh. “What’re ya doing with this?”

“Well, I was working on setting up a new largo pen.” Great! Words Whirl doesn’t remotely understand. One way ticket to a very distracting infodump, here he comes. “But then someone hit me with a door.”

“Wow, terrible, who would ever do such a thing. What in the pit is a lego?”

Tailgate tilts his head in this very distinct way, like he’s doubting Whirl’s definitely genuine and innocent interest that is definitely there. “It’s largo. And since when are you interested in slimes?”

“Since just now, when my only options for entertainment are sitting around in the house and twiddling my thumbs. And in case you haven’t noticed,” Whirl holds up a claw, clack clacking it together. “I don’t have thumbs.”

“Well… you don’t need thumbs for ranching if you want to help.” Tailgate’s voice shifts like he’s warming up to the idea, or like he’s just thought of something Whirl won’t be able to get out of—again. But the joke’s on Tailgate, because he won’t be able to trap Whirl under a slime this time.

And as a bonus, the distraction works. Tailgate starts leading the way, chattering on about… something about mosaic? Whirl has no idea, and he didn’t actually listen to enough of it to understand anyway. But he leads on, and Whirl follows, watching the front yard of the ranch turn into that lush overgrowth he vaguely remembers walking through on his first day awake, and on to the cliff edge he’d turned back at.

Except this time, they continue. Tailgate makes his way down a wooden pathway, only mildly rickety and built into the cliffside high enough to avoid being corroded by the ocean. Does that weird slime water even corrode stuff? Who knows. It leads down, down, around the corner and into a section of beach slightly enclosed under rock arches.

There are four plots built into the ground here, three of which are pens. The right one has green slimes inside, with plants on their heads and expressions on their weird slime faces that Whirl doesn’t trust, like they’re up to something. Meanwhile, the left pen has yellowish slimes that seem to flicker in the sunlight.

And in the far corner, the last pen is… empty? It doesn’t really matter, and Whirl doesn’t actually care that much so it’s not like he was going to ask about it, but he gets an answer he didn’t ask for before he can even consider not doing it. Tailgate walks over to that pen, the empty one.

And he talks to it.

“Hi guys,” Tailgate practically trills at the empty pen, high pitched and extremely fond, more than Whirl has heard from him before even despite the obvious affection he has for the slimes normally. “I have a friend for you to meet today.”

Again; how long has this guy been alone for?

Whirl points at the pen. “Okay, hold up. Am I the crazy one, or are you? Because there’s nothing in there.” He thinks he heard somewhere once that you’re not supposed to pop people’s delusions by pointing them out, but he’s not a therapist, so that doesn’t apply to him.

It makes Tailgate laugh, though. “Neither of us. C’mere.”

Haltingly, Whirl is pushed forward more by morbid curiosity than anything else. It’s apparently not fast enough for Tailgate, who grabs an edge of his arm and yanks him closer, right by Tailgate’s side.

This close, he can see something in the pen. It doesn’t look like anything, because there’s nothing there, but it’s moving. It’s almost like the air itself is moving, like it’s warped, stretched over round shapes that gently wiggle left and right. And as he watches, staring at the shapes that are there but not quite there, bright yellow eyes appear seemingly out of—and attached to—nothing at all.

And Whirl definitely doesn’t get startled or jerk backwards. Him? Noooo, he would never. That wasn’t him. Definitely.

Tailgate does the opposite of what Whirl totally didn’t just do, and gets closer. He reaches into the pen, pushes his servos and arms past the shimmering barrier of the pen’s walls, and makes contact with the nothing inside. The nothing that has eyes; the nothing that, at his touch, appears the same way its eyes did and melts into view.

Of course it’s a slime. Everything here is slime.

But this one is very different from all of the others. It’s practically the same size as Tailgate himself, which isn’t saying much, but… well, it’s a lot bigger than all the others. It’s dark, with even darker stripes, and tufted ears on its head sorta like the grey one from yesterday.

Oh, and also it has teeth. Like, really big teeth.

Also an important note that he’s pretty sure Tailgate has forgotten, but these things are literally indestructible. But no, here he is, leaning his entire upper body into the pen with the giant slime with giant teeth to nuzzle it.

“This is a largo.” Tailgate starts to explain, without bothering to remove himself from the teeth trap. He holds the monster sized slime like it’s his best friend, leaning into its squishy mass, and Whirl is almost certain it leans into him too. “They’re combinations of two other slime varieties, mixing features of both. These guys are hunter sabers.”

These? These? As in, like, plural? Whirl eyes the pen behind the slime Tailgate is snuggling, and sure enough, the other invisible lines of warped nothing also faintly betray the shapes of ears.

“Question; why are they invisible.”

Because not only did he find out yesterday that they literally can’t get splatted, but now he finds out they can turn invisible? Horrible. And kinda cool. But mostly horrible.

“That’s a trait from the hunter side. They have a camouflage they can use at a distance, but it wears off if you’re too close. Don’t worry, hunters and hunter largos are the only ones that can turn invisible, I promise.”

He’s almost afraid to ask. “And what do they get from the other side?”

“The teeth, of course.” Of course! Silly Whirl. Tailgate turns, resting his head on the slime but turning his visor onto Whirl. “Do you wanna pet one?”

No.

“…Yes?”

Whirl is going to find whichever part of him thought it was a good idea to say that, and kill it.

But Tailgate leans back, like he’s surprised, like he genuinely expected to be told no. His visor practically sparkles, lit as vibrantly as his voice as he asks “Really?!” and, pit, it sure does something to Whirl’s emotions. Any notion of backing out evaporates on the spot, because Tailgate is looking at him with a kind of happy excitement that people don’t use on Whirl.

Not since— not ever.

No one looks at him like that.

With a sigh to himself, he steps back up, reclaiming the distance he totally hadn’t retreated by earlier. “Yeah.” He’s pretty sure Tailgate might start to vibrate out of reality, like if he gets any more excited he’ll just phase through dimensions or something.

“Okay! Okay.” Tailgate takes Whirl’s claw, seemingly without a second thought. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t show that moment of second guessing whether whatever Whirl has is contagious or not. He just— reaches out, grasps sharp claws in his fingers, and pulls them into the pen with a calm confidence that he knows what he’s doing.

And— it’s weird, really. Whirl should be kind of offended. He should have the instinct to jolt away at the first contact, wrench his claws away and back to himself where they belong, kind of. But there’s a fine line and a massive difference between willful ignorance and genuine unawareness, and Tailgate’s movements make it very obvious which one he is.

He doesn’t let go the moment he has an excuse. He presses Whirl’s closed claws against the slime, holding his own servo over top, instead of letting go. When Whirl glances at him out of the corner of his optic, he’s lost in his own little world, swaying gently to the same silent beat the slimes always do.

There isn’t a lot Whirl can feel in his claws, but the slime is warm, and he can see a faint layer of short fuzz standing up around the edges of Tailgate’s servo. And there’s that same rumbling, a gentle vibration echoing through it just like the grey slime. It feels like a happy noise, warm and soothing.

“Don’t tell the others,” Tailgate whispers, almost conspiratorially. “But these guys are my favorites.”

And that, thankfully, gives Whirl something to focus on other than everything about this moment. The warmth, the contact, it’s all just a little bit too much on the wrong side of a fence Whirl has long been locked out of. He gasps, over-dramatic and perfectly distracting. “Tailgate! You can’t just pick favorites. What are the other slimes going to think?”

Tailgate picks up on the joke in stride, flinging his free servo up to press against his face, like he’s going to faint like a lady in a boring movie. “They can never know, Whirl.” He holds the pose for a moment, before breaking into giggles.

And, sure, maybe Whirl joins him for a laugh or two. Just for a minute. Just this once. It's not like anyone else is going to see it.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Finally, Cyclonus had met someone on this planet who might have some understanding of what’s going on here, and who could at least potentially be more trustworthy than the likes of Rodimus or Whirl. Someone who could answer his questions without leading him in circles, or with cryptic non-answers that only leave him more confused than he began.

He was certain things would start making sense around here with the cassettes’ help. That they would have, and share, the answers that the others seem to hide.

He was wrong.

They didn’t tell him anything. Not that they couldn’t; but that they, seemingly, simply chose not to. Even simple questions, with simple answers, weren’t respected. Things like asking why they were here were met with ‘camping, duh?’ like they were willfully misinterpreting what he knows they know he was actually asking.

No answers on how they got here. Why they’re still here. Why no one in the Decepticon army knows where they are, or that they’re even alive at all. Not even an answer on why Rodimus is here, something they should be able to share with him even if they’re here under some sort of cover.

Nothing.

He has no choice but to give up, and return to the ranch. By the time he returns through the cave with the glowing slimes, Tailgate is gone. Retracing his steps leads him back to the barn, and the rancher is nowhere to be found there, either.

Before he moves on further, Cyclonus finds himself staring at the barn. Its doors still half opened, machinery still visible, and this time, he takes a moment to slip inside.

The inside of the barn is interesting. There’s nothing that might be concerning, nothing to tell of some kind of secrets being contained, nothing but more gear like Tailgate’s hung on the walls like he has spare components for it. What there is, however, is a handful of machines unlike any other Cyclonus has ever seen.

Circular bases sit on the ground, lined up in rows. There are four of them, all spinning, the air above them shimmering with the faintest hues of color. Each one has a small screen at the bottom that displays an image, seemingly all different locations. One in the mountains, another in a lower valley, and another of dense forest.

The last one simply shows the ocean.

But they are all very clearly somehow tied only to this planet, and thus, not of his interest for now. He makes his way back out of the barn, continuing back the way he’d come until he returns to the main area of the ranch and the house built there. Outside, he still sees no sign of Tailgate, and a peek inside the house tells him that Whirl has since vacated his preferred corner.

Perhaps another Whirl incident has occurred. That is what he would expect to have happened, to explain both of them being missing. It isn’t hard to imagine Whirl being set off by something unexplainable, setting himself on the warpath, either right into Tailgate or with him hopelessly in tow.

It’s easy to imagine, even when there is no destruction to tell of such an outcome. No broken fences, no trampled crops. The slimes nearby doze peacefully in their pens, unbothered. Cyclonus continues on.

Only once he’s reached the cliff with the wooden path does he hear voices on the wind. They drift up, partially garbled by the slamming of the waves below, but the tones are distinct enough even from here. They are calm; no shouting, no harsh edges. He takes the path, optics trained on the land below as it comes into view.

Tailgate and Whirl stand in front of yet another slime pen, Tailgate leaning inside like he belongs there and Whirl holding a much more understandable distance. Except it doesn’t last; something is said between them, and then Whirl is stepping closer, only for Tailgate to grab him by the claw and pull him halfway into the pen himself.

Cyclonus expects shouting. Explosions, perhaps, of the literal and the verbal kind. He expects Whirl to lash out, reclaim his personal space with all the desperate vitriol of a wounded animal.

Only… Whirl does nothing. Gives no reaction at all.

Their voices become clearer as he steps off the path and around a gently bubbling pond. So, too, does the scene being laid out before him become clearer along with it, of Tailgate and Whirl petting the overly large slime inside the pen while talking quietly to each other.

It’s such a strange scene to behold. There’s something calm, almost domestic about it, something that feels so absurdly out of place that it should belong only in a fever dream.

Their tones suggest humor; confirmed when Tailgate laughs, and compounded when Whirl simply… joins in. It’s a light sound, ever so barely toeing on the edge of being carefree.

Cyclonus has only ever heard him laugh on the battlefield before. And even then, it was nothing alike. Dark and heavy, mocking and forced. This sounds like it should be coming from someone else, not Whirl. It simply doesn’t fit.

He feels like he’s intruding, somehow.

“Am I… interrupting something?”

Whirl breaks the contact like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t. And he doesn’t turn, doesn’t look up, almost seeming to curl in on himself and freeze. It’s… strange. Especially compared to Tailgate, who brightens and bounces up to Cyclonus without a second thought.

“Cyclonus!” Tailgate sounds excited, seemingly making to grab for Cyclonus’ servo. An action which he dodges, lifting it out of reach, disinterested in becoming the next one roped into whatever this moment was.

“See, I told you he was fine.” Whirl bites out, as if he’s attempting to sound normal, before he’s even managed to turn. He does, right after, leaning against a post of the pen in a too-casual way. “Have a good brooding sesh?”

“Where have you been? I thought you were still in the house!” Tailgate doesn’t seem to mind the rejected contact, instead keeping to himself while he bounces in place excitedly. Cyclonus isn’t sure what there is to be excited about. “Where were you?”

“Exploring.” He offers, simply. It’s an excuse that will work on Tailgate, he’s sure, but Whirl gives him a sharp look that says he knows Cyclonus wasn’t simply out for a morning stroll. “The cave is… interesting.”

He wouldn’t have thought Tailgate’s visor could get any brighter, but it does, practically beaming at him. “That’s the grotto. Phosphor slimes can’t hold their form in sunlight, so I keep them there.”

Cyclonus isn’t sure what ‘holding their form’ implies, and he doesn’t really care to ask. Even if he had wanted to, Whirl’s expression turns devious.

“Hey, pipsqueak. What’ya say Cyclonus joins us for— whatever it is you wanted to do.”

“If it involves that—” Cyclonus points at the large slime they’d both been petting, the very thing he had already decided he would be having no part of, already prepared to reject Whirl’s leading suggestion outright.

Whirl appears to have other plans, however. He waltzes over, slinging an arm over Cyclonus’ shoulders that he doesn’t quite manage to duck away from in time. “Nah. Tailgate wanted to teach us something about slimes, right?”

“Yeah!” Tailgate rushes to join them, pulling forth that slime container gun of his with a practiced ease. Instead of manually removing the tanks and emptying one, like he had before, he uses some control on the gun to apparently pick a tank. And without any further hesitation, uses it to deposit—of course—a slime onto the ground in front of them, shooting the creature out like a rubbery blob of useless ammunition.

It’s the most distinct looking one yet. Iridescent, with a cracked surface like a broken mirror, it refracts the sunlight in every direction with every movement. The normal passive swaying all of the slimes seem to exhibit lead to it constantly sending a shimmering pattern of colors onto the ground below and around it.

“This is a mosaic slime. They’re— mostly harmless,” Mostly? “They just accidentally start wildfires sometimes. Sort of like a magnifying glass under the sun, y’know? Which is why we’re putting them out here on the beach, where there isn’t enough to catch fire. And—” Tailgate gestures to both of the other pens around them, filled with yellow and green slimes each. “—why we’re going to be combining them with another slime type. It’ll mute the mirror effect a little bit.”

Combining? Cyclonus’ optics drift to the larger slimes the two had been petting. They’re flickering in and out of sight, and not a type he has seen before, but the mash of traits and the large size could be explained if they were a mixture of two. “You’re saying they can combine.” He deadpans.

“Yup!” Tailgate picks up the mosaic slime in one servo. It dangles in his grip, seemingly without a care, continuing to sway in the air with a dumb smile on its face. “So, which one do you guys wanna try combining it with? We have quantums and tangles here to choose from.”

Whirl seems to remember he’s still draped over Cyclonus’ shoulders, and shoves him away forcibly as if that was his idea. Then he looks back and forth between the pens, too interested in this concept for comfort. “What’s the difference?”

Tailgate points at the green ones. “They can grab prey through the ground and eat it whole.” Lovely. Then the yellow ones, “and they can phase through walls and teleport.”

Cyclonus finds he isn’t the least bit surprised at this point.

Humming, still far too invested in this, Whirl seems torn between the options. At last, he points at the quantum slimes. “I like the sound of a teleporting fire hazard.” Because of course he would.

And, of course, Tailgate doesn’t seem to find anything wrong with that statement. He plucks one of the yellow slimes right out of the pen just the same, allowing it to be pulled through with his servo as if the barrier wasn’t there at all, while still firmly containing the others. It’s impressive technology, perhaps on par with some such as Shockwave. He can only wonder what its inventor is like.

Now with a slime in each servo, the yellow one hazing out of focus like it’s trying to escape, Tailgate holds them both up. “Watch this,” He says, before bringing them together.

At first, the slimes just collide, smushing together slightly at the point where they make contact. It appears, for a moment, as if nothing more will happen. But just as quickly as that thought forms, so too does that change. It’s too fast to fully comprehend all of the details, but the slimes seem to almost swirl, fusing into one another, a flash of light blinding him for whatever follows after.

The creature that is left afterward falls out of Tailgate’s servos, too large to be held up. It still reflects the sunlight in every direction, off of shining segments that almost seem to float over its form, but with a distinctly vibrant yellow hue. And it shimmers, hazy, disappearing with a pop of sparkles and reappearing behind Tailgate just as quickly. A perfect fusion of the two slimes he had previously held, now seemingly one being.

Which is… a mildly horrifying concept. He wonders if they’ve kept any aspect of their individuality, if one has dissolved into the consciousness of the other, if they’re a wholly new being that has no idea how it got here, or if the two are aware that they’ve been mashed together into one shared form.

“Cool.” Whirl whispers, having none of the same thoughts.

“And that’s largos for you.” Tailgate pats its head, and gives no complaint when it squishes itself against his leg, apparently nuzzling him. He only leaves his servo where it is, petting the creature absently while he speaks. “It’s pretty weird at first, but you get used to it. They do this all the time in the wilds, so it’s not just something we as ranchers force them to do, or anything like that.”

“Do they… come apart?” Cyclonus finds himself asking, vaguely aware of Whirl moving, but too busy trying to comprehend the implications of all of this.

“No. A largo is a largo for good.” Tailgate answers easily, like he sees nothing wrong with that fact. Perhaps there is not; the slime doesn’t seem to mind, perfectly as happy as it was in two parts only moments ago, now permanently fused as one. The thought makes something in him cringe anyway, and he pushes it from his mind.

“Okay, so,” Whirl’s voice cuts through the complicated haze Cyclonus feels, dragging him forcibly back into the moment. “If combining one slime with another slime makes a bigger, cooler slime, then combining three must make the coolest slime, right? That’s how math works.”

He’s holding one of the green slimes, approaching the one at Tailgate’s leg with purpose and zero impulse control to speak of. “Wait, don’t—” Tailgate starts, a servo reaching out in an attempt to block him that does nothing to dissuade Whirl with an idea in his head.

The slimes press together, melding and fusing in the exact same process as before. But this time is—different. It doesn’t leave a slightly larger, perfect result, an evenly mixed combination of the parts that went into it. It leaves behind something entirely wrong.

Tailgate jumps away from it with surprising agility, removing himself a moment before the thing could attempt to bite him; which it does. Rows of sharpened, shark-like teeth snap down on the air where he had been, the rainbow hues of an oilslick dripping down over them. The whole beast appears unstable, its colors warring with each other, melting into one another and dripping onto the ground below it, as if it cannot hold its shape the same way the others can.

It turns, setting its sights onto Whirl. He lurches backward, but less quickly than Tailgate, allowing the creature an opening to latch onto his arm with its rows of teeth. Crunching sounds echo as its teeth pierce into his plating, biting down over and over again like it’s trying to take his arm with it, all while Whirl tries and fails to shake or pull it off of himself.

Cyclonus is reaching for his sword when Tailgate steps back in. He would have expected panic, for Tailgate to be the type to get lost in his own head in a crisis, but he just steps forward with his gun and shoots—water?—at the creature. It seems to wince, unlocking its jaws long enough to drop from Whirl.

And before it can do anything else, Tailgate picks it up. Plucks it up off of the ground the same way he had with the other slimes, both servos digging into its sludgey surface to haul it away without any hesitation.

“This is a tarr.” He explains, throwing the words over his shoulder as he walks. The tarr seems to try and spin in his grip, attempting to bite him, and he smoothly readjusts his hold on it and spins it back around to keep its teeth off of himself. It’s impressive; it’s practiced.

He’s seen a lot of these, it seems.

Morbid curiosity drives them to follow, watching as Tailgate brings it to the docks leading out over the ocean. Once he’s close enough, he swings the creature back, and unceremoniously flings it into the water.

It lands with a splash, and a burst of colors that fade away into the sky. Tailgate dusts off his servos.

“The slimes exist in sort of a cycle with this planet. You might have noticed that the water of the ocean isn’t quite water,” Cyclonus hadn’t. He looks down, seeing how the waves slide over the sand almost—stickily. How the liquid leaves a sheen on surfaces that’s too smooth to be mere saturation, how the waves make the wrong sound as they lap against the rocks. He takes a step back. “The planet and its slimes are all made from the same stuff, and the ocean is where all slimes eventually come from.”

Tailgate makes his way back up the docks to meet them, and without a moment wasted, goes straight for Whirl. Even Whirl himself doesn’t seem to expect it, startling ever so slightly when Tailgate grabs his arm to look at it. “I’ve had worse,” Whirl ends up saying after a moment, sort of awkwardly.

To which Tailgate only ignores him, completely. He tugs, and Whirl goes, letting himself be pulled toward the pond without resistance.

“You haven’t explained that creature.” Cyclonus points out in an effort to distract himself from how strange it is, seeing Whirl continue to be so— quiet. He’s hit Whirl with surprise attacks before; it never ends up like this.

“Slimes mix together all the time. It’s normal for them. But if too many combine together,” Tailgate talks while working, stepping into the pond—one made of real water, thankfully—and pulling Whirl’s arm along with him to clean oozing energon away from it. “Well, it’s kind of like an overloaded circuit, or maybe a corrupted file. Put too much load on something that can’t handle it, and it just… goes wrong.”

“And they’re weak to… water.” Truly, the strangest organics Cyclonus has ever come across.

“Just the tarrs. It washes away the sludge, making them break apart faster. Regular slimes, on the other hand, will also dissolve back into the sea when they fall in.”

“So,” Whirl says slowly, with an edge to his voice that Cyclonus doesn’t like, like he’s thinking up an idea. And they all saw how well his last idea went. “They… die?”

But Tailgate doesn’t seem to pick up on the tentative hope in his voice, instead apparently taking it as sorrow, and shakes his head. He offers both of them a warm smile. “No, no. Again, it’s a cycle. They might come back a little bit different, but they will come back eventually.”

Unexpectedly, it slams into Cyclonus exactly what he’s saying. What Tailgate’s words meant, the other night, spoken softly into a darkness tinged with glimmering lights. That this planet is similar to theirs, with a living core tied intrinsically with its inhabitants. He’d said it, and still Cyclonus hadn’t fully listened, brushing off his words as the mad chatter of an isolated mech. But now…

“It’s like the Well.” He murmurs, mostly to himself. To imagine the Allspark in comparison to—well, this planet— is mildly absurd. But at the same time, he can see the parallels. The similarity shared by no other race they’ve ever encountered.

Is that why these mechs are here? Why they seem to be simply waiting around, without admitting what purpose they’re here for? He files the thought away, with all the rest.

“There.” Tailgate stands from the pond, satisfied with his work and apparently unbothered by the water on his plating. Whirl stares at his freed arm like it no longer belongs to him. “It’ll hurt for a while, but you won’t need us to call the medic.”

“…Thanks.” Whirl says, flat and distant, without looking up or sounding like he means it at all. Tailgate smiles at him anyway, and Cyclonus finds himself staring. Not because he’d said it rudely, and not because Tailgate didn’t seem to mind.

But because he’d said it at all.

Okay, so maybe this planet is starting to get to him.

Not necessarily the slimes, exactly, or all the weird—everything about this place. In fact, he’s almost feeling better about that, because now he’s learned the slimes can actually die. Whirl likes things that can die. That makes everything much more tolerable. Getting rid of a problem by just throwing it in the ocean? Sign him up! Easy cleanup, if you ask him.

So it’s less about them. It’s more that he’s just… getting used to this place. He wakes up expecting the first thing he sees to be the rounded interior of Tailgate’s house, instead of the bare scrap metal of the cheap side of a barracks. He’s starting to expect to see Tailgate and Cyclonus around, and while Tailgate isn’t a very big deal, to see Cyclonus and him not be out of place… to see red optics, and not immediately be aiming at him without a second thought?

It just ain’t right, really. This isn’t how any of this is supposed to be.

Not to mention how Tailgate keeps managing to get under his plating. He keeps being—nice, to him, in this disarming way he doesn’t know how to handle. He just kind of keeps freezing up, because the alternative is fight, and he finds he doesn’t really want to lash out at Tailgate. Which in and of itself is a problem! Since when does Whirl give a damn if he hurts somebody’s feeeeelings or not? That’s the point! That’s what they get for being around him, it’s his whole thing.

So maybe he’s having somewhat of a crisis of self. That’s nothing new, he’s used to those, how many has he had now? Whatever, he doesn’t want to think about that. The point is, he’s still stuck here, and he has this terrible, creeping feeling that he’s just going to keep getting worse the longer he’s here. There’s something about this place that’s making him go soft, and he doesn’t like it.

Also, he’s pretty sure Cyclonus has noticed. He keeps looking at him weird, like he’s putting together some kind of a puzzle, or maybe he’s just looking at a bunch of pieces on the ground he’d never realized could be solved in the first place. And Whirl would rather he not do that, thank you very much! Cyclonus can damn well leave that puzzle in pieces on the floor where it belongs.

Maybe it likes being broken, has he considered that? And it’s none of his business anyway!

Anyway, the point is, Whirl is doomed. It’s like being here is infecting all of them with the same stupid friendliness Tailgate has. They’re not going to turn out like him eventually, are they? All… nice? Eugh. Whirl would rather die.

The obvious solution is to go back to his usual ways. Except all of the locals are bulletproof, he doesn’t know where Rodimus lives, and Cyclonus is too smart for his own good sometimes. He’s been paying enough attention, he would know what Whirl is doing if Whirl went and picked a fight now, and then that would tell him way more than he’s supposed to know. So that’s out.

He could still go drown himself, but the ocean is still thick and gross and apparently literally made of slimes, so scratch that one too, because ew.

It would be great if he could just, like… report himself for breaking his parole. Snitch on himself as a deserter, and then it doesn’t matter how far away he is, Magnus would track him down. That much he’s absolutely certain of, because there is nothing that could stand between that mech and his paperwork, and Whirl is a lot of paperwork.

But he can’t do that. He’s basically in the middle of nowhere, if middle of nowhere was more like at the far edge of nowhere. He has no long range comms, no ship or outpost to boost a signal, and no one to save him from this slow death of going soft.

And with Cyclonus of all people to watch it happen! Ugh. Maybe Tailgate will let the tarrs eat him if he asks—double ugh—Nicely.

Whirl can practically hear one of his dozens of therapists telling him he’s spiraling, and that he needs a ‘healthy outlet’ or whatever. Which is stupid, but he knows he would sure like to stop thinking about all this and the unsettled itch it all leaves under his plating, so he would like a distraction. Distractions are great. Whirl likes distractions.

Problem solved! Distraction it is. Wow, he’s so good at self care.

… Except he’s still on a planet in the middle of nowhere with nothing on it, and he still can’t go pick a fight with Cyclonus without risking being read like a book. What other distractions are there? He can’t fight, get wasted, or cause mass destruction. There’s basically no point in living.

A touch against his leg slams him out of his thoughts. It definitely doesn’t startle him, he doesn’t startle, thank you. But it jostles him back to conscious awareness of the world around him, and when he looks down, he’s met with a grey face without a single thought behind it.

“Oh, it’s you.” Why is he talking to it? He’s turning into Tailgate at a terrifying rate. A glance around tells him he’s still alone; he should hope so, considering he climbed a cliff above Tailgate’s ranch to get out of sight and have his crisis in peace. Which— “Wait, how did you get up here?”

The slime Tailgate had trapped him under the other day gives him zero answer, because it can’t talk, and Whirl is being stupid. The question stands anyway, because he can’t actually figure out how it could have gotten up here, but he knows better at this point than to expect anything to make sense around here.

Whatever. He has company now, apparently. The slime nudges him again, bonking its head slash entire body into his shin like it’s trying to get his attention. What had Tailgate called it again? A tabby slime? That’s a dumb name. “You need a better name.” He tells it, for some reason.

Apparently it disagrees, because it bites him.

Not anything like the tarr; those have actual teeth that do actual damage. All the tabby slime can do is like a cute attempt at mimicry, because while he can raise his leg and the little menace dangles from it, he can’t actually feel it.

It wiggles, and continues to wiggle even when he lowers it back down to the ground. All without letting go of him, like it thinks it could drag him somewhere if it tried. And—maybe it is trying? “Are you trying to tell me something?”

An answer comes in the form of it letting go of him, and proceeding to immediately pitch itself at his face. It bounces off, without so much as knocking his head back from how softly it bonked into him.

Well… he did ask for a distraction.

“Alright, alright.” Whirl shoves himself upright and resigns himself to an immediate future of continuing to talk to a blob. “What do you want?”

The slime stares at him with that same empty expression, holding eye contact, and rolls itself off the cliff.

He knows it lands on the ground below safely, and the fall won’t do a damn thing to it, but he still feels the action is at least marginally relatable. Maybe he should roll himself off a cliff too, little guy’s got the right idea.

Following along, Whirl drops down after it. It waits for him at the bottom, but the moment he lands next to it, off it goes again. Like a renegade ping pong ball, the tabby slime gears itself up for a big jump, flings itself into a rock wall, and goes flying. It bounces back and forth off of surface after surface, rocks and trees and fences, all somehow gathering speed as it goes.

Which… sure is one way to travel, alright. And probably explains how it got up there.

He isn’t sure where the others are right now, and he doesn’t really care, so long as they don’t catch him talking to a slime. While he’s definitely been caught doing worse, he doesn’t think he could survive Tailgate’s reaction to that. There’d probably be, like, high pitched squealing and hugs.

The slime leads him to that overgrown area, between the main ranch and the beach. Tailgate apparently uses this area for food production; all of the plots have garden beds in them, or short pens with chickens inside. He remembers Tailgate saying something about this specific slime and his chickens, and that thought is immediately proven as true when the little menace flings itself right into the side of a pen.

And, see, Whirl was under the understanding that the slimes can’t do anything with the pens. Can’t pass through the energy walls, can’t reach the controls, all that fun stuff. But this one little tabby, just like Tailgate said and Whirl is now learning firsthand, is a little troublemaker.

It flings itself into the corner of the pen at just the right angle that it hits a seam in the post with the controls in it, and because these things apparently don’t subscribe to any of the laws of physics, pops inside. Like… squeezes itself through the seam of the control panel.

Unsurprisingly, with a fizzle and a pop, the energy walls of the chicken pen disappear. The tabby squeezes itself back out again, basically appearing out of nowhere with how small of an opening it escapes back out through. Whirl would swear it gives him a mischievous look, too, like its empty headed expression turns into a smug little side eye for just a second before it’s bouncing off towards the next pen.

“Y’know what,” Whirl finds himself saying, watching as the area slowly ends up filled with prison break chickens and several disabled pens. “I think I like you after all.”

It bounces at him for that, and he catches it. That dumb expression is back on its face, a look that implies zero thoughts, but he knows better. There’s thoughts of chaos in that head. A yearning for destruction and inconvenience, the untameable urge to be a problem on purpose. Whirl has never related to someone more.

“I’m gonna call you Whirl Jr.”

A strange sensation of peace falls over them. Despite the oddities of this world, despite the unanswered questions compounding in the back of Cyclonus’ mind, they seem to find themselves settling in, regardless. Perhaps it is the consistency, that despite how unfamiliar it all is, it’s predictable in its unpredictability. Not so unlike Whirl— or, at least, the Whirl Cyclonus was previously used to.

Nevermind the current Whirl. Last Cyclonus saw, he’d been jailed in an empty pen with a grey slime for reasons he hadn’t bothered to listen to, but which Tailgate had spent a large amount of time recounting from the outside like a disappointed guardian. He imagines none of it was retained; Whirl did not look sorry.

They are finding more time to themselves than they did upon first waking. Tailgate is clingy, but he is not controlling. He seems to gravitate towards them, enjoys being around them despite neither of them giving him a good reason to, but does not demand that they be within sight at every waking moment. If they choose to wander, he lets them.

Which is of course how Whirl managed to get into whatever trouble he did, but also shows that Tailgate does not necessarily distrust them. As if he has nothing to hide, despite how that alone doesn’t make sense to Cyclonus. It feels like he should, like there has to be something he isn’t telling them, but he shows no fear of such a thing being discovered.

It’s a freedom Cyclonus, in truth, doesn’t know what to do with. He feels untethered, without purpose and left to float helplessly in space. Whirl clearly does not share the same struggle, apparently enmeshing himself with the local wildlife and making a nuisance of himself in an uncharacteristically harmless way. But for Cyclonus, there is nothing. Nothing to do; nothing to apply himself towards.

And so, he wanders. He watches. With nothing else to occupy his mind, he lets the information of this world fill the void where a purpose should be.

Days here are quiet. Despite all the potential for the opposite—the slimes, the tarrs, Whirl—incidents seem to be rare. Hours pass slowly, the landscape bathed in sunlight and moonlight and sunlight once more, all without ever having changed in between. It’s a type of quiet, of peace, that he had forgotten the sounds of, to an extent that they seem so foreign to him now.

Tailgate keeps himself to a strict schedule. Every morning, he rises with the sun itself and works for as long as it does. It is unclear if he does overwork, as Rodimus had said, or if he simply has nothing else to do. He can be found, at any moment in time and without fail, with his slimes or in his gardens. Keeping quietly to himself when he’s alone, or talking about anything and everything that could possibly cross his mind—also when he is alone, with no one to hear but himself.

Even after whatever petty crimes had landed him in slime jail, Tailgate does not restrict Whirl. He is equally free to do whatever he pleases, even when he has as little purpose here as Cyclonus does. But in a strange way, it almost feels like Whirl is integrating into this place better than himself; that he is quicker to embrace the unknown, already unbothered by the presence of the slimes and freely interacting with them just as Tailgate does.

It is thanks to Whirl’s bored curiosity that Cyclonus learns more about these creatures without the need to ask for himself. In quiet moments, when he has nothing to do but sit on a rock nearby and watch Tailgate till soil with his own servos, Whirl appears. Time and time again, holding a slime he’d found somewhere, asking Tailgate what it is and what it does.

His moment with the tarr did not discourage his newfound interest, it seems. Or perhaps he is simply unable to sit quietly, unable to be bored, before desperately grasping for something to fill the silence. Perhaps there are things to be heard in the silence that he does not want to listen to.

He would not be the only one.

Cyclonus’ chronometer has adjusted to local time. It tells him the time as accurately as it is meant to, functioning exactly as it should. But its sound is… off. Ever so subtle, there’s a wrongness to it, like the barest grains of sand caught in gears that continue moving without a care. A difference so subtle that, were they able to hear it at all, no one else would notice anything was wrong.

It echoes inside his head, just barely on the wrong side of normal. Just enough to make him aware of it, to notice it, instead of falling into the comforting sound of familiarity.

And so he, too, finds himself seeking things to fill the silence. Tailgate’s voice, the sounds of his tools, Whirl’s questions.

Even the slimes themselves.

They do not have words to share, but they make for a surprisingly pleasant viewing experience. Enough so, that when Tailgate’s gardening is done and he moves on to the next task on his neverending list, Cyclonus stays where he is, continuing to watch the pen and its occupants.

He knows now that these ones are a rock based variety. Each type appears to make slightly different sounds, stemming from their unique characteristics. These ones make a pleasantly solid noise, like pebbles clattering down a path, as opposed to the more organic, squishing noises of many others. They roll around in their pen, bouncing off of the edges and each other almost violently, but never with malice. Roughhousing; and nothing more.

Hours pass. They drift by, like the clouds far overhead, and the shadows cast by the sun across the ground. Steadily, slowly, time moves on without a care. The slimes in the pen wrestle each other, bounce off the walls, and settle for a rest, only to repeat it all again after. Like their energy is boundless, like they do not mind their unchanging environment in the least, content to do as they please all the same.

It’s only in the later part of the day, when the light is beginning to wane and the temperature has reached its plateau, that Cyclonus notices a change. Something different, for the first time in hours of casual observation.

The steady cycle of play, rest, and play again is broken. One by one, the slimes drop out of it, going still in a corner of their pen. They cluster around one side, some plastering themselves against walls they cannot escape, and they stay there. Waiting. Watching. Swaying gently with the same pattern they always do, but otherwise unmoving.

Cyclonus stands. Peers around, moving to get a look at their faces, for some kind of hint of what has changed.

They look… upset? Mouths pulled into unhappy shapes, eyes collectively fixed on something outside of the pen. Following their gaze leads him to another of the gardens; planted right next to their pen, overflowing with red roots that they desperately seem to want.

All of that activity, all day long. It’s no wonder they’re hungry.

He could… get Tailgate? But something about seeking Tailgate out, specifically to tell him his slimes are hungry, feels some kind of a way that he doesn’t like. Too open, perhaps. That he’d be indirectly telling the rancher that he’d been watching the slimes, looked closely enough to see what they needed, and cared enough to fix it. He does not want Tailgate to get such an idea.

But it bothers him, the way they look. He hadn’t imagined such empty headed creatures could look so sad, but they do, and he does not like the way it makes him feel. He could… the idea feels absurd, but… the solution is right there. Almost painfully, tantalizingly close to them, but just out of reach.

Cyclonus reaches down, and yanks one of the roots from the ground.

The slimes bounce and jostle each other when he brings it closer, but they go still again with apparent anticipation. He is hesitant to risk contact, but the sad faces win out over the hesitation. Carefully, he holds it through the wall.

It is snatched up just as quickly, with barely a brush of his fingertips. The slime that took it from him inhales it in one large crunch, its face brightening back into that same smile he’d gotten used to seeing on them before. It rolls, spins in place, and bounces itself off the walls once more.

Watching it return to its normal behavior, to being happy, perhaps, as a direct result of an action of his own, brings Cyclonus a gentle feeling. It’s warm, and long forgotten, and a startling comfort against all that he’s used to. It reminds him of days long past, before the war.

He is less hesitant after the first success. The slimes are excited, desperate perhaps, but they are not as pushy as he may have expected. They each wait for their turn, as patient as they can be even when he’s sure they don’t want to be, and always take the offered vegetables gently. Not one bites him, even by accident.

For assumably mindless creatures, they are… considerate. Surprisingly careful, mindful of themselves. He wonders if that is inherent, or trained, a result of having been under Tailgate’s care for however long that they have.

They are calmer once they are all fed. They bounce around at first, excited, but settle down again faster than before, likely having worn themselves out from a day of barely contained chaos. Some of them settle against the wall nearest him, melting to fit the corners of the pen.

Cyclonus finds himself reaching. It isn’t a conscious decision, merely one he looks down and finds himself in the process of making. Indecision bleeds up and down his lines, torn between pulling back and reaching further. His servo hovers over one of the rock slimes, fingers just barely breached through the wall.

It’s a strange feeling. He wants to; yet he does not. He still does not know if they are truly safe to touch, if contact with them has made Whirl act so strangely, and though that doesn’t feel like the cause for the entirety of his hesitation, he cannot place the origin for the rest.

The slime blinks at him, slow and sleepy. Millimeters disappear between his palm and its rocky head.

“Tailgate! What’s this one?”

Cyclonus jolts, and wrenches his servo away without ever making contact. He’s crouched by the pen, close enough to touch, and throws himself back to his feet to obscure the fact he’d been having such a moment at all.

When he looks around, he finds Tailgate. Sitting on a bench against his house, staring at Cyclonus. As if he’d watched the whole thing, and chosen not to interrupt. From this distance, without him talking, without an expression to speak for him, there is no way to know what he’s thinking.

And for once, Cyclonus is somewhat thankful for Whirl’s antics. He appears out of nowhere, a whirlwind of energy that slams into the ground and draws all attention to himself in an instant.

There’s a slime in his claws, one that Cyclonus realizes with a start that he recognizes, at least on some level. It’s a vibrant red, cracked through with glowing yellow, as if made of molten lava itself. The exact kind that Rodimus had been carrying in another tank, and which he has yet to see on Tailgate’s ranch otherwise.

Where Whirl even found it is anyone’s guess.

“Don’t ask where I found it.” Whirl says, as if he’d heard that very thought. “What is it? What’s it do? Does it explode? I hope it explodes.”

Tailgate’s posture, notably, is one of caution as he approaches. “Whirl,” He begins, almost gently, servos partially raised in a cautionary gesture. “Maybe don’t hold that one so close.”

“Why?” Whirl holds it up, looking the slime in the face, leering at it with his single optic like he’s trying to see the danger Tailgate seems to think there is. “Seems perfectly fine to me. Hey, look, he’s glowing. I think he likes me.”

As it turns out, Whirl’s earlier hope turns out to be true, because it explodes. Quite literally.

It’s in the form of an energy propulsion, an incendiary field that blasts outward not so unlike an actual bomb. The slime drops from Whirl’s grip, pale and uncomfortably grey, while Whirl himself is knocked back onto his aft. One of his claws snaps up to cover his single optic, disturbing chips of bubbled paint that flutter to the ground around him.

“Whirl!” Tailgate rushes down the few stairs from his house, concern pitching in his voice. He drops to the ground beside him, servos reaching out, but a claw thrust out in his direction stops him before he can make contact.

“Don’t,” Whirl grumbles, low and strained. His other claw is still over his optic, obscuring it from view.

There’s a moment of hesitation before Tailgate tries again, more slowly. “Whirl, are you—”

“I said don’t!” Whirl snaps, shoving Tailgate away roughly. He wrenches to his feet, stumbling further away, claws dropping to his own arms. Cyclonus can see them digging in. “Leave me alone.”

Silence pulls taut between them, tense and heavy. No one moves; Whirl stands there, energon dripping down claws dug between his own plating, single optic averted to glare at the ground. Tension is drawn through his shoulders like a cable teetering on the verge of snapping in half.

And it’s… familiar. This is the Whirl Cyclonus knows; the one on a hair trigger, the one reacting and lashing out for reasons no one understands but him, and not a chance of him explaining to anyone else. Obviously, of course, he took an explosion point blank to his face, which would upset most mechs. But somehow, someway, Cyclonus is absolutely certain that Whirl’s outburst isn’t actually about the explosion.

He would think, as well, that the return to normalcy would be comforting in a strange way. That not everything has been flipped on its head, that Whirl has not magically changed overnight as if he’d been replaced by a strange, calmer version of himself. That the cloying sense of wrongness would abate, soothed by knowing the consistency is still there, where it should be.

It’s not.

Cyclonus dislikes this. It instills the same feeling in him as watching the slimes pitifully stare after their food did, a rolling feeling of discomfort crawling beneath his plating. Instead of feeling like a return to normalcy, it feels wrong.

“Whirl.” Tailgate is the one to break the silence, trying again despite the shove that must have been anything but gentle. His voice is level, calm, the words laid out slowly and carefully. “I just want to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.”

Whirl turns away from them in a harsh, sudden movement. There’s agitation dancing beneath his surface, barely contained, as if a snap of his voice and a slight shove are the least of what he actually wants to do. And yet, uncharacteristically, he resists.

“I’m just gonna— I need to—” He starts and stops his sentences, trying for what he deems to be the right one, and rejecting all of them. With a frustrated noise, he stomps away from them without looking back, choosing none at all.

Tailgate raises a servo toward his retreating form, visor flashing, a hesitant half step forward doing little to bridge the gap Whirl is creating between them. A servo on his shoulder makes him stop, and it isn’t until Tailgate looks back at him that Cyclonus makes the connection that the servo is his.

He’d moved without thinking, stopped Tailgate without realizing, but he finds it’s a decision he stands by. “Let him go.” Cyclonus tells him.

“Whirl seemed pretty upset.” Tailgate deflates, sagging. Cyclonus lets go of him.

“He did.”

It’s clear Tailgate still wants to go after him, but ultimately chooses to listen. He turns away with a sigh, facing once again the seemingly innocent little creature that had started this whole thing.

Still right where Whirl had dropped it, the explosive slime has regained its color, and now sways in place like nothing is amiss at all. It isn’t hard to imagine how Whirl could have seen it and deemed it harmless, unknowingly setting himself up for injury.

“Why did it—” Cyclonus gestures at it, vaguely. There’s no need to specify, they both just watched it happen a moment ago.

“This is a boom slime. They’re named that because, well—” Case in point; the creature, once again, explodes. This time with no one holding it, with nothing around it, it simply glows brightly and explodes all over again. It leaves the slime appearing greyed, and… dizzy? “That’s what they do. Perceptor’s theory is that they generate too much energy, and that’s how they have to release it. Whirl didn’t do anything wrong, he just… didn’t know to be careful.”

The slime recovers itself once more, colors brightening back to that vibrant red hue. It bounces toward them, flinging itself high enough into the air for Tailgate to catch it. Cyclonus takes a calculated step back.

“They’re perfectly friendly like all the others. You just kind of have to…” For those moments of Tailgate speaking, it sits in his grip, swaying in place and perfectly content. But once it begins to glow again, that slime gun of Tailgate’s appears in his servo in an instant, sucking the slime away into a tank before it can explode. “...Be aware.”

Cyclonus doesn’t really have anything to say to that. Whirl is the least careful person he has ever met; it is unsurprising that this happened. Even if he had been warned ahead of time, he likely would have brushed it off and ignored it, and this outcome would have been inevitable.

Still, Tailgate seems almost as if he feels guilty. Staring down at the slime in its tank, with a dim visor and an uncharacteristic silence clinging to him.

It’s uncomfortable. Cyclonus feels almost as if he has some kind of an… obligation? To reassure Tailgate, or to provide something in the way of comforting words. He doesn’t know what he possibly could be expected to say even if he wanted to, and stays silent instead.

He’s saved by an unknown sound. It’s faint, muted and only barely echoing from somewhere, but it’s a repeating and distinctly digital sound. Something almost bubble-like, airy and soft. Tailgate snaps to attention when he hears it, breaking out of his little moment of guilt and making his way towards his house.

The sound, as it turns out, is a ringing from his computer. The same one on the very desk that Whirl is always sleeping under, screens now lit with what is distinctly an incoming call. An image accompanies it, of a familiar face in reds and golds. Tailgate answers.

Chapter Text

Whirl has a new enemy.

Can it be considered new when it was made when he got here? Who cares. That whole thing about how he’d rather take a space bridge again than stay on this planet? Yeah, he’s changed his mind.

Because sure, on paper, or at least in his head, it’s easy to say they’re not that big of a deal. It’s fine! He’s had worse, right? He’s no coward. Being held back by trauma who? Whirl doesn’t know her.

Nevermind the whole explosive slime thing. He’s not talking about that now or ever, thanks.

Anyway! Tailgate’s servos are splayed out in a ta-da! motion over a spinning device he’d called a teleporter. It’s giving Whirl, like… pre-nausea? Sure! That’s probably a thing. He feels sick just looking at it, like going through it is going to put him in the same state as the last time he’d used warp technology.

Even though this one is on a much smaller scale, and presumably working properly. He side eyes Cyclonus. “You haven’t hit this one with a sword, have you?”

Tailgate’s visor flickers, confused. “Huh?” Neither of them answer him. Meanwhile, Cyclonus gives him this flat look, flatter than usual like he thinks Whirl is stupid. Also, he just… steps into it. Without a word! Zero hesitation!

Showoff.

“Uh— okay, bye!” Tailgate tells the teleporter. Then he turns back to Whirl, sort of in a rush, like he’s worried Whirl is going to do the same thing. Little does he know Whirl will not step foot in that thing a moment before he absolutely has to. In fact, is it too late to claim he’s sick? “You’re going somewhere called Nimble Valley.”

“Yeah, yeah, go help some guy with his slimes or whatever, I know.” Whirl does not want to listen to the explanation again. He’d listened, he swears.

Mostly.

“You’ll be helping, but you should be having fun, too. Don’t be afraid to enjoy yourself, okay?” He says that like Whirl is afraid of fun, which he is most definitely not. Whirl knows how to have a great time! It usually involves more violence, but whatever, he still knows how.

Also, he feels like he’s being reassured by a guardian figure before an outing, and it’s weird. It’s like Tailgate is worried about him, or something. He waves him off, chasing away the suffocated feeling it gives him. “I promise not to kill anyone, happy?”

There’s a beat of silence. “That’s… not what I was asking, but great!”

Well, that’s that. Whirl doesn’t really have any more excuses to hold off going through the teleporter, so before Tailgate can figure out how much he really doesn’t want to, he forces himself to step through. Bracing himself for dizziness, discomfort and the sensation of his fuel tank phasing out of his frame, all he gets instead is the barn around him turning into unfamiliar terrain in a single blink.

Cyclonus is already there, staring at him like he’d been waiting. The air here is colder, less dry than Tailgate’s arid ranch, and the colors around them are so different it’s jarring. Tall cliffs and spikes of pale rock jut high into the air all around them, while teal green moss is dense beneath every step.

And not just colder, but there’s an undercurrent of something in the air. A feeling just barely out of reach of him placing what exactly it is, but something he can distinctly feel, like a silent hum of electricity. Whatever it is, it targets his sense of time, knocking his chronometer completely offline until nothing but digital zeros blink at him on his internal display. Unreliable piece of—

“You made it!”

Slowly, slowly, Whirl looks up. Slow enough for that voice to decide it should probably belong to someone else, but it doesn’t listen before his optic falls on Rodimus. Annoyance at his chrono turns into a renewed urge for violence in an instant.

Whirl may have only partially listened to the explanation, but he knows for a fact he would have caught Rodimus’ name if Tailgate had mentioned it. Which means Tailgate didn’t mention it; didn’t breathe a word of where he’d actually gotten Whirl to agree to go. Something like betrayal sinks into his growing anger.

“You.”

And unlike last time, Rodimus doesn’t look startled. He has the gall to grin at Whirl, like this is some kind of a game to him. “Yeah. Me.” He practically taunts—no, he does taunt, because he continues with a smug, “What are you going to do about it?”

Whirl lunges for him.

He was probably expecting as much, too, because Rodimus jumps out of the way without ever losing that stupid smirk on his face. Prancing backwards, he hops out of the way of Whirl’s claws over and over. Every miss makes the energon in Whirl’s lines threaten to boil, tipped over an invisible edge when Rodimus laughs at him.

“Catch me if you can!” Jumping over an edge of the cliff he’d been backing up towards, Rodimus disappears, and Whirl chases him over without a second thought. It doesn’t lead to the ocean far below, instead opening up to a path that Rodimus transforms before landing on. He’s taking off barely before his tires have even hit the dirt, flinging rocks almost like an added insult as he goes.

Above, there’s a boom of jet engines, and a flash of purple between the rocks.

They create distance from him fast, disappearing into the unknown landscape ahead. With only the barest glance to make sure he’ll have the space, Whirl takes their lead, jumping into his own transformation sequence.

Parts that haven’t moved in far too long finally do, cables protesting just barely shy of being painful, stiffened components freeing themselves and following the full range of their motion. Somehow, he’d managed to forget entirely that he hasn’t transformed once since before the space bridge incident, and now, a renewed feeling courses through him. Not the anger; but a deep satisfaction that leaves him feeling like he’s been let off a leash he hadn’t realized he was on.

Whirl takes off after them. He’s behind, and the winding paths and deep valleys between jutting spikes of rock can’t be taken at full speed. But that means the same is true for Rodimus and especially for Cyclonus, and the jagged edge of a challenge makes it all the more enticing.

Every corner he takes where he successfully hugs a wall, shaving increments off the distance between him and Rodimus, adds to that initial feeling. There’s a task in front of him, one that he likes, and he zeroes in with full focus on catching those flashes of red and gold deeper in the valley.

All of that progress is lost in a split second, though. The path turns sharply, hidden behind another rock until nearly the last moment, and Whirl has no choice but to pull against his own momentum with everything he has to avoid becoming a part of the wall. It’s close; so close that he still bumps against it, losing all of his speed and the distance he’d closed in one go.

But… even as he gears up to take off again, there’s something that catches his attention. Movement below, a swarm of little red shapes that can only be slimes, speeding along at a pace to rival his own moments ago. Some of them are sparking with electric charge, little arcs jolting off of them, between others and the rocks around them.

Whirl looks up, now paying attention to his surroundings properly. That faint hum that can only be felt and not heard seems to echo between the rocks, energy contained within them and faintly escaping into the air. It feels charged, like just before a lightning strike.

And it fades once the slimes have passed by, the thrum quieting down to nearly nothing.

That explains what happened to his chrono. The rocks around here must either generate or at least hold some kind of charge, and knocked his garbage digital chrono out with the field they emit. Which is… annoying, but also cool.

Primus, he’s been around Tailgate too long. Now he thinks rocks are cool.

Shaking off the nerd part of his processor, Whirl turns back to the very important matter of chasing down and murdering Rodimus.

It becomes clear somewhere along the way that this is an intentionally routed race track, about the time Whirl starts noticing the landscape repeating itself; that they’re going in circles. It weaves between the biggest rocks with the strongest field, and with each repeating lap through the track, more and more of those slimes show up.

There’s a lot of them. A few days ago it would’ve been creepy, but now he looks down at the shifting mass of electrified red and is mostly… No, nevermind, it’s still kind of creepy. Individually they’re fine, but those ones just kind of look like a writhing mass of organics. Gross.

Anyway, back to the race—the murder chase, he corrects himself. He’s not here to have fun. Well, he was, but that was before he knew whose ranch this was. Is this a ranch? Whatever. He pushes forward, trying to catch up on the corners.

The first one to tap out is, unsurprisingly, Cyclonus. Not because he doesn’t have the endurance, but because Rodimus probably does this every day, and Whirl is on a mission that is totally not fun, not at all. He probably realizes that he doesn’t want to be in the middle of it when Whirl catches up, too. Smart move.

Except… ugh. It’s like he’s losing his edge, because he can feel the rage dwindling away. Getting back in the sky and pushing his engines is a great way to burn off excessive murderous energy, apparently, no matter how much he hates Rodimus. What is this, therapy or something?

Whirl gives in. He takes another lap back around, and pulls out of the track once he’s back at the place he saw Cyclonus last. It’s a little mossy rock edge, just above the actual physical track the slimes and Rodimus are on, a perfect vantage point to watch from.

Transforming back is smoother than it was the first time, but no less satisfying on his joints. Which is terrible, because it only goes further to make Whirl not angry, when he’d really like to be angry. Maybe he’ll get lucky, and one of these two people he's hanging out with that he can’t stand will do something to piss him off again.

But for now, he lands somewhat near Cyclonus and totally doesn’t kind of enjoy everything going on around them. The moss is soft under him when he copies Cyclonus and sits down on it, and a brisk, cold sea breeze blows in from the ocean somewhere below, comfortably wicking away the heat he’d built up in the race.

Rodimus keeps going by, slower now that he probably knows he isn’t running for his life, still leading the pack of slimes that follow him around every turn. They crackle and pop with excessive energy, like a bad lightbulb with a short in the wire.

Here, somewhere in this weird mountain range and the middle of the track, the energy field of the rocks is even more noticeable than before. Even where they’re sitting, he swears he can feel it through the ground beneath them, just barely. A faint thrum that makes it through the moss ever so slightly, but rings out of the rocks overhead much more clearly now.

“There is something unique about this place.” Cyclonus says, apparently having the same thought.

Before Whirl can think better of it— “It’s the rocks.”

It makes Cyclonus look at him, like the surprised kind of snapping around to stare at him. He resists the urge to squirm, instead flippantly gesturing above their heads like it’s common knowledge. “You can feel it. The energy is bouncing between them like radio towers.”

He looks up at Whirl’s direction, listening. “You’re right.”

There’s something… quiet, about the way Cyclonus says that, that he doesn’t like. It’s too contemplative, like the moments before a conversation can turn more genuine and land in that space where people start trying to connect and understand each other. Whirl would rather die, thanks.

And the worst part is that it makes him—ugh—glad when Rodimus joins them. Because it’s a distraction, an interruption to the thought Whirl doesn’t want Cyclonus to finish, and only serves to continue making his anger go the opposite way than it should. He’s here to be murderous at Rodimus, damn it!

Well, technically he was here to have fun. Which he did.

He can still be mad about it.

Rodimus flops onto the grass—wisely—next to Cyclonus with a worn out noise. There’s a faint sizzling as the heat of his frame turns the moisture on the moss into steam.

Below, the crackling electricity makes it clear the slimes are still going, outlasting all three of them and continuing on like there’s no end in sight. It makes him think of sparklings on hyper efficient jet fuel, which is not something he’s ever actually seen, but it feels like an accurate enough comparison.

Between the three of them, though, there’s an awkward silence. Cyclonus isn’t a talker, Rodimus is probably trying to be careful for once in his life, and Whirl is perfectly happy not talking to either of them. It hangs there for a solid while, with nothing but the crackling sounds of the slimes to break it.

Whirl almost wants to make a bet with himself on who will crack first, when before he can even decide, Cyclonus takes the chance away from him by doing exactly that. Spoilsport.

“Please explain—” He pauses, apparently unsure of how to exactly word what he’s trying to ask. Whirl can guess; why are they electrified? Why do they race? Why are they the exact same color as Rodimus, because that’s actually kind of weird, and Whirl would not put it past him to have spray painted them. Would spray paint stick to a slime? “—this.”

“Oh, those are quicksilver slimes. They feed off of electric energy, and the rocks around here are kind of like really big lightning rods, so this is the only place you’ll ever be able to find them.”

And there it is, Whirl was right about the rocks. He knows stuff other than destruction, sometimes!

The poor, old, dusty gears in Cyclonus’ head are trying so hard to turn. “So the rocks are not the source of the energy themselves.”

“Nope!” Rodimus—being Rodimus—points finger guns at them. Whirl forgot he did that. “That’s our energy.”

Huh.

Rodimus raises his servos in a surrender motion before he explains more. “This is all secondhand, so don’t quote me on it being exactly right, it’s all magic to me. When we race on the track, it generates static; but that’s only half of it. The rocks also pick up on our own EM fields and draw in the residual energy from those, so when we go blasting around the track over and over…”

“Then it builds up in the rocks. Leading to,” Cyclonus finishes the thought for him, and looks up, leaving the rest of his own sentence unsaid as he listens to the singing hum of the rocks all around them.

“Exactly.” Rodimus agrees, though Whirl would swear he hears a faintly muttered, I think I got that right, anyway. “And then it attracts the quicksilver slimes that feed off it, and there you go. A track full of hypercharged, hyper slimes.”

As if they’re proving his point, the slimes speed by yet again. Based on the humming in the air, they’re going to be at it for a while. Actually, with Rodimus as the rancher here, Whirl can only wonder if the stones ever go quiet at all.

“You don’t cage them?” Cyclonus asks, and Rodimus barks a laugh.

“You can’t get quicksilver slimes to stay put, trust me. They’ll eat those containment fields for breakfast.” He shakes his head, chuckling, watching the swath of red dash by again. “Nah, these guys are like… free spirits. They do whatever they want, and you can’t stop ‘em.”

It’s a calm moment. Almost… nice, even despite the company. He doesn’t really intend to do it, this time, but Whirl slices right through it anyway.

“Like you?”

Silence answers him.

He expects an instant denial. A changing of subjects, brushing off the accusation they both know he’s making, the accusation they both know is true. Rodimus looks down, picking at the moss. His expression— well, Whirl can’t really pick apart what it means, too many minute details to easily piece together an overall guess. It’s complex, complicated, the kind that doesn’t just fit nicely under one single word to describe it.

“I didn’t want to leave.” He starts, quietly, and there it is. The shifting of blame. The it wasn’t my fault. Except— “But that’s not an excuse. I should’ve at least come back and faced you all, instead of just… disappearing. I could say I didn’t have time, that the reassignment came too fast, but that wouldn’t be true if I did.”

Whirl wouldn’t have even waited for a reassignment. He shakes his head, forcibly shoving that thought away where it belongs, because he is not sympathising with Rodimus Prime of all people.

“Yeah? So? You still did it in the first place. You still left him.”

“I thought he could get out.” Rodimus says. Quietly, guiltily, an admission without an excuse tied in. “It was my fault. I should have waited, I should have gone back—I should have faced you all. I should have done a lot of things, but that doesn’t change the fact I didn’t.”

Whirl never thought he’d live to see the day Rodimus Prime admitted fault, but here he is. Rodimus always had this demeanor, like he thought he was better than everyone around him. Like he believed he was the main character in a story about him, and no one else truly mattered. That anything he did, no matter who it hurt, was right just because it was him.

That he was important, even before he actually was.

He doesn’t have it anymore. He just looks… sad. And not in the kind of way like he wants sympathy, but—in the kind of way like he doesn’t. Whirl hates it. It’s too genuine, too sparkfelt. Rodimus means what he’s saying, with all the quiet contemplation of someone who’s had a very, very long time to do nothing but think about their wrongs.

Whirl hates it. He hates this. This— quiet, mournful way Rodimus sounds, like he’s sorry for everyone but himself. Like he means it, like he really, really means it, without excuses. Without trying to find a way to make it not his fault, without blaming everything and the world itself before himself.

“I’m sorry.”

It’s spoken so softly. Nearly lost in the thrumming of the stones, said only for its truth and not to be heard. Spoken because it should be, not as a way to gain forgiveness. Not as a ploy, not as a shield, not as a way to express his own hurt; nothing more than simply being the right thing to do, when there’s nothing else he can do to change anything he did.

Whirl sighs. It was never really about Rodimus.

“Yeah, well. Good. But I’m still not going to forgive you, got it? I still hate you.” Whirl turns away, refusing to spend any more time looking at his sad, stupid, actually respectable form of regret. “And I’m not the one you should be apologizing to, anyway. Too bad you can’t do that.”

Is it cruel to remind Rodimus of the fact he can never apologize to the only person who would ever have the right to forgive him for what he did? Maybe. Does it make Whirl feel better about the sinking realization that he probably doesn’t want to kill him for it anymore?

…No.

Rodimus doesn’t say anything, but Whirl can feel him looking at him. Staring at his back, like he’s searching for something. The moment stretches, silence drawing out, but he still says nothing. Whether that’s out of hurt over what Whirl just said to him, or something else entirely, he doesn’t know. And he’s not turning around to find out, either.

And eventually, Rodimus gives up.

“How are things going back at Tailgate’s ranch?” He asks instead, changing the subject entirely after a few moments of more tense silence. “I hear you’ve been making friends with the slimes.”

“No,” Whirl starts, at the exact same time Cyclonus also says the same. Like they’re in sync, which just makes them look like one of those couples who finish each others’ sentences or something. And Cyclonus isn’t even close enough to the edge for Whirl to shove him off and break that implication, either.

This day is terrible.

And then there’s Rodimus, who just grins at them, again, and makes Whirl regret finally turning to look at him. “Oooh, denial. So you are starting to warm up to them.”

“Yeah, well,” Whirl snaps. “They don’t like me, so who cares.”

“What do you mean?”

He just had to open his big—well, he doesn’t have a mouth. He just had to say words. So what if the whole explosive slime thing maybe sorta got to him? It’s none of their business. And it doesn’t matter. He’s not staying on this planet anyway.

“Whirl had a slime explode.” Shut up, Cyclonus. “He must have taken it personally.”

“I’m gonna take you personally if you don’t shut—”

Rodimus interrupts them before Whirl can again decide to kill Cyclonus instead. “You think the slimes don’t like you because one exploded?” He asks, in this tone of voice like that’s a ridiculous idea. His face is ridiculous, thanks. He’s probably just gonna spout something about misunderstandings or judging books by their covers or whatever. What a joy.

Except he doesn’t do any of that. He stands up, and points to another path, away from the race track and leading up into the cliffs.

“Follow me. I want to show you something.”

He leads the way between stone walls still humming with energy, something that he barely seems to notice, but Whirl is glad when the path opens up again and the sound isn’t quite so close to his audials anymore. At the top, past a small thicket of trees, the view opens up to Rodimus’... ranch? Home? Whatever, the place he lives.

They’ve been here before, though it isn’t like Whirl paid any attention to it as he chased Rodimus through the yard. But there’s a large house, nothing like Tailgate’s tiny little round dome of a cabin, and only a few plots here and there for slimes or gardens. Half of them are empty, even, like Rodimus doesn’t even bother with a majority of the things Tailgate spends so much time on.

“I don’t really do the ranching thing.” Rodimus admits, proving that thought. “I just keep the slimes I like, and the things they need, which isn’t much.”

He gestures to the first plot as they approach it. It’s a metal container, open to the air, and filled with ashes.

Ashes that are moving, like a horror movie Whirl saw one time with sand and monsters underneath it. He knows it’s just slimes, but still. Creepy.

“As much as I like the quicksilver slimes—I mean, they look like me—I gotta admit,” Rodimus reaches into the ash, digging out one of the moving lumps. “I have the biggest weak spot for these guys.”

The ash crumbles and falls away from the blob, lifted up with a level of slow, reverent care that Whirl didn’t even know Rodimus was capable of. He holds it in both servos like something precious, its shape slightly more liquid than the other slimes as it oozes just over the sides of his palms and between his fingers.

“A fire slime.” Cyclonus comments, because apparently he’s the expert here now.

“Yeah.” Looking down at it, Rodimus looks almost… sad? Melancholic, maybe. “You would never know, but they’re really cuddly. They like being held, y’know? It’s just that they’re, well—made of fire. Literally. If you touch them, you’ll just get burned.”

Cyclonus stares at the slime, and then Rodimus. “Then how are you holding it?”

“Outlier. I’m fireproof.” Rodimus shrugs. Whirl knows it isn’t quite that simple, but he can’t really blame him for not wanting to explain more about it to Cyclonus if he doesn’t already know. “No one ever even knew fire slimes wanted attention as much as the other slimes until I got here. I feel bad for them. Imagine no one being able to get close because of things you can’t change, no matter how much you want them to.”

Yeah, imagine. Who could ever relate to that.

“The point is,” Rodimus pulls the slime close, hugging it to his chest, and starts walking away from the ash trough. “There’s a lot of slimes that are capable of hurting us, but it doesn’t mean they intend to. The quicksilver slimes are radiating electricity, but you wouldn’t blame them for it if you got zapped mid-race, right?”

“You’re saying that from experience.” Whirl doesn’t guess, he knows. Rodimus doesn’t deny it, because Whirl is right.

He leads them down the cobbled path in front of his house, past a pen of chickens, and within sight of a pen full of the exact explosive slimes that Whirl definitely wanted to see again. If he’s going to try to get Whirl to try that again, he’s dumber than he looks.

But he doesn’t. “Just watch them.” Is all he says, making no move to try and lead them any closer.

Whirl kind of wants to ignore him and not do that, just out of spite. He finds himself watching them anyway, though, seeing them bouncing around in their pen just like all of Tailgate’s slimes always do. That means they’re happy, as far as he’s aware, or at least having fun.

And just like before, they start to glow, the only warning before exploding. At least this time he’s at a safe distance, and can see the force of it throwing all the other slimes around in the pen. It kind of looks a bit like a game of pinball, actually.

“Notice anything?” Rodimus asks, cryptically, like he has an actual thought in there for once.

“No?”

He nods toward the pen, and its continued explosive game of pinball. “We’re nowhere near them, and they’re not upset, but they’re still exploding. It’s what they do. Just as much as the fire slimes will always be on fire, boom slimes will always explode. It doesn’t mean they don’t like you, it’s just… how they are.”

“Wow, thanks, I had no idea fire was hot and explosions were explosive, thanks.” Whirl makes to turn.

Rodimus dares to grab his arm and stop him.

When he turns back, violence and vitriol at once gathering in him to lash out, he’s… definitely not startled, but at least a little bit taken aback by the intensity of the stare Rodimus is leveling on him.

“Some of them are dangerous, Whirl.” His grip tightens, almost to the point of being painful, almost too hot from the radiated heat of the slime he’s still carrying. His tone is firm, inarguable, gaze as hard as steel. “But that doesn’t make them bad. It doesn’t mean they want to be. And it doesn’t mean they hate you.”

There’s something more that he’s saying, but what it is, Whirl isn’t entirely sure. Though he can make a guess; and it makes him regret being here, around the one person on this planet that probably knows him best, as little as that is.

It’s easier to brush it off, and take it literally, instead of whatever Rodimus is trying to say but not say.

“Fine.” He tugs, and after another moment, Rodimus relents and lets him go. That stare stays on him for another few seconds, almost demanding him to listen, before sliding up to focus over his shoulder.

“…Where did Cyclonus go?”

For a second, Whirl assumes it’s a joke. A bad way to break the tension Rodimus started, thanks. But when he turns to look, it’s not a joke. There’s no one there. No tall, purple form to create an unmissable eyesore against the backdrop of greys and pale greens.

Where in the pit did he go?

And why?

“Does he do this a lot?” Rodimus asks. “Just… disappear without a word?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“Well, I don’t know—” He doesn’t like that tone. “—maybe because you’re always together?”

Ah. That's why he didn’t like that tone. “We are not always together.”

“If you say so.” Rodimus sounds like he doesn’t believe a word, and drops it before Whirl can decide to kill him. “Well, we better find him. The valley tends to attract lightning storms, and I doubt we want him out alone in those.”

Ugh. Of course Cyclonus has to give Whirl the job of tracking him down so he doesn’t mysteriously keel over in the mountains. What is he, a sparkling sitter? It’s not even like he’d die, Cyclonus can survive being made at least a little bit crispy. Whirl would know!

But then he imagines Tailgate, carrying a slime and smiling at him with dangerously creative punishments in mind, and follows after Rodimus. No thanks, not again.

Before they can make it back into the wooded trails behind Rodimus’ house, a glimpse of something out of the corner of his optic makes Whirl turn. On a raised stone platform, underneath an awning and tucked away against the back of the house, there’s some kind of a machine. A weird looking computer, massive, with two screens.

He elbows Rodimus, gently. He swears. Ignore the oof. “Hey, what’s that for?”

Rubbing his side, Rodimus looks where he’s pointing. “Oh, that’s my comms station. You might’ve noticed we’re all too far apart for inbuilt comms, and Tailgate doesn’t have them anyway. So we have these. Every ranch has one.”

Whirl finds himself staring at it, the gears turning. “Does it… go off planet?”

“Not normally, no.” Damn it. “But since the valley here is so electrified, it disrupts the signal. So mine—” Rodimus points up. Far up, past the tips of the rocky formations jutting into the sky.

There’s a signal tower out of the top of his house, reaching far above. It’s large, and looks like it’s been engineered to do a lot more than it probably actually needed to, like whoever built it just kept going to see how much it could do.

“—is boosted. It doesn’t reach all the way to Cybertron, I’m not sure I’d even want it to, but… you can sometimes catch ships in a few of the quadrants on this side of it.”

Whirl thinks about it, though he doesn’t need to.

“…Mind if I use it?”

He’d seen them again.

Up in the cliffs, flashes of color between trees that didn’t quite blend in with the environment. Something so subtle that if he didn’t already have an inkling that they were somewhere out there, he’d never have noticed it at all.

Whirl didn’t stay fixated on chasing Rodimus long enough for him to investigate, but as the two butt heads over Whirl’s usual flippant attitude and Rodimus’ refusal to accept it, they don’t notice him turning back the way they’d come.

The rocks are still singing, and the slimes still speed along in swaths below, but there’s less of them. The residual energy is finally fading, the crackling of electricity dissipating. He can see them a bit more clearly without halos of static obscuring their red forms, getting a glimpse for the first time of one’s face, even if still at speed.

Rodimus was, truly, not joking. They do look like him, the same vibrant red with golden chevrons on their heads that look exactly like the sharp edges of his frame. It’s a curious thought, imagining if they are naturally like that, if Rodimus came to this planet and found them without any warning that they would look just like he does.

It’s no wonder he lives here, in the only place they can be found. Whether by ego or simply fondness for the sheer odds of it happening at all, it’s a reasonable choice. Perhaps even more so, if he has found a feeling of belonging with them, when he so clearly has not had the greatest of luck with other mechs in his own faction. Whirl is proof enough of that; and their unnamed companion, likely dead by Rodimus’ own failings, only further proof still.

Cyclonus shakes the thoughts out of his processor, and focuses back on his search.

They are tucked away, hidden well in the flora, protected from any weather by an overhanging cliff. Though the wind has kicked up, a frigid breeze raking over the valley from the ocean, their little hideaway appears warm and comfortable. Courtesy of a familiarly vibrant, flame-laden slime.

“Does Rodimus know you’ve taken that?” He asks, in lieu of a greeting he does not care to give. One of the twin cassettes scoffs, rolling his optics.

“We’ll give it back.”

“And hello to you, too.” The other chimes in.

Cyclonus is not here for another of their games. Their non-answers, their pointless chatter that only goes in circles. “Why are you here?”

“Two for two on rudeness, big guy.”

Starkly, he finds he regrets leaving Whirl and Rodimus. He considers turning back, right now, before they can waste his time.

It’s the beastformer that raises his head, pinning Cyclonus with his stare. He is different from the other two; his gaze alone tells that he sees, and knows, far more than they do. And that he simply chooses not to say it, his words withheld until they matter more.

If there is a purpose to their being here, he is the one in charge of it. The other two are interference, a distraction meant to cover him under an umbrella of association. Obfuscation, by way of sheer annoyance.

“You keep asking us that, but you haven’t told us why you’re here.”

Perhaps it’s because they’ve pushed his patience so much already the last time he dealt with them, or perhaps he has been around Whirl too long. Either way, it’s spite that makes him shrug towards the race track in a willful misinterpretation of that question. The beastformer’s optics narrow at him, knowing.

One of the others crosses his arms. “People don’t just come here for no reason, you know.”

The other chimes in. “Yeah. You might not think so, but there is always a reason.”

Cyclonus stiffens, realization dawning on him that they are very nearly repeating the same words Tailgate had already previously said to him about this world.

They seem to mistake his posture change for discomfort, however; assuming they have found a lead.

“So what’s yours? Are you a deserter?”

“Got scared off by the war? Got exiled, sent away?”

“Running from a mistake?”

“Left behind?”

Back and forth, back and forth, the twins press. Cyclonus stares at them, at their increasing energy as they work themselves up, attempting to extract an interesting answer from him. Unfortunately for them, the answer is nothing interesting, and nothing like what they seem to believe about this planet. “A space bridge malfunctioned.” He deadpans.

Behind them, the beastformer’s stare levels on him once again. Sharper than theirs—

“Or are you searching for something?”

—and disconcertingly true.

Cyclonus turns on his heel. He does not flee; he has had enough of their games, and will tolerate them no further.

They are superstitious at best, and out of their own minds at worst. The idea of a planet that only draws visitors with deeply personal reasons and not simply by happenstance is ridiculous. He is here because he cannot leave. He is here only because of that space bridge.

He is here because of Whirl. Nothing more, nothing less.

It has no ties with anything more.

Making his way back leads him right into the path of Rodimus, not far from the house. “Cyclonus! There you are.” He calls the moment he spots him. Cyclonus attempts to reign in the seething agitation, and mostly fails. “Are you okay?”

“I am fine.”

Rodimus stares at him, as if he’s trying to tell if that is true or not. But he lets it go without further question, shrugging and turning back. “I went ahead. If we head back now, we can meet up with Whirl before he also starts trying to find you.”

He half expects to find Whirl gone by the time they get there, by no other reason than it being Whirl, but that isn’t the case. Rodimus calls out to him as they approach, announcing their return, and Whirl scrambles to the path from somewhere behind Rodimus’ house.

“Did you have a good—”

Whirl cuts him off with a wave of a claw. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, Cyclonus, where have you been?” He crowds into Cyclonus’ space, familiarly antagonistic in a way he has not been in some time. “Kind of weird, you sneaking off like that. Are you up to something?”

It’s goading. He knows full well it’s goading, Whirl attempting to pick a fight once again for no reason, as if he has finally remembered who he is. It brushes against Cyclonus’ already disturbed patience in just the wrong way, tempting him into giving Whirl exactly what it is he’s asking for.

Only by the barest shred of his self control does he resist, instead shoving Whirl away from him with arguably more force than strictly necessary. “Forgive me for needing a break from you.”

It is true enough to be believed, in any case.

Whirl stares at him, almost like he’s been struck silent for the first time in his life. For all that the previous goading was completely normal for what Cyclonus is used to from Whirl, this almost startled reaction is anything but, as unfamiliar as all of his other behaviors on this planet.

Then he seems to regain himself, wrenching away with a glare. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you thought we were friends.”

Rodimus looks between them. “Wow. And I thought I had issues.”

Whirl looks like he’s ready to snap at him next, but he doesn’t get a chance to. The next sound is an audible thunderclap from overhead, drawing their optics upward in a synchronized action. It’s cloudy, the sky darkened and looming overhead.

“Ah, yeah. That’s why I was afraid of leaving you out somewhere alone.” Rodimus explains, dropping his gaze back to them. “I’d invite you to stay longer, but it’s going to get pretty wild around here, and you don’t strike me as the type to handle being cooped up very well. Better get out now, while the teleporters still work.”

The idea that the teleporters can cease functioning over something as trivial as a storm is disconcerting. It makes sense, especially given the magnetic nature of this valley, but it still makes unease crawl up his struts. A part of him almost doesn’t want to risk warping when there’s already the chance of it going offline in the near future, but the rest of him would rather another failed warp to the other side of the universe than to be in a small, enclosed space with Whirl at this moment.

Rodimus leads them back. Four teleporters are stationed in a row, against a high rock wall and overlooking the ocean in the distance. “It’s this one. Say hi to Tailgate for me, will you?” He won’t. “And drop by anytime you want. I’m always down for a race, and there aren’t that many people around here that can handle the valley.”

Cyclonus nods. He likely won’t do that either, but it’s a pleasant enough offer. At the same time, Whirl says nothing, and leads the way through the teleporter with none of his earlier hesitance.

When he makes it through, Whirl is already gone from the barn. Outside, the familiar orange landscape is painted in long stripes of light and shadow from the sun dipping towards the horizon. Matching stripes of pink and blue mark the sky, a vibrancy of warm hues that feel so bright after spending the past hours in the valley.

Tailgate is not there to greet them, but that is understandable. He had no way of knowing when they would return, and there is no doubt in Cyclonus’ mind that they will find him amongst his slimes or in a garden, as he always is. That’s likely where Whirl is already going, taking the path back towards the main yard of the ranch.

Unless, of course, he’s just on his way to the house to claim his corner and brood. It doesn’t make much difference, regardless.

Except Whirl doesn’t seem to do either. When Cyclonus catches up to him at the entrance to the main area, he’s standing there, looking around not like he’s searching for Tailgate, but something… else.

And he doesn’t wait for Cyclonus to ask what his issue is. He speaks, unprompted, tone suggesting his earlier fit has been forgotten.

“Something’s wrong.”

Cyclonus takes in the area once again, more carefully this time. It looks as it should, everything undisturbed and exactly in its place. But the longer he looks, the more it seems just slightly off. The garden beds are dry, despite Tailgate’s habit of watering them in the evenings. The door of his house is just faintly ajar, not entirely pushed into its frame.

And in the far corner, in the pen of rock slimes that Cyclonus had spent so long watching this very morning, there is no movement. A collective lump of blue tells him they’re still there, but huddled into the farthest corner of the pen. The details of their faces become clearer as he steps closer, revealing trembling forms and wide eyes.

“You’re right.”

Snapping his claws several times, Whirl says nothing. He moves with purpose, marching across the yard with Cyclonus on his heels, along the familiar path into the overgrown section of Tailgate’s ranch.

The same slightly wrong scene greets them there, as well. The chickens are missing, as well as the loose slimes that tend to loiter in this area. It’s eerily silent, nothing but the faint whistle of the wind through gaps in the rock walls above. Whirl barely spares the area a second glance, continuing on toward the beach.

At the archway before the wooden path, there’s a sound that makes something in Cyclonus’ inner workings freeze. It echoes up, faint and muffled but unmistakably distinct, burned into his memories from years of war. From injured and hopeless soldiers, grieving and distraught, with no other way to sooth their pain but with tears.

Slower now, more hesitant of what they’ll find, they turn the corner. Open, unrestrained sobbing fills the air of the beach, the only sound to be heard over the waterfall into the pond.

The area is in ruin. Empty pens with corner posts leaning as if smashed, the few remaining energy walls flickering like a dying light. Black, iridescent splatters mar the ground and walls alike, in puddles and long streaks.

And in the middle of it all, crumpled amidst the mess and the source of the cries, is Tailgate.

Chapter Text

That feeling somewhere deep within Cyclonus’ components gets stronger with each step closer. It’s uncomfortable, a creeping chill that he can only best describe as dread, though he isn’t sure that’s entirely right.

Whirl lingers behind him, letting him lead. He seems equally as off balance as Cyclonus feels, radiating a hesitance that isn’t like him.

Tailgate’s shoulders shake. He’s on his knees, legs messily folded under him, back bent as he leans over. Curled up, as if the weight of the universe above is pressing down on him; or at the very least, the weight of whatever occurred here. Facing away, he hasn’t noticed them yet, loud sobs escaping him with no one around to hide them from.

Discomfort coils around Cyclonus’ spark. This scene is familiar in the worst of ways, dredging up memories of shattered windows, busted doors and a ransacked room that he had failed to repress. At the very least, Tailgate is here; but he isn’t sure that’s any better, because Tailgate’s openly expressed anguish is almost worse than the silence.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know if there’s anything he can do, or if he should at all. It’s a subconscious choice to let himself come to his knees by Tailgate’s side, something which Tailgate makes no indication he has noticed at all.

Not, at least, until Cyclonus’ servo hesitantly finds his shoulder.

Silence. Tailgate freezes, rigid as stone, still enough that Cyclonus may have thought time itself had stopped if his chronometer didn’t continue ticking. The seconds tick by, each one almost louder than the last, as Tailgate continues not to move at all.

Then, slowly, he sits up. Like a puppet on strings, controlled by distant inputs that don’t seem entirely his own. “H-hey Cyclonus.” He seems to try for casual, normal. Like he wants to pretend nothing is wrong. Like he wants to pretend he’s fine, and they didn’t just stumble across the scene that they did.

It isn’t remotely convincing, and not just because his voice cracks like it’s been shattered.

“What happened?”

Though Tailgate has no expression to emote with, his visor flashes. Flickers, like the destroyed energy fields around him, unsteady and rapid. “I—” He looks around him, the words lost as he chokes up around them. Another sob wrenches out of him, despite his apparent best efforts to contain it. “I should’ve— I wasn’t thinking, I—”

He doesn’t appear to be able to say it, breaking down once again. Awkwardly, Cyclonus attempts patting his back, uncertain of what exactly to do but feeling the need to do something.

Even for the short time they’ve been here, this doesn’t feel right for Tailgate. All of their barbed comments, all of their cold distance toward him, he hasn’t seemed bothered by a single thing. Always vibrant, always cheerful, taking everything pitted against him in stride.

Cyclonus hadn’t realized how much seeing that change would get under his plating. It feels wrong, to see Tailgate in this state. For him to be in this state.

“I forgot how far tangles can reach,” Tailgate whispers, quiet and choked. “How far quantums can teleport. That they can get out, that they can…”

Whatever the rest was going to be, he can’t say. Cyclonus doesn’t need him to, anyway. The scene they’ve been presented with is clear enough on its own, describing without words exactly what happened here. All of the slimes are gone, with nothing but smears of black to suggest what became of their fates.

Reminded of the nature of those beasts, Cyclonus turns his attention to Tailgate’s physical state, leaning in enough to study him for damage. Experienced as he has shown himself to be, the destruction left behind in this area seems more than even he could have handled without mistakes, nevermind the emotional toll that may have affected his response time.

Just as expected, Cyclonus finds not many, but some dents and dings. Gouges in plating, the occasional nick in cables beneath. It’s nothing serious, but the sight of it just makes that feeling in his spark writhe even more. Tailgate doesn’t move, or even react at all when he grabs for him, lifting an arm to look closer.

He almost seems to phase in and out of being aware they’re there at all, his visor fixated back on the sludge-splattered ground.

Looking up, Cyclonus catches Whirl’s gaze. He’s hard to read, even more so than Tailgate, but Cyclonus is familiar enough to recognize the line of tension in his frame. His claws are snapped shut, held tight like a fist, and his optic blazes just a little bit too brightly.

It seems they share the same thought. Cyclonus’ own dislike of all of this is reflected right back at him, a silent agreement crossing between them on just how wrong this feels.

“Come with me.” Cyclonus says, pulling upward gently. It takes a moment, but Tailgate follows his lead, gaze still pinned on the ground like he’s processing his surroundings through thick water.

Leading him back to the house, Whirl hovers just a bit too closely with every step of the way, all while saying nothing at all. Tailgate lets them bring him inside, lets them settle him on the edge of his berth. Silent, still, even as Whirl knocks over an object or six in his search for a medkit.

He barely even reacts to his cuts being wiped clean. Not a single wince, only a dim stare and a faint tremor that Cyclonus only knows is there because of the contact to patch him up.

Only once Cyclonus is finished, and finds himself and Whirl both simply… standing around, unsure of what else to do, does Tailgate finally drift back above the surface. He looks up, stiffly, visor still flickering.

“I’m okay.” He says, sounding anything but. “Sorry. Sorry, I just— need a minute. I’m fine. How was your trip?”

And somehow, that’s worse than everything else leading up to this moment. Because Tailgate still sounds rough, choked and barely audible as he attempts to hold back his emotions without breaking down all over again, yet he’s asking about them.

He’s apologizing.

“Sorry I didn’t tell you about Rodimus, Whirl.” His voice is so quiet. So—small. Like he doesn’t feel like much of anyone at all.

Tailgate moves to stand up, and Cyclonus stops him before he can think. It earns him a confused, dim stare.

“I’m okay, really. All good now!”

Cyclonus had thought Tailgate showed all of his emotions freely, not weighed down by the sheer need to hide them, to pretend they aren’t there. It seems he was wrong. Tailgate is very clearly not fine, betrayed by his voice and body language, and yet his words try to convince them otherwise.

Like it would be a problem if he wasn’t.

“Look, pipsqueak.” Whirl steps in, speaking again for the first time. Cyclonus finds himself surprisingly grateful for it; he would not know what to say if he’d tried. “Take a break. Looks to me like you’ve had a pit of a time, so like… sleep it off or something.” He waves a claw flippantly. “We’ll clean up, you stay here and get a hold of yourself. All this emotional stuff makes me itchy, you can keep it.”

Well. Cyclonus was grateful. He’s not so sure now, because surely even he could have done better than that.

And yet somehow, apparently, it works. Tailgate stares at Whirl, stares at the floor, and back to Whirl again. “Y-yeah. Yeah, you’re right. Sorry. I’ll—get it under control.”

Cyclonus swears he hears another whispered apology at the end, so barely audible he can’t be entirely sure it was there at all. Annoyance prickles underneath his plating.

“Great! You just chill out. Take some time off for once. You’ve got us here to—” Whirl pauses, like he’s trying very hard to find the right way to say something. “—maybe not screw things up, probably. I’m sure we can figure it out! May as well get the rest in now while you can, before we’re gone, right?”

Something in that sentence has— some kind of an effect. Tailgate deflates, sagging back into his berth. “Yeah. You’re right, I’ll… take you up on that offer. Thank you.”

He sounds… dim, dejected, but in a different way than before, somehow. Cyclonus cannot place how, or why, only that it must be something Whirl said.

Either way, Whirl grabs Cyclonus’ arm, and begins dragging him towards the door even as Cyclonus attempts to wrench himself free. The claw is a death grip, and he will not be getting out of it. “Good! You do that. Stay here, take a nap. Cry into a pillow or something, whatever it is sad people do.”

“Whirl—” Cyclonus starts, because whatever the right things to say are, none of those words are anywhere close to it.

“We’ll clean up the beach and water your plants, okay bye!”

If Tailgate had a response, they don’t get to hear it. Whirl slams the door closed behind them without waiting to listen, and Cyclonus turns on him, anger surging in his lines.

“What exactly—” He begins to demand, and once again is dragged away from the door, away from the house, far out of earshot. “That was cruel, even for you.”

“Shut up. You see the way he was acting?” Whirl points at the house, his tone surprisingly serious, the flippancy gone. “That’s a mech that doesn’t know how to ask for help. That was the only way we were going to get him to stay there and not just pretend he’s fine and join us.”

“And why wouldn’t we let him join us?” Cyclonus truly does not understand the point in leaving Tailgate to his own pain in isolation, why it feels like Whirl is deciding to simply abandon him even after Cyclonus was sure he shared the same feelings about finding him. If Whirl’s actual reason really is that he doesn’t want Tailgate’s ‘emotional stuff’ near him, he’s worse than Cyclonus thought.

“Because,” Whirl jabs him in the shoulder with a claw, harsh, leaving a scratch in his paint. “I saw that look you were giving him, I know what you’re feeling about this whole thing. This, this whole thing, whatever actually happened—” He gestures toward the direction of the beach. “It’s worse than you think it is.”

Cyclonus stills, torn between suspicion and caution. “How so?”

“Those slimes, the ones that are gone? Those were his favorites. You didn’t see him with them, but he looks at them like— like—” He can’t seem to find the right word. “He just… really, really cares about them. You can tell. So that mech in there, right now? He’s just lost the one thing that he cares about more than anything else on this planet, believe me.”

“So you leave him alone? You act like he’s an annoyance and you leave him to deal with that on his own?” The previous anger is rising, boiling in record speed. Whirl must have no idea what it’s like to lose everything, left alone with nothing and no one. Cyclonus turns away, anger making his movements jagged and harsh. “I’m going back to him, unlike you.”

“Oh, no you’re not.” Whirl grabs him again, a vice claw around his wrist. Cyclonus gives him one last warning look, which Whirl faces head on and without any remorse. “You’re going to help me, if you’d get your processor out of your aft long enough to listen for once.”

“Listen to what?”

“Listen to what I’m saying. Tailgate’s favorite slimes are gone. We weren’t here to help, and he’s having a whole breakdown. You don’t like it. And I don’t like it either, no matter what you think.” Cyclonus doesn’t believe that for a second, but Whirl does sound like he’s desperately trying to make Cyclonus understand, not like he’s mocking him. There is no trace of mockery in his tone, despite the callous way he had treated Tailgate’s feelings in the house only moments ago. “And we can’t just— comfort him, because you have the emotional intelligence of a socket wrench and I’m me. So what do we do? We fix it.”

Cyclonus stares.

Whirl, fixing something? Because someone is sad? Whirl doesn’t fix things. Whirl doesn’t care if someone is sad. This—this isn’t who Whirl is. “And why do you care?” There has to be something. Some reason, some purpose behind him doing this. Whirl does not do anything unless it serves him in some way.

This is not real. Not like he’s trying to convince him it is.

Whirl stares back at him. For a long moment he’s silent, meeting Cyclonus’ distrust and disbelief head on, without any reaction to possibly hint at what he’s thinking. Where there should be anger, or a laugh at Cyclonus’ expense, or something, there’s simply… nothing. Whirl just looks at him for an unsettlingly long time, like there are far more thoughts for him to mull over than Cyclonus could have guessed.

And finally, he speaks. It’s quiet, serious. No mockery, no anger. Almost devoid of emotion entirely. “Forget I’m involved with this, okay? This isn’t about me. This is about Tailgate, and how he doesn’t deserve what he just went through. You can agree on that one, right? So then help me fix it, and shut up.”

Cyclonus considers it. Staring at Whirl, studying the details of his body language, attempting to find some clue to tell that he’s lying, but there’s nothing. And as much as he doesn’t want to leave Tailgate alone to suffer in isolation after losing something important to him, as much as that thought makes buried memories shift and writhe in the depths of his mind, Cyclonus knows he wouldn’t know how to help if he tried.

Likely, he would only make it worse if he did.

“Fine. How, exactly, do you plan to fix this? Tailgate’s slimes are gone.”

“Tailgate had to get them from somewhere. All we have to do is get them again, and replace the ones he had.”

“You think you can erase his pain so easily, just by getting him new slimes?”

That makes Whirl stare at him again. That same stare that says so little, yet which distinctly seems as if there is so much more going on behind it. Slowly, as if afraid the words will trip them if he says them too quickly, Whirl speaks. “… No. I don’t think we can erase it. What’s done is done, and we just have to deal with it.”

He looks down at his claws as he says it. Only for a moment; optic rising back up so quickly Cyclonus could almost believe he’d imagined it.

“But maybe— I mean, pit, I don’t know. Maybe it’ll help, okay? Maybe he would like to have some of it back.” Whirl’s voice is rising, barely restrained emotion making it louder with each word. “Even if it’s not the same. Even if it will never be the same. Wouldn’t something be better than nothing? Wouldn’t anything be better than nothing?”

Cyclonus has a strange feeling that he’s not really talking about Tailgate anymore.

“If you lost everything—” Whirl starts again, voice falling just as quickly as it rose, but Cyclonus barely notices. He’s too busy forcing down an instinctive, defensive surge of anger at those words. “—wouldn’t you want it back? Even just… some of it? A little, tiny part of it? Any of it?”

His answer comes, by no conscious choice of his own, without hesitation. Fueled only by the sheer force of its truth; by nothing but the faint memory of a shop’s door chime, and a feeling that registers in his spark now as only pain.

“Yes.”

Silence drops between them, an unknown sort of tension in the air. Neither move, neither speak, seemingly equally as frozen in place as the other. Whirl almost looks like he didn’t even expect that answer from Cyclonus, just as much as Cyclonus didn’t expect to admit it.

Whirl is the first to look away, resetting his vocalizer.

“Anyway. Less talking, more actually doing something about it. I’d rather not have to deal with a sad, mopey, depressed Tailgate for the rest of the time we’re stuck here.” And… Whirl’s voice is back to that usual flippancy. That careless tone, apathetic to anyone but himself. The tone he uses most often, falling into like a default setting. Only moments ago, Cyclonus listened to his voice rise, emotions running high without the anger he has always shown. Something genuine, now vanished like it was nothing.

The change is too fast. It’s too easy. A mask to slip into, arranged perfectly in front of the truth each and every time.

It’s… it’s fake. Whirl is— Whirl is—

“Come on, slime planet to Cyclonus. You’re the one who was just complaining about abandoning him, remember? So get moving, we have work to do.”

Whirl pretends he doesn’t care.

That— Cyclonus shakes his head. That is a thought to dissect another time, because right now, Whirl is staring at him like he’s considering if Cyclonus’ greyed frame might be more helpful. “Fine.” He agrees, not entirely remembering whatever it was Whirl said last.

“Great! Primus, that only took forever. You really ought to update your hardware, you must be getting rusty. Literally, I do mean literally.” At the very least, the insults are familiar territory. Whirl fidgets; walking in a circle, clacking his claws together. It would look like some strange summoning ritual if Cyclonus didn’t already assume he was trying to think of a course of action only now. “The question is, how do we find out where Tailgate even got those slimes?”

“If he was the first here, it’s likely he recorded logs of his discoveries.” Cyclonus offers. “Though if they are stored anywhere, it is likely—”

“In his house. Or on his computer, which is also in his house. With him.”

This seems like a pointless blockade. “Why, exactly, do you believe he cannot know or be involved?”

“Did you listen to anything I said? He’d never let us. He’d say it’s fine, and then go be sad somewhere. And I don’t even know if he would ever replace them for himself either, do you know how hard it is to start over with something you liked as much as he liked those things?”

There it is again. Whirl speaking about this like he knows, like he’s been in Tailgate’s place before. Differently than Cyclonus, perhaps. “What did…” He finds himself speaking, slowly, almost hesitant. Almost afraid of what the answer could possibly be. “What did you lose?”

Whirl stares at him. He clacks his claws suddenly, like a snap of fingers. “Y’know what? We can just ask Rodimus. He’s pretty stupid, but he lives here. He’s gotta know something.”

He turns, marching towards the barn without waiting for any sort of acknowledgement, and ignores Cyclonus’ question so blatantly it was as if he’d never asked it in the first place.

“The storm,” Cyclonus starts, chasing after him. Rodimus said the storm was likely to knock the teleporters offline. It could have happened already, or it could happen any moment if it hasn’t.

“Don’t care!” Whirl throws back, casual disregard of danger in full effect. “That’s all we got. I’m not just gonna go waltzing through those random other teleporters, who knows who else has shacked up on this planet. This could be Megatron’s vacation home for all we know, and I am not risking knocking on that guy’s door.”

Cyclonus highly doubts that is the case.

Whirl does not hesitate in the least to go into the barn and straight to Rodimus’ teleporter, to the point that he has already disappeared by the time Cyclonus even makes it through the door. It’s nothing like the first time, when Whirl had taken so long to follow him through; which he’s certain Whirl would claim talking to Tailgate as the reason for, yet he’s equally certain that would be a lie.

Now, the lack of hesitance whatsoever feels more like he’s running from Cyclonus’ question than anything. As if he wants the lesser of two threats, and has decided the teleporter is exactly that.

He is left with no choice but to wait. Cyclonus will not be pulling the same reckless stunt, disinclined to get himself ripped through space yet again. As well, if Whirl is so concerned about how Tailgate feels, has he not considered how Tailgate would feel if they got themselves killed or disappeared completely right after his slimes?

It wouldn’t exactly make him feel better.

Especially the disappearing. Tailgate may not be as close to them, as… but as friendly as he is, Cyclonus is sure it would bother him if they vanished without a trace. Without explanation.

Without a goodbye.

Luckily, that reality seems it will not come to pass. Whirl reappears, dripping with what is presumably rainwater. “Okay, two things. One, turns out Rodimus screams like a little bitch if you bang on his door in the middle of a storm in the dark, which is hilarious.”

Cyclonus can only wonder why he has decided to listen to this mech after all.

“And two, he told me where to go. And we,” Whirl turns, eyeing the walls of the barn. The walls that are filled with spare parts for Tailgate’s gear. No copies of his strange gun; but the tanks, indeed, are there. Unsurprisingly, Whirl grabs a few, searching for attachments to carry them with. “Are going to need these.”

If the situation Cyclonus now finds himself in had happened only a few weeks ago, he would have assumed he’d been lured away by Whirl to be murdered in the woods.

Whirl has brought him to a far edge of the land that is presumably considered Tailgate’s, but outside of his ranch. They flew here, perhaps—hopefully—led by coordinates given by Rodimus and not simply verbal directions. Long left behind are the orange cliffs of the biome Tailgate calls home, replaced by the long and winding paths below of an overgrown forest.

Whirl alights onto a massive fallen tree trunk, bridging the gap between two segments of land otherwise broken by a river. It’s high up, a relatively decent vantage point even as the trees on every side grow much, much higher.

There are paths into the woods on either side of the trunk. They are open, vibrant, lit by strangely glowing plants even in the dark. Bright pink flowers and pale blue mushrooms cast a gentle glow, preventing complete shadow even in the places where the trees block out the moonlight.

But neither of those paths, it seems, are the place they need to go. Whirl turns towards the ocean and, inevitably, draws Cyclonus’ attention to a third path.

A wooden path. Built into the wall of a cliff, making its way out over the water and around the corner to somewhere unseen. “Looks like that’s the way.” Whirl comments smoothly, and jumps down without waiting for a response, or checking that Cyclonus follows him.

Turning the corner presents them with a new section of forest, seemingly removed from the rest. The high rock walls divide it from the other area entirely, even hiding it from view from all sides except that on the ocean. It looks exactly the same as the rest, the same massive trees and glowing plantlife.

Except that it feels… different. Cyclonus cannot place exactly how, and he has no choice but to venture forward in a bid to keep up with Whirl and not lose him in this place, but the feeling lingers.

The land is in small chunks, almost like islands, broken apart by large gaps of water. More wooden pathways bridge the gaps between them, at first; ending entirely by the third small island, with nothing but a partially destroyed mound of wet and rotting wood to tell it had ever been there.

Ahead, it’s clear there are no more. Whoever was building here—Tailgate?—gave up, or chose not to continue, after this point.

The only question is why.

Whirl does not have similar thoughts. He jumps the gap, bridging the distance easily but seemingly without stopping to consider if he could. Reckless, as usual.

“Y’know…” Whirl says, almost conversationally, but mostly suspiciously, as Cyclonus follows him over much more carefully. “We both have tanks on us, and we need at least a few slimes, so…” There’s a dangerous twinkle in his optic, the kind that spells trouble. “I bet I can find more of ‘em than you can.”

“No. We are not here to play your pointless games.” Cyclonus refuses. It does nothing to dissuade Whirl, who leers at him.

“You’re just afraid of losing.”

Cyclonus ignores him. There is no pointless game if Whirl cannot goad anyone into playing with him.

There are less breaks in the land ahead, less ocean to risk falling into, but not necessarily any easier to navigate on foot. This place is notably less travelled, without paths worn into it over time, leaving them without a clear way forward. It also creates plenty of places for things to hide; fallen trees, some hollow and some not, crevices in rocks and walls, endless plant life dotted all throughout.

It hits him, as the landscape changes to higher cliffs and bigger trees to navigate through, just why this area feels so strange.

It’s empty.

He has not seen a single slime since they arrived. There were some in the other parts of the forest, before they took the wooden path, but since then there have been none. Other than themselves, nothing here moves. There is only them, the plants, and the silence.

Too quiet, too still. Like a held breath, the calm before a storm.

Behind him, a plant rustles. Cyclonus snaps to look at it, but there is nothing there. The bush that made the noise is still swaying, ever so slightly, as if something knocked into it. Nothing else around it is moving.

“What are you, tired already?” Whirl calls out to him, from much further ahead. He has to yell for his voice to carry, a sound just a bit too loud in the silence. Like it doesn’t belong.

There’s a feeling creeping up Cyclonus’ back, prickling under his mesh. It’s one he knows far too well, one that he has long since learned to trust, partially even because of the very mech he is now hurrying to catch up with. Because this time, he knows Whirl isn’t the source of it, the one hiding around a corner waiting for a chance to strike.

It’s something else that’s watching them.

The feeling only grows stronger when he catches up. It looms, the storm threatening to break. Whirl gives him a strange look, a head tilt, perhaps even readying himself to ask a question; like he has not noticed the strange details around them, but somehow has noticed Cyclonus reacting to them.

Over Whirl’s shoulder, he sees something move. Before he can say anything, Cyclonus shoves past him, instinct driving him into a protective stance. “Rude, you could’ve just—”

Whatever Cyclonus saw moves again, alerting Whirl to its presence as well. Plants rustle, shaking, and in the darkness underneath them, yellow eyes blink open.

“That’s it!”

Whirl shoves right back in front of Cyclonus, charging toward the eyes. He’s fast, moves without hesitation, and snatches the creature into the vice grips of his claws before it can possibly attempt to run from him.

When he turns, the slime is wriggling in his grip. It appears less calm, less empty headed than the others. Those bright eyes, glowing in the darkness, almost seem to glower at them.

“These are what we’re looking for.” Whirl confirms, nodding to himself as if even he wasn’t entirely sure of what he was looking for. Cyclonus can only hope he has assessed it correctly, and is not simply wrong.

Because as it stands… the slime squirms harder, uselessly biting down on Whirl’s claw, but too small to do any harm. “Are you certain this is Tailgate’s favorite slime?”

“Yup. The eyes definitely give it away.” Before it can wriggle free and escape, Whirl shoves it into one of the tanks, twisting a lid to keep it contained. Even inside the glass, the slime almost appears to bristle. “And now I’m in the lead!”

Emboldened, perhaps equally by the confirmation of exactly what they’re here for as well as for the catch itself, Whirl takes off before Cyclonus can even remind him they are still not playing a game. He charges ahead, vaulting higher into the trees and cliffs and disappearing into the greenery.

Cyclonus sighs, regretting every choice that led him here.

The feeling of being watched returns with a vengeance. It feels like someone is standing over his shoulder, but when he turns, there is no one there. Whirl is gone, far ahead, the slime he’d captured taken with him. There is not a single sound to be heard past his own vents and the ticking of his chrono, not a single plant swaying in the wind.

And yet, he knows there is something here. It presses in from all sides, like he’s surrounded, like an ambush he simply hasn’t seen yet.

For just a moment, a thought crosses his mind. A return to his initial feeling about this area, of it being a way to get rid of him. Surely not, not now, for seemingly no reason at all. But…

The air shimmers, almost. Like heat over a flame, it wavers, distorting the images behind it. Just as before, eyes open up in the darkness, but they are not like the slime Whirl just captured. They’re much larger, with much darker glares to match. One by one, with each tick of his chrono echoing in his head, more appear around him.

He is surrounded, and Whirl is nowhere to be seen.

What that means, he doesn’t have time to consider. These are not like the slimes at Tailgate’s ranch, or even the ones Rodimus has. They are angry, growling noises escaping them that he wasn’t even aware the slimes could make.

One of them launches itself at him with full force, an attack which he blocks with his sword. He expects the creature to slice in half on contact; except it doesn’t. It slams into the sharp side of his blade with enough force to shove him backwards, his feet sliding in the dirt, but it does nothing to the slime. The slime simply bounces off, as if it cannot be cut with his blade.

Or, perhaps, with any blade.

Another one slams in from another direction he is not ready for, still recovering from the first one. It shoves him further, rocks crumbling underfoot and throwing him off balance with the sensation of the ground attempting to give way under him. They’ve shoved him to the edge of this island; with nothing but the ocean below, thick and sludge-like in the darkness.

Cyclonus cannot fight these. For whatever reason, they are impervious to damage at least from his weapon. Nor can he transform here, the canopy of trees, trailing vines and plants on all sides leave him with no room to maneuver, no escape without getting caught and tangled if he did.

Turning and sheathing his weapon in one, Cyclonus lunges for the next island. Grabbing the top edge and ignoring the eerily still water below, he pulls himself up before the feral slimes can attempt to knock him down.

He’s certain they can follow him, and they likely will. What he did not expect was for there to be more, slipping out of shadows and from under plants from seemingly every direction, continuing to crowd him just the same.

Ahead, in the direction Whirl disappeared off to but is no longer anywhere to be seen, the path only gets worse. The land is more broken up here, some areas seemingly washed away into the ocean, and the next safe platform is an uncomfortably far distance away with nothing but ocean in between. It’s one that Whirl likely took without hesitation, but which Cyclonus has a sinking feeling he may not be able to make.

He can only wonder, in fact, if Whirl even did make it across.

Another slime crashes into him, slamming him against a tree trunk with enough force to make his chrono stutter. It leaves him still within the slime’s space, which it takes advantage of, biting down on the nearest part of him it can reach. And unlike the little one from before, this one has force behind it, biting into his arm hard enough to leave deep gouges in his outer plating.

Shoving it off, he doesn’t have any more time to waste. The others are right behind it, movements telegraphing that they’re getting ready to launch themselves next in a successive barrage he won’t be able to fight off so easily. Cyclonus runs for the edge, able to do nothing more than hope that he has enough speed to make it across.

The other side comes almost within reach. He stretches, aiming for the upper edge, and misses. Slamming into the wall, he is weightless for just a moment before gravity takes over and pulls his weight towards the water below.

And just as quickly, his descent stops, a vice grip digging into his wrist. He looks up.

Determined yellow stares back at him. It takes him a solid moment to realize it’s Whirl; stretched precariously far over the edge to catch him. His processor stalls, tripping over an impossibility it doesn’t know how to comprehend.

“You,” Whirl huffs, straining. “Are heavy.”

As short as it is, the insult confirms that it’s actually him. That it’s actually Whirl leaning over the edge, anchored by nothing but his lower half and crumbling rock splashing into the water below. That Whirl is the one risking his own self to keep Cyclonus from falling.

He… doesn’t know what to think. All he can do is stare, previous thoughts of ambush and abandonment falling away, replaced by the fact that it's Whirl standing as the only anchor between him and a likely very miserable death. One that Whirl, in fact, had no obligation to keep him from.

Whirl shifts, inching himself back, attempting to gain more leverage. It makes more of the cliff edge crumble under him, but Whirl ignores it, seemingly getting enough support under himself to heave backwards and yank Cyclonus up with him. The water disappears from sight, the dangling gravity replaced by solid ground to collapse onto.

Faint huffs beside him are the only thing Cyclonus has to confirm to himself that actually just happened. Turning his head, he finds Whirl sprawled right there with him, a tangled pile of limbs that may actually be partially under himself.

“You…” Cyclonus says, without really meaning to speak. The words aren’t even in his head, only the concept, as if putting it into words will shake too much of what he thought he understood.

And… and Whirl glares at him. “Look, don’t get all in your head about it or anything. What, am I just supposed to go back, like ‘hey, sorry Tailgate, got you some new slimes but your favorite piece of gaudy decor died, sorry’? I don’t think so.” He turns his head, letting it fall with a faint thunk onto the ground, breaking eye contact. “Also, if you died, then I wouldn’t get to kill you. And! You’d be leaving all the work up to me! You’re not getting out of this slime catching business that easily.”

Cyclonus goes limp himself, collapsing fully back onto the ground to stare at the canopy of leaves above, and the stars that peek through between them. It feels like the ground beneath him is unsteady, shifting, moving; but his internal readings tell him he isn’t moving at all.

Whirl is talking with the same voice he’d used on Tailgate, in the house. When he’d brushed him off; acted like Tailgate was a nuisance; and proceeded to drag Cyclonus into all of this… just to make Tailgate feel better. The voice that was ultimately a ruse, meant to cover up what he truly intended.

Except now, he’s using it on Cyclonus.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?”

“Not even slightly!”

There’s a sigh from somewhere behind him, because Cyclonus is boring and doesn’t like fun. And, sure, Whirl wouldn’t necessarily call this fun, but… well, it’s not like he can mess this thing up any more than it already is. Unless he manages to make it catch fire, but then that would just be entertaining, so it would still be a win in his book.

The access panel of this post is discarded on the ground next to him, a mess of wires hanging out of the inside like a mechanically gory mess. Or maybe electrically? Whatever. Whirl has no idea what most of them do, but luckily for him, most of them are still plugged in. Which means he gets to just take the few that aren’t, plug them into random ports, and see what happens!

It’s, like, a fifty percent chance of exploding, probably. Which is probably fine.

Whirl tries one combination, and nothing happens, so he tries another. That one makes a weird popping noise, which he kind of wants to see the outcome of, but not as much as he wants this to actually work, so he undoes that one too.

By the third one, something flickers. It’s the energy emitters at the sides of the posts, which is a… good sign? Maybe? “Did I fix it?”

Cyclonus stalks around the pen. Or maybe lurks, walking around kind of ominously, staring at the posts. “I think they’re still out of alignment.” He says, squinting, tilting his head. Then he steps up, shoving a post in whatever direction it apparently needed to go in.

Around and around he goes, pushing and pulling at the posts until he apparently deems them probably somewhere close to a ninety degree angle. And, at the last one, the energy field flickers back to life. Whirl blinks at it. “Y’know, I didn’t actually expect that to work. I just wanted to mess with it and see if it caught fire.”

“My sincerest apologies at the loss of your arsonistic fun.” Cyclonus quips back at him, like— was that a joke? Cyclonus knows how to make jokes? The world is ending.

Standing up, Whirl shakes out his joints. “Okay, so… that’s it, I guess. We have a pen, and we have slimes, so… now we just turn them into bigger slimes and hope we do it right.”

“It cannot be that hard.”

“Yeah, but do you want to go through all of that again?” Whirl throws back, because he sure as pit doesn’t. Watching Cyclonus almost get eaten by feral slimes was funny, but it was a lot less funny when the next ones came after Whirl. He can still feel the bites throbbing, the dents and punctures of—who would’ve guessed—saber teeth on saber slimes.

“... No.”

“That’s what I thought.” Staring down at the tanks they’re carrying, Whirl has a better idea. “Actually, hang on. Can’t we just… dump them all in there? They’ll fuse together eventually on their own, probably. I think he said they do that.”

Cyclonus looks kind of like he wants to argue, except then he realizes Whirl is right, because he is.

Whirl does, of course, make sure to pop the lids with his arms inside the energy field and the rest of his body outside of the energy field, though. For one, he doesn’t want these things escaping after they worked so hard to catch them. And two? He doesn’t want to get chomped again. As it stands, he feels like one of those human kitchen tools he saw a commercial for once—a cheese grater? Yeah, that sounds right.

Also, he’s pretty sure the slimes are still angry. They’ve been glaring from inside of the tanks for a few hours now, which is kind of funny when they’ve squished down to match the shape of the inside of the tanks, but less funny when he remembers they have to come out at some point. Like, y’know, right now.

In fact, he hopes the energy field is actually even still strong enough to contain them after being broken and haphazardly fixed by a guy without servos, but they’ll be finding out real fast if it’s not.

Apparently having the same thought, Cyclonus matches him, so that they’re both dumping their captured slimes in at once. Light and dark brown slimes of varying levels of both angry and toothy escape their little glass prisons, clustering together inside the pen and growling at their captors.

And… actually, it doesn't take long for them to start fusing together, just like the ones Tailgate showed them did, since they’re squishing together all defensively like that. Which is great! Except that the bigger, stronger slimes that they turn into also look a whole lot angrier. Kind of like the ones that were trying to eat them for the past several hours.

They slam against the inside of the pen, but the energy field holds, leaving them unable to do anything else but sit inside and continue shooting both of them withering glares.

“They are…” Cyclonus comments, apparently not sure how to finish that thought.

“Friendly?” Whirl offers, helpfully.

“You seemed quite sure of this plan.” Oooh, he can feel an insult coming. Cyclonus gives the slimes a sideways glance. “I… am not sure these compare to the ones Tailgate had.”

“Oh yeah? They’re plenty friendly! Totally harmless! Wouldn’t hurt a fly.” One of them slams against the wall again, hissing, when Whirl gestures in front of the pen. “...Maybe!”

“I have my doubts about this.”

“Look, what else are we supposed to do?” Whirl throws back. All of this effort, all night spent chasing after very bitey slimes—proven by the amount of teeth marks on the both of them and the sun now rising over the water—and suddenly Cyclonus changes his mind? “Tailgate—”

“Cyclonus? …Whirl?”

—is right there.

Whirl spins around at a totally normal, totally not caught doing something he shouldn’t have, pace. Tailgate is coming down the wooden path, servo trailing the stone wall behind him and steps slow in a distracted kind of way, all while staring at them. Instinctively, Whirl tries to lean against one of the posts of the pen, and he’s almost glad Cyclonus yanks him away from it before he can try.

But only because he doesn’t want to get mauled again. He’s offended, otherwise.

“What are you…” Tailgate looks past them. His visor is bright, flickering, a telltale sign of a whole lot of emotions happening all at once. Hopefully they’re not bad, whatever they are.

“Uh. Surprise?” Whirl tries, while Cyclonus says nothing. Unhelpful piece of…

Tailgate comes over, slowly, almost like he thinks he’s dreaming. He stares at the two of them for most of the way, making Whirl fidget, before turning his attention back to the pen beside them. A servo reaches out, slow and unsure, landing on a dented fencepost. Then he leans around it, looking inside.

And of course, one of the slimes slams against the wall in an attempt to attack him. “We, uh…” Whirl starts.

“...Tried.”

He’d be mad if Cyclonus wasn’t right.

Tailgate doesn’t answer either of them. Something about him—softens? Somehow? Something all genuine and fond and gross.

Whirl kind of thought he could predict what Tailgate’s reaction might be. Maybe more crying, or maybe some super excited, happy-bouncy thank yous that would be more in line with his usual behavior, or even better, something they could have finished this in time not to witness at all and pretend to have no involvement when Tailgate tried to bring it up later.

What he never could have expected was for Tailgate to reach into the pen full of very bitey slimes.

They both lurch forward on instinct, half-started warnings echoing out of both of them, but Tailgate stops them with a raised servo in their direction. “Shhh.” He says, calmly, going back to reaching, and then leaning, into the pen.

And Whirl thought his ideas were bad.

The slimes growl and snarl, glaring and radiating the same murderous energy the two of them have had to dodge all night. Tailgate doesn’t react to it at all, or seem bothered in the slightest. He just… makes quiet, calming noises, moving slowly into the pen with them. His servos are held out, fingers wiggling slightly, but he doesn’t seem to reach too close to the slimes.

One of them leans forward enough to sniff him, and recoils with a hiss, setting off the others with hisses of their own. “It’s okay.” Tailgate murmurs, a little bit louder, like it’s for the two of them as much as it is for the slimes. Just as slowly, he settles down onto his knees, sitting on the floor of the pen. Still with his servos held out, still with that same calm energy.

Whirl takes back everything he’s ever said or thought about Tailgate. Minus the parts about being crazy, and short. One because him being short is just a fact, and two? Literally everything that’s going on right now.

Especially because it’s apparently working.

The slimes glare at him, defensive and aggressive and obviously considering trying to smash him into the ground, but they don’t. And he just… waits. Ever so patient, like he would wait years if that’s what it took. Like he doesn’t mind how long it takes, like, at all.

To Whirl, it feels like they stand there in this weird sort of expectant silence for an uncomfortably long time, but he kind of doesn’t want to wander off out of boredom, or honestly even move at all. He feels like the slightest movement will set the damn things off again, and yeah, that would be a great feel-better gift. ‘Here, Tailgate, we brought you a free mauling.’ That would sure be so helpful.

So he doesn’t move, and waits to see what’ll happen. And for a long, long few minutes, nothing does, to the point that he’d almost think they managed to break Tailgate and also the slimes and that time will never progress ever again.

At least until one of the slimes moves again. Closer; almost… curious? Like it’s as confused by him sitting there as they kind of are, and they actually know what he’s up to. Kinda. It inches closer and closer, until it can sniff his servo again, except this time it doesn’t rear back or hiss.

Tailgate reaches back for it, gently setting his servo on its head, and pets it. Whirl kind of expects that to be the breaking point, for it to remember that it wants to eat him; and it kind of is, just not the eating part. Its eyes do—something—and turn more yellow than the angry dark color they’ve been the whole time they were trying to eat him, and it… butts into the touch.

And purrs.

“Hunters and sabers have the strongest personalities of all the slimes.” Tailgate starts talking, still in that same, soothing tone, but the words make it pretty clear he’s not still talking to the slimes themselves. “They are the most aggressive, but that’s not because they’re mean. They just…”

He keeps petting it. It practically turns to mush in his servos, which isn’t much considering it’s already a slime, but it melts over his knees until he’s practically half buried under a blanket made of jelly. The others creep closer, looking less angry and more curious with each passing second.

And he turns. Leans his head against it, holding it as much as it’s holding him, and looks back at the both of them with a much more fitting, vibrant color to his visor.

“They just need time to know they’re safe.”

Chapter Text

Whirl was, and Cyclonus didn’t think he would ever have this thought, correct. Tailgate’s vibrancy returns to him seemingly tenfold at the return of his slimes, even if they aren’t exactly the same ones he’d had. It makes the night feel like it had been worth it, worth the danger and the pockmarks left by teeth that they both have as a result.

It feels… right, strangely. As if, while Tailgate drags them back to his house with the normal exuberance Cyclonus has come to expect from him, things are as they should be. Like the calm after a storm, instead of just a continual progression ever downward. Which in and of itself feels strange to him, the unfamiliarity of something actually turning out well in the end.

At least assuming it isn’t a front. What they’d witnessed after Tailgate’s slimes had been destroyed, the ghost of a self he seemingly buries deep within himself, cannot be a mere one off instance. It was a hint to something deeper, long hidden from any who might see it, exposed like a raw circuit by the circumstances.

Like a broken illusion, witnessing it has taught Cyclonus that there is more to this strange mech than the constant happiness he shows. That he, seemingly, only pretends to always feel; but even so, despite the fact that knowing as much could just as easily make Cyclonus believe that what he shows now is equally fake, it somehow accomplishes the opposite.

Because as Tailgate pulls them inside, chattering and asking questions about their adventure to replace his slimes, there’s a different kind of brightness to him. If he were to attempt to describe it to someone else, he doesn’t think he could succeed in explaining exactly how it’s different from before, but it is. As if knowing what it looks like when Tailgate is pretending has now taught him how to see when he is not.

And he knows, with inexplicable certainty, that what is being shown to them now is more genuine than any before. As if the illusion was broken, the curtain ripped down, only to show a truer form of the very same thing behind it.

“You really went to the wilds?” Tailgate is asking, his visor flickering not with emotion, but with the strain of just how brightly it’s glowing. The moment Whirl sits down in his usual corner, Tailgate is bounding over to him, freely barging into his space and inspecting him for damage while Whirl freezes like he doesn’t know how to react. “I really wish you hadn’t gone there alone and unprepared, but… you did really well!”

And as if to deflect from the attention being fawned onto him, Whirl attempts a joke. “What, you’re not going to freak out over these?” He asks, waving a saber-bitten arm.

“Well, I do kind of want to. The wilds can be really, really dangerous, so honestly you’re really lucky nothing went horribly wrong.” Tailgate’s voice drops to a more realistic, down to earth level as he grabs the very same medkit they’d used on him only hours ago. Whirl doesn’t look particularly happy about it being used on him now, but he doesn’t actually refuse Tailgate sitting in his space and treating him. “But then again, you’re both probably used to that kind of thing. And… I mean, you did it for me. It would kind of undermine your decision to go out of your way for me if I just got upset about what could have happened.”

He looks up, giving Whirl some kind of an expression that causes Whirl to stiffly look away. When he turns it on Cyclonus a moment after, he can understand why; there’s a genuine, thankful warmth in the look that makes him want to squirm under it.

“Thank you. Both of you.” Finished with Whirl, Tailgate makes his way to Cyclonus to repeat the same treatment on him. Gentle servos lift one of his arms, fingertips running impossibly delicately over aching dents. In lieu of a face, Tailgate’s smile shines through in his voice. “Maybe don’t do it again though, okay? As grateful as I am, I’d rather you didn’t die trying to do something for me.”

“See, I told you so.” Whirl sneers at Cyclonus, right back to his usual self now that he isn’t the one being uncomfortably doted on. Little does he know, it makes for a phenomenal distraction from the heat attempting to gather behind his faceplates.

“I seem to recall being the one to tell you that, actually.” Cyclonus deadpans back. He doesn’t expect the comment to draw a laugh out of Tailgate, mid-patch application.

“Never change, you two.” He says, fondly.

The growing warmth returns with a vengeance, leaving Cyclonus no choice but to forcibly look away and stamp down the fluttery feeling the comment brings up in him. What it means, or why such a sentence would give him such a feeling, are not things he is particularly interested in trying to unpack at the moment.

Finished with his work, Tailgate stands up, servos on his hips and looking proud of himself for subjecting them both to being cared for. Or perhaps proud of them, but that thought makes the feeling worse, so Cyclonus chooses to stick to the previous assumed reason.

“Well! Since you two put in so much effort for me, how about we do something special today? Maybe…” He looks around, gaze falling on the hearth. “I know! Do you like, uh… what do I know how to make… how about jellied energon?”

Cyclonus cannot think of a single other dish that would be more predictable from the mech whose entire life revolves around slimes. Even still, it’s a suggestion that Cyclonus finds he is in no way opposed to. In fact, it sounds almost… nice.

There’s a loud groan from Whirl’s corner. A sound which Cyclonus immediately takes as protest, and is equally as quickly disproven when Whirl says, “Pipsqueak, you have no idea how long it’s been since I’ve had real cooking.”

“Really?”

Whirl turns to Cyclonus. “Are ‘cons as bad about rations as the ‘bots are? Because I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen anything that could be considered actual food in… Uh, actually, I’m not gonna say, because it sounds less pathetic that way.”

It isn’t a topic Cyclonus has spared much thought towards. Fuel is fuel, and matters little in the face of the tasks at hand. But now that Whirl mentions it, assuming his faction is as similar about the topic as it sounds, he can understand why Whirl would feel that actually admitting how long it has been since he’s had anything but concentrated liquid rations would seem ‘pathetic.’

“There are more important matters to worry about during a war than the soldiers being given luxuries.” Is what Cyclonus ends up saying in agreement. Whirl gives him a strange look, while Tailgate stares at him like he’s just said something extremely questionable.

“Real food isn’t a luxury, Cyclonus.” Tailgate states, almost like he can’t believe he has to say as much. Whirl barks a laugh.

“Try telling that to upper command! Actually, don’t, that’s a terrible idea.”

Tailgate stares, looking back and forth between the two of them for a few moments more, before apparently making up his mind. “Well, in that case, it’s settled. More actual cooking it is!” He turns, slipping a large pan from the wall and setting it into the hearth. Under his breath he adds, “as soon as I learn more recipes, anyway.”

The house lapses into a warm silence as they watch Tailgate work. Despite his usual habit of chattering at length during any task, this time, he falls into a focused kind of quiet. Attention pinned on the pan and the bubbling mixture inside, it’s only the faintly muttered and nearly unintelligible complaints that betray what may be a lack of skill in this particular area.

It would seem, as far as Cyclonus can tell, that Tailgate must not actually do this very often. The thought fits; the mental image of Tailgate opting for the quick and efficient liquid fuel more often than not feels particularly accurate to him as a person, slotting in alongside the mentioned workaholicism like a puzzle piece.

Not that Cyclonus has any room to speak on the topic, however.

With a frustrated sigh that Cyclonus can only read as boredom and frayed patience, Whirl stands. He looms over Tailgate’s shoulder, butting into his space and leering down at the pan.

“You’re stirring too fast, it’ll never come together like that.” Tilting his head, he looks down at the fire. “And it’s not hot enough.”

Tailgate doesn’t question him. He leaves the spoon at rest, grabbing a chunk of firewood from a pile to shove into the ashes. In the meantime, Whirl takes the spoon, holding it aloft and only occasionally scraping it through the mixture. Unlike Tailgate’s stiff and second-guessed motions, Whirl moves with the same sort of coordinated confidence Cyclonus has seen seasoned warriors fight with.

Not including Whirl, of course. His fighting style involves chaos and unpredictability, a raging storm instead of a controlled waterfall. Which makes it all the more strange to see him be steady, calm, with the casual assurance of someone that knows what he’s doing well enough to barely even think about it.

Like the gears of a machine, they click together. Whirl gives his advice and patient directions, while Tailgate listens to him without question. It’s a calm, almost domestic moment, in which Whirl almost seems to forget himself and what he’s supposed to be. Especially as the contents of the pan come together as intended, seemingly for the first time under Tailgate’s attempts based on his reaction.

He bounces in place after they successfully flip the cohesive disk of cooked ingredients, beaming up at Whirl with a vibrancy that flickers with excess energy. “I didn’t know you knew how to cook! Where’d you learn? Do you know any others? Can you teach me?!”

“I—” The mundaneity of the moment bleeds away from Whirl like an unplugged electrical cable. He looks away, scratching at the side of his neck with a claw, remembering himself and withdrawing all over again. “It’s nothing special. Lived alone before the war and all that, y’know, like most mechs.”

In an attempt to seem busy, or perhaps distract himself from the moment, Whirl takes the time to cut the food they’d made into small squares with the spoon. Tailgate makes himself helpful, offering dishes for Whirl to serve portions onto. The first is handed to Cyclonus, the second held aside by Tailgate, and the third…

“I, uh, nah.” Whirl says, more of a series of noises than any kind of a sentence. He waves a claw. When Tailgate still continues holding the plate to him, confused, he takes it uncharacteristically gently and sets it back on its shelf.

“Aren’t you going to—”

“Nah.” Whirl pulls down a cup instead, filling it from the reservoir of liquid energon that Tailgate keeps around. He returns to his place on the floor like he’d never moved at all. “Don’t give me that look, I’d try it if I could. It’s the count that thoughts, or whatever.”

“Don’t you mean the thought that counts?” Tailgate questions, still sounding confused, slowly sitting down onto the floor himself.

“That’s what I said.”

“That’s not—”

They devolve over the topic, Tailgate arguing back over the sentence and Whirl doubling down that he’d been right from the start. It’s not an angry or real argument, it’s banter, silly and lighthearted and filling the silence in the spaces between them.

And, most importantly and whether Tailgate picked up on it or not, it’s a distraction. Whirl has a wrist line, one that he slips into his cup and slowly drains of its contents while they bicker. It’s done silently, subtly, without fanfare and as if Whirl didn’t want it to be noticed at all.

Cyclonus has seen him fuel before now, of course, but he’d always assumed it was a preference, or simply how he’d been built. Or perhaps a matter of vulnerability; he’s known mechs unwilling to bare their faces or show their intakes in public or in mess halls before. It appears he was wrong.

Because unlike Tailgate, who shows some insecurity in the way he removes his mask but turns somewhat away, who covers his intake with a servo as he eats, Whirl does not. Seemingly cannot; something that Cyclonus would assume was simply a result of his construction were it not for the envious look he gives Tailgate for only a moment before it’s gone.

Perhaps ‘upper command’ is not the true reason Whirl has not had such luxuries, after all.

He has made his feelings on the matter clear, however. The forced casual air as he’d waved it off, the way he intentionally distracted Tailgate before it could be questioned further, before questions could be asked that he did not want to answer. Cyclonus turns his attention to his own food, knowing better than to voice his observations.

The plate is unfamiliar, made of earthy tones and a rough texture, handcrafted and exceptionally outdated. The contents, on the other hand, are strikingly familiar even on its surface.

Imperfect, flattened cubes glow gently in the dim light of the house, the glow of the energon dampened by the other ingredients. They are semi-translucent, stacked haphazardly in a pile, and have little grooves on the sides from being cut into straight edges with a round utensil.

At Tailgate’s mention of the dish, Cyclonus had been intrigued. Now, presented with the real thing, steeped in the charm inherent only to something so undeniably homemade, he isn’t so sure. And he cannot really say why, cannot place the reason for the hesitance that grips him now that it’s actually been handed to him, only that it does.

“The only one here with a mouth, and he doesn’t even know how to use it.” Whirl scoffs. It isn’t incendiary, Cyclonus knows in an instant. It’s searching, thinly veiled as disinterest under Whirl’s usual insults to cover up the fact he wants to know what’s really going on.

He will have to be disappointed, then. Cyclonus doesn’t fully know either, and even if he did, he doesn’t particularly wish to explain the strange, confusing feeling of melancholy that almost seems to stem from the dull glow itself. “I was admiring your work.” He says instead, voicing the first unrelated reason that comes to mind.

Whirl stares at him, a look that somehow manages to be loud without making a sound at all.

“Really?!” Tailgate gasps, voice high and loud in the face of an unexpected compliment. Cyclonus finds himself nodding, finds that despite its use as a distraction of his own, it is not an untrue statement.

“Of course.” With no other way to put it off any longer, Cyclonus lifts one of the squares. “They look just as I remember them.”

And that’s… that’s really all that it is, isn’t it? And it doesn’t end at the appearance. Taking a bite is like stepping through a doorway in his own memories, a vivid familiarity that douses him in nostalgia like a bucket of cold water. He remembers the table, a cheap and mass produced alloy with dents that made it look more like a miniature recreation of a mountain range. The dishes, in all different sizes and shapes and not a single two that ever looked the same.

The flavor is different. Different additives, different mineral content in this energon than it was back then, back there. But the texture is identical, as if it were the very same plate of jellies as it was millions of years ago.

It slams him with an aching, desperate longing for that place. For that kitchen; for its perfect imperfections, for the ever-present light of neon signs through the cracked window, for—

Cyclonus slams it back where it belongs, locked tight into the deepest recesses of his memories.

“It’s very good.” He tells Tailgate, evenly. Tailgate beams at him, bright and awed and genuinely thankful even for such a lackluster compliment. It’s a welcome distraction against the ache rattling against Cyclonus’ emotions from the inside out.

Tailgate turns to Whirl, his demeanor sobering to something gentle. “I’m sorry for making something you can’t eat.” He says, making Whirl stiffen. So he had noticed Whirl’s attempt at distracting him, after all. “I promise it won’t happen next time, okay?”

Whirl looks uncomfortable, and Cyclonus can already see him looking for a way to brush it off, though Tailgate does not push the issue any further. No questions asked, no prompting for further explanation; he says his apology, and returns to his food.

Whirl cannot wait to get out of this. The house is all… cozy, and quiet, with gentle banter here and there between Tailgate and Cyclonus, like this isn’t weird. And it’s kinda not, but it is, because it’s too soft. It itches on the wrong side of his processor, a familiarity that he crushes down with a vengeance before he can even imagine where it’s coming from.

See, this is why he didn’t actually want to be around when Tailgate found his replaced slimes. If they’d been able to put them back like nothing happened and then make themselves scarce before he found them, Whirl would’ve had plausible deniability to fall back on, but no, he just had to discover them in the act. And now he’s all thankful and genuine and being painfully nice to them. It makes him itchy.

He doesn’t even want to think about the rest of it. The whole cooking thing, Tailgate’s sad and confused expression, his apology… ugh. Whirl would rather die.

Which is why, when Tailgate’s computer lights up with an incoming call that interrupts whatever the two of them were saying, Whirl takes it as the one and only time some nonexistent god will be saving him, and answers it without even looking to see who it is.

There isn’t really anything he expects, because he didn’t actually think about it before he did it. But even if he had actually thought about it, whatever he expected wouldn’t have been whatever this is.

Two mechs stand in frame in the video feed. Or— one of them does, anyway. The other is hanging upside down, tangled up in wires and cables that loop down from somewhere up above.

Whirl doesn’t know who they are. The one that’s standing has an Autobot emblem, but he isn’t anyone Whirl remembers ever meeting before, and the other doesn’t have one at all.

But none of that is really all that interesting compared to the chickens. Nevermind the two mechs, nevermind the one being upside down, they are surrounded by chickens. Practically buried in them, really. There’s a few tangled in the wires with the neutral mech, some squished against him and others dangling around him, while one singular chicken has made its home on the Autobot’s head. It’s nestled in place, apparently content as could be.

There’s more in the background, walking across machinery, seemingly having infested every corner of wherever these two are calling from. Neither of them seem phased by the chickens, ignoring them completely like this is normal.

“Hello, Tailg—” The Autobot starts, blinks, and leans closer. On his head, the chicken shuffles to stay balanced. “You aren’t Tailgate.”

Behind him, a dish clatters, and Tailgate clambers into Whirl’s space to join the call. “Hi Percy!”

At the sight of Tailgate, this Percy guy relaxes from the guarded, suspicious demeanor he’d started to take on. It shifts to something more curious. “Ah, there you are. Good morning. I assume this is one of the mechs you told us about, then?”

“Yeah!” Tailgate wraps his arms around Whirl for emphasis, as if there were anyone else in view that he’d have to specify who he was talking about. Whirl tries to ignore how warm he is. “This is Whirl. Whirl, this is Perceptor, and that’s Brainstorm.”

Perceptor dips his head slightly, while Brainstorm gives some kind of a greeting salute that looks really stupid upside down. Tailgate lets go, disappears, and comes barreling back, dragging along Cyclonus against his will.

“And this is Cyclonus!”

Perceptor tilts his head. The chicken adjusts, again. “Interesting. I can only wonder what sort of incident brought the two of you here, but welcome to the Range regardless. Though I’m sure Tailgate has made you feel perfectly welcome on his own already.”

“What’s up with the chickens?” Whirl asks, ignoring everything he just said.

And, in turn, Perceptor ignores the question. “Well, we were calling for Tailgate, but seeing as the two of you appear in good health at this time, I suppose we may extend the invitation if you would like to join as well.”

“What invitation?” Tailgate asks, excitement flaring in his voice. He leans forward, invested and interested already. In the corner of the screen, Whirl can see he leans close enough to make the preview of their own side of the video feed nothing but his face.

Brainstorm is the one to answer, gesturing wildly enough to make himself sway in place. “To test a new invention! I’ve been working on it for ages, and it’s finally at the point Perceptor will let me test it on someone!”

Perceptor gives him a look. “The first static test subjects were deleted from existence on entry, or have you forgotten?”

Waving him off with a level of blatant disregard Whirl can relate to, Brainstorm continues. “Yeah, yeah, it’s tested to Percy’s standards and safe now. Point is, we made a virtual version of the Range and were hoping you could help us test it out.”

“What is the purpose of it?” Cyclonus asks, the first thing he’s said this whole call. Brainstorm throws his arms out wide, proudly, startling the chicken on Perceptor’s head.

“I dunno!”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Perceptor sighs, composes himself, and continues. “It was not designed with a particular purpose, yes. However, it could be useful in learning to navigate the dangers of the Range without subjecting oneself to the actual danger of the real experience, as well as help us understand the traits of the slimes better with more replicable results.”

“Also, I’m pretty sure there’s some weird glitches going on that we need you to find.” Brainstorm adds. “They look like slimes, but neither of us made them. We’re gonna need you to capture and isolate them so we can figure out where they’re coming from.”

“So…” Tailgate hums, processing all of that into an actual language, probably. “You want us to play a virtual video game and capture glitch slimes?”

“No—” Perceptor starts, while Brainstorm points a finger at the screen and exclaims, “Exactly!”

Tailgate looks between Cyclonus and Whirl. “Well, do you want to—”

“I’m in.” Whirl agrees without any further thought, because it sounds interesting and that’s good enough for him. Cyclonus just sighs, which is probably, totally a yes.

“Very good. Our portal is active, you are welcome to arrive at your earliest convenience.” Perceptor tells them, and before Whirl can ask about the chickens again, ends the call.

“Do we have to use another teleporter?” Whirl whines, as put-upon and dramatic as he can manage. Sure, the past few times were fine, even when Rodimus’ was supposed to break from lightning or whatever, but he still doesn’t have to like it. How far could it be, anyway? Can’t they just fly? Whirl would much rather fly.

“Yes, actually.” Tailgate points at the teleporter they’re supposed to take. There’s a little label at the bottom which kind of just looks like water, with a little bit of seaweed for decor or something. “Brainstorm’s lab is under the ocean.”

Whirl’s thoughts fixate on one particular bit of that sentence, which is the part about the lab being under the ocean for some reason. For what reason? Who knows! Actually, that does sound like some ridiculous scrap some crazy scientists would come up with. He’s tempted to ask what the given reason is, but Cyclonus beats him to it with a way more boring question.

“Is it not equally their lab?”

“It is now! But it was Brainstorm’s long before Perceptor came along.” That’s… okay, that is kind of interesting, actually. Maybe that has something to do with why only one of them has a faction and the other doesn’t? Though why either of them are even here is anyone’s guess. Why anyone is here is anyone’s guess.

What happened to this place supposedly being all isolated and empty? Tailgate has, like, plural amounts of neighbors!

He leads the way through the teleporter, giving them no choice but to follow. Whirl cringes on the way through, but it’s equally as uneventful as the last few times. In a blink he finds his surroundings replaced by sleek metal paneling and fluorescent blue lighting, almost uncannily similar to the look of Cybertronian builds compared to Tailgate’s organic-ish home.

It feels… weirder than it should, to him. Like he’s gotten used to Tailgate’s house without realizing.

The two scientists are waiting for them, though Brainstorm is actually standing properly upright and no longer tangled up in wires. Which is kind of a shame, because Whirl really wanted to find out what that was about. There isn’t a chicken on Perceptor’s head anymore, either, though there are still a bunch scattered around the lab, to an extent that Whirl genuinely can’t tell if they’re supposed to be there or not.

“Good to see you’ve made it safely.” Perceptor greets them, evenly and politely. He gives them a nod, talking to Cyclonus and Whirl directly, while Tailgate launches himself into Brainstorm for an overly excited hug. Apparently they’re friendly? “And it’s good to meet the two of you in person. You caused quite the stir when you arrived here, you know.”

Brainstorm is a lot bigger than Tailgate. He’s able to catch him mid-tackle, an arm around his middle while the opposite knuckles grind against his head. Tailgate giggles, shoving against him in an unserious attempt to make him stop. It’s playful, overly familiar, and Whirl can’t stop staring at them. Cyclonus doesn’t seem to notice.

“Did we?”

“Mmm.” Perceptor hums. “While you may have thought it lucky that Tailgate found you, it was the sort of event no one could have missed. The energy surge that was unleashed as a result of your warp tunnel coming to an unstable end knocked all of our devices here offline. From there, it was simply a matter of discovering what had caused it.”

It feels like sort of pointless small talk, a big waste of time that doesn’t really matter. Almost like Perceptor is trying to give Tailgate and Brainstorm a moment to catch up, in their weird, friendly way. Which is fine, totally fine. It’s not like Whirl actually cares. In fact, he’s glad they’re the ones doing the friendly-feelsy thing and not subjecting him to it. Even just being a witness is bad enough.

He’s glad when it ends.

Brainstorm bounces around to the other side of Perceptor, gesturing proudly to some machinery Whirl can’t be bothered to pay attention to. “Which brings us to why you’re here! Well, actually no, this doesn’t have anything to do with that. Unless it does?” He makes a face, like he’s having a thought. Whirl wonders if that’s difficult for him.

Perceptor writes something down on a datapad. “I will explore the possibility of the glitch being a result of the power surge and unexpected shutdown.”

“You’re the best, Perce. Anyway! This is our virtual simulator of the Range. It might just look like one big hunk of computer to you, but there’s a lot going on under the hood. From the inside, it should look exactly like the real Range, but that’s what you’re here to tell us.”

“This test will actually accomplish several things at once, especially considering your varied experiences.” Perceptor nods to Tailgate. “Your experience working the Range will tell us the accuracy in its environment and equipment simulation.” He turns to Cyclonus and Whirl next. “While the two of you are nearly entirely unfamiliar with this planet and our tools, which makes you prime candidates on whether or not the simulation is useful for safe learning.”

“And as a whole, your job is to look for those glitches.” Waving them over, Brainstorm brings them to some kind of a circular pad that looks like something between a teleporter and an elevator, clearly expecting them to stand on it. “We don’t actually know what they look like, or how they’re manifesting on the inside, so that part is going to be up to you. Just look for anything that looks… weird. Otherwise, just have fun! And tell us every single detail afterwards.”

“We will also be logging your movements within the simulation, though we will not be able to speak with you. There will be a shutdown function available to you within the program should you need to use it or once you’re done, as well. If anything goes wrong that we can detect, we will pull you out from this side.”

Whirl starts zoning out somewhere along the way, staring at the glowy light of the ceiling directly above the teleportavator. These guys sure talk a lot, and that’s saying something considering they’ve been living with Tailgate this whole time.

It sounds kind of like someone is reading the terms and conditions to him, forcibly, against his will. Like these guys are just as bad as Magnus, who doesn’t understand that no one reads those.

No one except Magnus, of course.

He tunes back in around the time the machine activates. The lights change color, brightening, and an energy wall that isn’t all too different from the ones on the slime pens shoots up around them. Whirl can’t resist the urge to poke it, expecting his claw to phase through like with the pens.

It doesn’t. It’s solid.

A slow feeling of dread builds at that fact, like ice water dripping onto him. He presses harder, testing the strength of the barrier, while doing his best to make it look like a casual action. Pretending it’s just curiosity, that he’s just interested in the barrier and how it works. Nevermind how solid it is, even when he pushes against it without holding back, how it holds as if he weren’t touching it at all.

Sure, if he really had to, he could probably blow it up. But… the idea that his own strength isn’t enough to bust out of here if he wanted to gives him a feeling he doesn’t like in the slightest. Like he’s trapped, tricked into some weird container for a purpose he has no way of knowing is actually what they said it was for or not.

The creeping dread gets stronger, rising in him alongside a growing feeling of near panic. He’d forgotten how much he hates these… sterile environments, the stark lights and pale paneling of labs and hospitals, the acrid disinfectant that can never really cover up the smell of energon in the cracks. He isn’t strapped down, but he may as well be, the ghostly sensation of binds holding him down as if they were real. Phantom scalpels slice beneath his plating, searching, prying, cutting into him piece by piece until all that’s left is—

A servo lands on his shoulder. He snaps to look at it, weapons systems whirring alongside the shuddering maelstrom of forgotten emotions that threaten to overtake him. Red optics stare back. They should make it worse; an enemy right in here with him, right in front of him and within dangerous proximity, but they don’t. Like something rarely found on the safe side of familiar.

It feels almost like an anchor point. A distraction. Cyclonus is all calm and composed, like always, like there’s nothing off about this situation at all. He just watches Whirl, seeing too deeply between cracks that Whirl would much rather he not, thanks. Trying to shake off the grip on his shoulder does nothing; Cyclonus holds firm, annoying and distracting and grounding all in one.

Whirl hates it more than the panic.

And then it changes. Something changes, anyway. The ground, the world, falls out from beneath them, except that it doesn’t. Whirl can still feel solid ground beneath him, can still feel Cyclonus’ grip on him, but those sensations fade away to the back of his subconscious.

They’re replaced by different sensations at the forefront. Wind on his plating that wasn’t there a moment ago, the sounds of clattering rocks and bouncing slimes. When he blinks, resets his optics, the containment tube is replaced by the familiar vivid orange biome that Tailgate’s ranch is in.

And he can see Cyclonus, standing near him and looking around. He’s out of arm’s reach, servos kept to himself, despite the fact Whirl can still distantly feel his touch. It’s jarring, disorienting, and he has to stop focusing on the feeling because the disconnect between what he sees and what he feels threatens to make him nauseous.

Forget being trapped, this is way, way weirder.

“This is so cool!” Tailgate apparently disagrees. When Whirl turns to try and find him, he witnesses Tailgate holding up a rock in sheer fascination. “It’s like it’s real!”

Oh, right. Virtual simulation and all that. Whirl had almost managed to forget what was going on here in the process of losing his mind in a science tube. Looking down at himself to make sure he still has all of his limbs and assets, he gets to watch in real time as something appears on him. Built up pixel by pixel, disturbingly different from the realism of the world around them, tanks and equipment exactly like Tailgate’s slowly appear on his frame.

Including the gun. It manifests in his claws, dropping into his grip like a real weight once it has finished loading in.

Tailgate bounds over, rock forgotten. “Oh, wow! It even copied my gear onto you!” He pauses to think. “Or, well, Brainstorm probably just programmed mine in as the default. But that’s still really cool!”

Whirl isn’t so sure about that one. The weight on his back, the straps holding the various tanks onto him, the tubes running from the gun to the containers… he feels a bit like he’s in that one movie with the humans that vacuum up ghosts or whatever. Bulky and overencumbered, like he could be knocked off balance by a stray wind.

“Yeah, yeah, super cool. What are we supposed to be doing, again?”

“Didn’t you listen to what they said?” Tailgate asks instead of answering, giving Whirl a flat look. Or at least as flat as his bubbly self can manage.

No. “Yes.”

Shaking his head, Tailgate points to the parts of his new, not-real equipment, starting with the gun. “This is what we call a Vacpack.” Whirl will not be calling it that. “It stands for vacuum-backpack, and like you’ve probably already learned, is the easiest way to catch and contain slimes. It connects to four—ooh, five!—tanks at once, as well as one for water, but you can carry more and switch them out manually.”

He isn’t sure why he’s the one getting everything explained to him in painstaking detail. Tailgate continues on about how to use the gun, which is ridiculous, because it can’t be any harder than point and shoot. Or… point and suck, or something. Why isn’t Cyclonus getting this lecture, huh? He doesn’t even use guns!

Actually, on that thought, he looks around. Cyclonus is nowhere near them; he’s still within sight, and the same virtual equipment has manifested onto him just like Whirl, but he isn’t paying it any mind. He’s crouched on the ground, staring very intently at a rock.

Primus, what is with these two and rocks? Is Whirl the only sane one around here? Because that’s a terrifying thought that should never be true. And if it is, they’re all doomed.

Ignoring whatever else Tailgate is trying to explain to him, Whirl scruffs him by the ‘Vacpack’ and marches the both of them over to Cyclonus. One, to save himself from being read instruction manuals today on top of the terms and conditions, but also to see whatever the hell has the big lug so fascinated.

“Slime planet to edgelord.” Whirl calls, tapping on Cyclonus’ head with his free claw when he gets close enough. He kind of expects Cyclonus to reach up and threaten to snap his wrist, but Cyclonus just ignores it, answering without looking away from the rock.

“There’s something off about this.” He says, suspicious.

Right, cool. Going inside of a video game broke him, great.

Wiggling free of Whirl’s grip, Tailgate leans over Cyclonus’ shoulder, inspecting the rock with him. “I mean, this variety doesn’t appear in the Dry Reef, but… maybe Brainstorm just got it wrong?”

With a disbelieving hum, Cyclonus reaches for the rock. If he didn’t know better, Whirl would swear the rock almost seems to… vibrate? Shudder? As Cyclonus gets closer to it, but that would be stupid, because rocks don’t move.

Except apparently Whirl doesn’t know better, because Cyclonus’ fingers don’t actually make contact with the rock. They phase through it, like it isn’t there at all, and then it explodes. And it’s not a violent explosion, just— one moment it’s there, and the next moment, there’s energon-blue pixels shooting in every direction from where it had been.

Quicker on the draw than he’d take him for, Tailgate points his vac gun at one of the masses of pixels and sucks it right into a tank. Which, okay, Whirl didn’t expect capturing literal pixels on their agenda for the day, but sure, that totally makes sense.

He only captures the one despite his speed, the others disappearing into the world around them as quickly as they’d appeared. Like ripples on disturbed water, they phase into the rocks and even the air itself, leaving behind a momentary shimmer of disturbed pixels and revealed code before the environment stitches itself back together behind them.

With the rest gone, Tailgate disconnects the tank and brings it up into view between them. That vibrant, glowing blue is captured inside, unable to escape through the glass like the others did through the world. There’s a slight iridescence to it, a faint hint of shimmering pink within the bright blue hues, and the edges fray away into sharp angles. Every movement leaves behind the afterimages of where it had been, and stark white, square eyes stare back at them through the glass.

Whirl has… no idea what to think about this, actually. Is he awake? Is this real? Maybe he died in the teleporter, because this is a special kind of weird, even for him. The grip on his shoulder is giving him a really, really weird sensation of disembodiment about all of this, even though he really should be used to that by now.

“It’s a slime.” Cyclonus says, helpfully, stating the one and only obvious fact they can see about this thing.

“I guess we’ve figured out what we’re looking for.” Tailgate turns the tank gently, inspecting the decidedly inorganic slime from all angles. “Just wait until we bring this back to Percy and Brainstorm. They’re going to lose their minds over this little guy.”

“Okay, so we found the problem.” Whirl gestures at the thing. “Does that mean we’re done here?”

And, okay, maybe that wasn’t the best question to ask. Because Tailgate gets this look, even without a face, he gets this mischievous twinkle in his visor that spells trouble. The last time Whirl saw that look, Tailgate proceeded to trap him under a definitely, totally, very deadly slime without remorse. And sure, maybe it was foolish of him to think Tailgate would let them out of here that easily, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

…Probably.

“You’ve got the gist of the Vacpack now, right?” Tailgate asks, and somehow, the tone he uses makes Whirl feel like he probably should have listened a little bit closer, actually. Maybe he’ll explain again? Whirl points at Cyclonus.

“You didn’t read him the instruction manual.” He points out, pretending he’s found a new life’s calling in being fair.

“I was listening.” Cyclonus deadpans, because he hates Whirl.

“Great!” Tailgate gives them another once over, probably reassuring himself that they do indeed have the gist of it, and the next instant he’s sprinting away at a speed his stubby little legs should not be capable of. “Whoever catches the most glitch slimes wins!”

“Gh—wh—” Whirl splutters. That’s what he wanted to do hours ago, and now someone else actually wants to compete? Now? When he has half a suspicion he could fall through the ground at any moment? When he hasn’t actually slept since, like, yesterday? He turns, and finds Cyclonus also gone, like the traitor he is. “Oh, come on!”

Last in this impromptu little race because Tailgate is a smarmy little cheater, Whirl takes off after them in a scramble. And it is not easy to keep or catch up, nearly tripping over his own feet with the unfamiliar weight of the rancher gear on him. This stuff is digital, whose idea was it to make it heavy?

Which, also, related thought. Tailgate wears this stuff every day? Like it’s nothing? Nevermind him being short and therefore terrifying close to ankle biting range, Whirl didn’t need to know he’s also apparently strong, too. That feels like too much power for him to have.

Begrudgingly, he supposes it makes some kind of sense. Ahead of him, Tailgate is dashing around the area, knocking more glitch slimes loose from what looks to Whirl like plain old rocks. The equipment doesn’t look like it weighs him down at all, maybe even doing the opposite, like he throws its weight into his jumps and dashes for added momentum.

It’s kinda similar to what it’s like to fly, knowing the ins and outs of your own build well enough to use even the disadvantages to as much of an advantage as you can. He’s pretty sure Tailgate can’t fly, but the way he moves, it feels like it wouldn’t be that hard for him to figure out if he ever could.

The area they’re in isn’t exactly small, but he kind of makes it look like it is, covering every corner before Cyclonus can even catch up to him. He does flips over small gaps, spinning in midair and using his gun to suck up slimes beneath as he goes, and righting himself again before he lands only to keep going without so much as a stumble.

Smooth, practiced, and arguably kinda cool in a way Whirl didn’t think he’d be applying to Tailgate. He’s uncomfortably torn between the urge to compete and win just for the sake of it, or continuing to watch and see what other tricks the little shrimp’s been hiding.

“What is this.” Cyclonus says, somewhere, interrupting Whirl’s very important gawking. Standing off to the side, he’s holding up a slime that looks completely normal. It looks like Whirl Jr., actually, a little grey tabby thing that he really should already be used to. After all, they’ve already been here for, what was it again, weeks?

“That’s what we around here call a slime.” Whirl tells him, slowly and carefully, so that his apparently dusty old processor can understand. Cyclonus shoots him a flat glare.

“No, I mean—” Apparently unable to explain, he just turns the slime around, revealing its face to them. A face that is very… um… Well, it looks more empty headed than Rodimus, and that’s saying something. It definitely doesn’t look anything like Whirl Jr., that’s for sure. Like it has a perfect disguise, except for a comically bad giveaway of a face that looks more like something Whirl could doodle on paper.

“Awww, it’s cute!” Tailgate says, because of course he would. He comes over and takes it from Cyclonus, who hands it off without the slightest complaint for obvious reasons, probably glad to be rid of it. With Cyclonus it seemed calm, without a single thought in its head, but in Tailgate’s servos it sort of seems to shimmer and glitch at the edges with what Whirl can only assume is some kind of anxiety at being held by someone with at least half a processor. “Shhh, it’s okay.”

Pulling it close, Tailgate just… hugs it. Which is a lot more in character for him than being cool, and not remotely surprising, but it’s interesting that the constant affection applies even to this thing that isn’t actually real. Cyclonus seems to have a similar thought, because his resting bitch face does this thing, and… Whirl blinks, staring.

Since when does Cyclonus know how to look fond?

It feels alien to see it on him. A soft look, the sharp edges of his perpetual frown falling away to something warmer. Like something that isn’t supposed to be seen, a remnant of something shattered a long time ago. As Tailgate continues holding and talking to the slime, entirely oblivious to anything else going on around him, Cyclonus just keeps watching him with that same look.

He can still feel Cyclonus’ servo on his shoulder, but now it feels even more disconnected than it did before. Like a long dead ghost, like it’s supposed to be.

Violently shaking his head, Whirl turns away. “Well, you two have fun with your new freaky pet, I have a competition to win while you’re not looking.” He says, as flippantly as he can manage.

“Aww, but you haven’t even met it yet!” Tailgate calls after him, almost whining, which makes for a perfect excuse to remove himself that much faster.

Climbing a half crumbled wall until he’s well and fully out of Tailgate’s short and stubby reach, Whirl only dares to look back once he’s at the top. Cyclonus is staring at him with way too much deep thought to be healthy for his old man circuits, while Tailgate holds the slime and its zero thoughts face up towards him. It would be threatening if he were close enough for Tailgate to put it on him.

“Nuh uh, I don’t think so. You can give me that… thing when it figures out how to have a real face.”

Tailgate gives him a look, which Whirl ignores fantastically. He turns and hops off the other side of the wall into a new area, leaving the other two alone with their rock and weird slime obsessions. Voice carrying over, shrill and mildly exasperated, Tailgate yells at him. “We don’t even have real faces!”

“Rude!” Whirl calls back. Comparing him to that glitchy, weird looking thing, that doesn’t actually belong here and probably causes all sorts of problems to the functionality of the whole system, all while looking like a crime against nature? …Whirl can’t relate to something like that at all.

Anyway!

They can do it their way. Whirl isn’t sure who taught them how to win competitions if their idea of it is to just get distracted by every rock and bush in the entirety of the wilderness, but he’s sure they’ll figure out how effective that method is soon enough. Especially once he wipes the floor with them, and gets to make Cyclonus look stupid, which is his favorite hobby.

Except it’s not. And the moment he has that thought, he shoves it back in the depths of his memory to be dealt with never, shaking off the telltale feeling of more repressed… stuff trying to creep up on him.

Which is a perfect excuse to do exactly as he claimed he would, and go win Tailgate’s dumb little challenge, but… looking up, Whirl makes eye contact with a plant that has that same stupid doodle face, and decides he’d rather not, actually. Those things give him the heebie-jeebies for reasons he can’t quite put his claw on, and doesn’t care enough to try anyway.

Voices carry over the wall he’d jumped. Muffled only by the thick stone, too low to carry over the top of it, he doesn’t really have any idea what they’re saying. And it’s probably not important anyway, another tirade about rocks or slimes or the power of friendship or… Y’know, something stupid like that.

Some traitorous part of his mind supplies the oh so helpful thought that maybe it’s something important, but he argues back with the question of what could possibly even be important, around here, to him? It’s not like he cares, especially not about what those two could get up to. What’s the worst they could do, anyway? Break the simulation? Blow it up? Nothing worse than he could do, that’s for sure!

Intrusively, the soft look on Cyclonus’ face pops into his head.

Whirl doesn’t dignify it with any acknowledgement. He turns, stomping off further into wherever it is he’s ended up, not caring in the least about where he’s going.

Maybe he should rekindle the whole trying to kill Cyclonus thing. It’s been too quiet lately, like Tailgate is making them soft, making them forget about the much more important topic of who gets to kill who first. Really, like with most things, this is obviously all Cyclonus’ fault. If he didn’t have the nerve to supply Whirl’s mangled processor with more ammunition to play tricks on him with, Whirl wouldn’t have to shunt them back into old habits where they belong.

Or maybe it is his own fault for letting himself slip. He hesitates at the thought, stuttering on his next step, staring down at his claws. That face bounces around inside his head, knocking against the distant feeling of the servo on his shoulder like a bad combination.

… Nah. It’s definitely Cyclonus’ fault.

His aimless wandering brings him up a small, mostly hidden path, rising up along canyon walls and completely obscuring him behind rocks and plant life as he goes. The further he gets, the more he finds himself mildly interested in where it could even be going. It ends much higher up than where he started, the flat top of a pillar of rock, standing high over every other surface in sight.

When he looks over the edge, his optic zeroes in on Tailgate and Cyclonus like some kind of magnet, which he is absolutely not going to think any more about. It’s probably just because they stand out so distinctly against everything else around them, and absolutely nothing else, because that would be stupid. Anyway! Back to not thinking about that anymore.

They can’t see him from down there, or at least don’t know how to look up, because they don’t seem to notice him. And he can’t hear whatever they’re saying, but it isn’t like their body language is hard to read. Tailgate is skipping ahead, weird slime still held in his servos like he’s completely forgotten about his own challenge. He turns and walks backwards, talking to Cyclonus, his visor glaringly happy even from this far away.

Meanwhile, Cyclonus just follows him. He’s attentive, listening to whatever Tailgate is saying despite the fact it’s likely a bunch of nonsense. He’s always been a glorified guard dog, shadowing people like it’s the only thing he knows how to do, which it is. When that started applying to here, though…

Because for as much as Cyclonus tends to hover around whoever’s nearest anyway, defaulting to that habit because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself, it’s not like he ever pays that much attention. Enough to make sure Whirl can’t pull a fast one on him, but not enough to listen, caring about as much as Whirl does whenever someone opens their mouth.

Which is what makes it so interesting to watch him now. He follows Tailgate around every twist and turn, saying nothing about the pointlessly meandering, exploring path he takes them on. No complaints, apparently no comments at all, and without ever letting his optics off of him. And sure, it’s normal for him to be quiet, all looming and broody and silently judging, but that usual demeanor has disappeared. He’s just… watching. Quietly. Like he’s perfectly content continuing to do exactly that.

Tailgate trips. Not far, mind you, not like he’s on the edge of the island and risking drowning in digital slime or something. He just stumbles over a jagged edge of terrain, probably too distracted talking about whatever to watch where he’s going, and thrown off balance by the lack of arms when he’s busy holding a slime.

A few weeks ago, Cyclonus would’ve just watched him go down. He wouldn’t even laugh, because unlike Whirl, he can’t appreciate the humor in someone eating dirt. He just would have stared, silent and brooding and judging so loudly without saying anything at all.

And that’s exactly the thing. Because he doesn’t do that.

Tailgate trips, and Cyclonus moves. He never gets the chance to hit the ground because Cyclonus catches him, surges forward to wrap an arm around him before he can go anywhere at all.

When that changed, Whirl doesn’t know. They stand there, both frozen in place and locked together like neither of them know how to react, processing exactly where they’ve just ended up. Between them, the slime is squished in place, still with the same stupid face as before. He would say it doesn’t look like it has any clue what’s going on, but honestly, neither do the mechs on either side of it.

There’s no unwanted, intrusive thoughts tormenting him like he would expect there to be. It’s eerily silent in his head, a blank space where he knows there should be something. Or where there is something; just not something he can find right now, and he doesn’t want to try, anyway.

Instead, he just… watches them. Contemplating the pieces that are connecting together with dull, heavy thuds, like they’re made of solid stone and nothing can stop the understanding once it begins. And the fact that he is the only one aware of it, because he knows Cyclonus, and he’s starting to know Tailgate, too.

They’re both stupid. Neither of them can see what he just did, and continues to see, as they awkwardly separate and have the expected exchange that follows. Thank yous and you’re welcomes, continuing exactly as they had before with an edge of awkwardness that’s as easy to miss as it is a neon sign in the dark, moving forward and pretending it had never happened at all.

Rolling over to break his line of sight, Whirl stares at the sky above. His thoughts remain quiet and empty, like for once, they’re as afraid to go anywhere near that as he is.

The touch on his shoulder leaves a sour taste in a mouth he doesn’t have.

There is an empty stillness to the air. It hangs, draped over the land in the form of low clouds, obscuring everything below it from the sky far above. Not a star shines through, buried away behind layers of grey, visible only by the reflections of thousands of lights against its surface.

Those lights are blurry in the distance. Round, distorted shapes, glowing so brightly and smeared so unevenly against the horizon. Cold seeps in, a creeping chill, spreading from every drop of water that pings off of his plating.

And yet… he sighs. Breathes out the day’s tension into the air around him, in a short-lived breath of fog that disappears as quickly as it came. A blip in the grand scheme of things; a passing moment, lived and released. A stepping stone for a better day.

Water pools on the pavement below, an image of lights disturbed with each further drop. He watches it, staring down into the steady ripples that reflect his own optics back at him. Even with the ripples, the distortions in the water, he looks tired.

It’ll all be worth it, someday. Maybe it already is; but maybe, someday, it’ll be easier.

Maybe someday, things will change.

He keeps walking. Following the familiar path, the stone that he’s surprised hasn’t had a trail worn into it by him alone by now. It’s a path he takes like a ritual, every day once the light has faded, when it’s dim and quiet and only his. The rain only adds to the atmosphere, the insulated quiet, cutting him off from the city and everything in it. Be that good or bad; the things he likes, or the ones he fears.

It’s all distant here. A breath of fresh air, a moment to breathe. A place far longer lived than his new home, far more familiar, a bridge between two lives past and present. His stress seeps away into the ground beneath him as he walks, leeched out at the same rate that the cold seeps in. It’s a worthwhile trade, to him.

There’s a statue here, in this park. It’s old, cast in tarnished bronze, of someone who was important once. He doesn’t know who; he never bothered to ask and doesn’t really care to read about all that came before. To him, it’s nothing more than a landmark, a timestamp in his walk, a familiar shape in the darkness that he knows to expect.

But that’s just the thing. He knows it, knows its shape, even if he’s never paid all that much attention to it or why it’s there. Which is why he knows, before he’s even gotten close enough to get a good look, that he knows something has changed.

Someone stands in front of it. As still as it is, staring up at it, rain pinging against them just as it is to him. They’re dark, paint blending in with the dim night around them, noticeable only by his familiarity with this place.

He opens his mouth to speak. Nothing comes out; like his voice is lost to the wind, dissolved in the rain. The stranger turns to him anyway, as if they’d heard.

They look lost.

Expensive filigree decorates the edges of their plating. A status symbol to some, a brand to others. He isn’t well enough versed in the culture of nobles to know which this one is, but he knows the object in their hand. It’s cheap, mass produced, and tells him what the designs can’t.

They say something back to him. It’s lost to him, like something said behind a wall, something he knows is there but out of reach and hidden. And yet, he knows what they said, in some way. It has no words, and he doesn’t know what it was as equally as he understands entirely.

He steps closer, a servo rising between them, palm up. Vibrant, beautiful, distrustful optics track his every move. Like they expect him to turn on them at any moment, a lurking danger in the darkness.

More silent, lost words leave him. He nods to the object, and with a hesitance that matches that distrust, maybe which tapers even into some kind of buried fear, they nod. An agreement, or maybe acknowledgement. Whatever he’d asked, they’re saying he’s right.

Something blooms in his chest. A feeling, something warm and righteous. It’s what he was looking for, the knowledge that he’d made the right choice. That what he’s learned was worth it all. That what he has can be shared, made useful, that he can prove he can do it.

The world fades, turning to dim static at the edges. He keeps talking, silent words he can feel but not hear, and his awareness of himself pulls away. As if he is being controlled by someone else entirely, left to watch himself as if he were a third party looking in from the outside, watching as he talks and chatters without a sound. Even the rain fades away, leaving only silence, pulling him away from himself like he no longer belongs here.

When he looks down, finds a puddle, and sees himself, he remembers why.

Whirl lurches, wrenches himself out of his own tangled limbs, vents heaving and fans rattling like they’re about to give out. Emptiness sticks into him from every angle like needles, a numbness that makes the floor feel fake, like he isn’t actually here. His body feels wrong, unfamiliar, all of the wrong shapes and distant sensations that don’t feel like they should.

It lingers, hangs over him, an inescapable tangle that wraps around him like binds and won’t let him free. It won’t go away, it won’t go back where it belongs, refusing to be stuffed back in the depths of his mind. Like a losing battle, for all that he pushes against it, it pushes back twice as hard.

A very real fear grips him, shooting through his lines like solid ice. What if he can’t put it back?

He pushes back, harder. Buries himself in walls, twists in on himself tight enough to try and crush the emptiness away. Disables his vocalizer; because he’s being weak, and he refuses to have it seen. It’s not supposed to be there. It’s not supposed to still matter. It doesn’t matter.

Don’t think about it.

Don’t think about it.

Don’t think about it.

He forces his mind blank. Shoves away the phantom sensations, the reaching tendrils of memories. Grips himself tighter and tighter against the threatened feeling of needles and straps and scalpels, until the numbness is chased away by pain of his own doing, and then tighter still. Metal creaks; metal that’s his. It is.

Even if that’s the only thing left.

The static ringing in his audials slowly fades. The memories pushing against him get weaker, quieter, something he can shove away and pretend he never remembered at all. It’s over, it’s done with, it’ll never change.

That mech died a long time ago.

After what feels like another thousand years he never wanted, Whirl is able to sigh, breathing tension out into the air around him. It’s dark, quiet. The hearth crackles beside him, and rain patters against the roof. He relaxes into himself, crumbling into a pile of limbs with no strength left in them.

“Are you alright?”

It’s a quiet whisper, barely more than a breath, and it still startles him like a bad jumpscare. He wrenches straight back into tension, snapping around to see red optics in the darkness.

“Don’t talk to me.” Whirl snarls back. Cyclonus blinks at him, but he doesn’t look surprised or put off, which just makes it worse. It’s none of his business. So they worked together one time, it doesn’t make them friends.

Whirl would rather die than be friends with him.

“You seemed distressed.” And what is that, some sad attempt at concern? Like he actually cares? What a joke. Forget Whirl, being here is making Cyclonus go soft. Give it long enough and he’ll start, like, a puppy rescue or something, go all grossly domestic and good-guy about everything like some kind of bad parody.

“Mind your own business, you crusty old excuse for spare parts. Or do you not know how to do that? You want to have spark to spark talky-feelings time, get to know each other, have conversations about our deepest thoughts and feelings?” His tone goes more sarcastic and volatile with each word, making Cyclonus’ stupid optics widen in the darkness like that’s somehow surprising to him. He really must be dumber than Whirl thought. “Well, fine. How about you start, and we can talk all about you and the little toaster over there, huh?”

Cyclonus blinks at him. Completely and utterly empty headed. “What are you talking about?”

Scrambling up out of his corner and staunchly ignoring how his crimped metal and previously numb components scream about it, Whirl looms over Cyclonus as uncomfortably as he can.

After all, what better way to make someone drop it than to make them more uncomfortable than they’re making you? Besides, Whirl loves making people uncomfortable. It’ll make him feel better about what definitely didn’t just happen and what definitely never happened before.

Stop thinking about that.

“I saw the way you were looking at him earlier. Saw the way you caught him when he fell, like some kind of a knight in shining armor. Or are you too stupid to see it, even though you were a whole lot closer than I was? You had a front row seat!”

“What are you talking about?” Cyclonus repeats, again, with more emphasis like he still doesn’t know what Whirl is saying. But he gives himself away, even if he doesn’t even know it, because he glances at Tailgate on the other side of the room for just a second. Red optics flicking over there, checking if he’s still asleep, like he’s afraid of this exchange being overheard.

“Oh yeah, sorry to break it to you, but you’re not subtle. Even if you’re so dumb you haven’t figured it out yet.”

Silence follows. Cyclonus stares at him, for long enough that Whirl starts to think he’s actually managed to fry the stupid old rustbucket, before he turns that stare on Tailgate. It’s a quiet, thoughtful kind of stare, the kind where he’s mulling over his thoughts and sorting them out painfully slowly.

And then… well, this could be cinema, actually. All of Whirl’s residual suffering is forgotten for sheer entertainment at the way Cyclonus snaps back to look at him again, optics only incrementally wider, which for him makes it look like he’s finally figured out that the square peg goes in the square hole.

“Took you long enough, sheesh.”

“No, no,” Cyclonus shakes his head, looking concerned. Which, wow, that is some dense denial in this one. Whirl was mostly joking about him being allergic to emotions, but man, it sure does look a whole lot more accurate than even he expected. “That’s— it’s not— you are inventing nonsense.” He shakes his head again, hard, like he’s trying to delete the suggestion entirely through brute force.

If Whirl had eyebrows, he would raise one. “Are you gonna bluescreen? I mean, if that’s what it takes for me to get back to bed, have at it. We’ll reboot you in the morning, I promise… maybe.”

Cyclonus glares at him. A real glare, like he’s supposed to use. “Leave me alone.”

Faux aghast, Whirl throws up his claws like a fainting lady. “But I thought we were talking about feelings! What about our oh-so-important spark-to-spark? Denied, rejected! Oh, woe is me!”

Despite his very dramatic and totally very genuine performance, Whirl returns himself to his nice cozy corner, curling back up in a tangle. Cyclonus glares at him some more, which Whirl meets with a challenging stare back, daring him to just try whatever it is he’s thinking.

And of course, he wins. Cyclonus rolls over to go back to bed, choosing to drop it and ignore him.

It leaves the house completely quiet once more, with nothing but the sound of the rain outside. With nothing but his own thoughts.

That’s definitely fine. It is. There’s no reason it wouldn’t be.