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“Holy shit,” Nitrozeus breathed. He stared, hard and unwavering, as if the sight would dissipate the moment he dared to look away, his single optic drinking everything in, the pair of wide, pink optics that met his, the helm in a slight tilt of inquiry, the blinks that spanned milliseconds. “Holy mother of fuck. ”
Before him now was no device nor handful of energon forsaken on the ground. It was miniscule, wide-optic’d—and alive.
It was a sparkling.
Amidst the thickening fog of his stupefaction, Barricade’s voice came through the static of the comms: “What is it?” he demanded through a growl. “Speak, fool. Did you find anything or not?”
The tracker had forgotten the police cruiser still loitered in his wait for a response, and for a moment he seemed wholly unable to answer, the rash-fashioned inquiry slipping past his notice as he stared no more, but gazed at the miracle that hadn’t occurred in millennia since the war.
“ Nitrozeus? I swear to Primus, if you don’t answer me—”
He turned off his comms lest any abrupt sound—whether that be Barricade’s grated voice or the general static—alert the sparkling, who was eyeing him with utmost intrigue. Closer NItrozeus stepped on tentative pedes, caution fashioning his movements, his focus heightened.
“Hey there,” he said in a soft voice. “Where did you come from?”
The sparkling babbled, nonsensical sounds carried by her shrill voice. Nitrozeus couldn’t quite recall when last he heard such a sound, nor the exact length of time in which he hadn’t thereafter, but it was doubtless an extensive duration, for his audials had to make slight adjustments to accommodate the sound inputs. It was jarring as it was wondrous, hearing the voice of a sparkling again: just when it was close to tipping off the periphery of his vast remembrance, becoming more myth than depths deep in the past, it appeared unexpectedly, present again, right here, stark and so very real.
Nitrozeus bent down on a knee and cautiously scooped the sparkling into a careful hold of his arms, pressing her ever so slightly to the surface of his chestplate. Not at all did she object or express even the slightest aversion to the action; in fact, her reaction to this was that of one discovering something knew, for she made a sound that indicated sheer glee, and Nitrozeus noticed the beginning flapping of her wings, a fluttering it appeared most akin to, not in the least unlike the way in which the avians originating on Cybertron let their emotions be known through their own preferred means.
Speaking of origins…Nitrozeus wondered who the carrier was, and though he surveyed the area at which his discovery of the lifeform was made, there was no other presence to be identified but his and the one in his arms, kept secure in their nestle. Nor had he noticed any peculiarities, whether visual or otherwise, whence he came, nothing worthy of taking note of but the stretch of land that he flew above. No sound, sight, or occurrence alluding to a carrier having unintentionally forsaken her offspring, and if his optic did not receive any information noteworthy, then there was no fruition to be borne in doing an additional search. Not unless he gained another’s aid.
The tracker online his comms again. The femme sparkling made a slight jolt at the sudden burst of static that rose in a single, swift second, and he patted her once to ensure a sense of safety. “Barricade,” he said through the connection, “ I’m here. Do you copy?”
A grumble. “Of course I do. And I’m waiting for a report,” he answered in displeasure.
“Good. You won’t fucking believe what I found.”
____
“How?” was all Barricade asked when he arrived to find a sparkling in Nitrozeus’ arms. He stared at it in disbelief that mirrored, if not surpassed Nitrozeus’ own, utter perplexity swirling in the crimson of his optics, rendering him briefly frozen. His reiteration of the inquiry came in a bit more than the whisper that the previous utterance emerged in, and Nitrozeus knew the additional words that stood on the edge of his tongue, hanging there unsaid: How is this possible?
He himself truly did not know, but would attempt nonetheless to provide what substitute, scraps of answers he could formulate per his finding. “ I found her over there—among the rubble.” He gestured behind himself, to the piles of accumulated scrap.
“Alone?” Barricade still had yet to remove his gaze.
Nitrozeus nodded. “Couldn’t find anyone else.”
Barricade shook his helm slowly. “Primus. Primus above.” His tone was something peripatetic and blurred in its fashion, and whether it was a reverent praise to the immortal divine for this harbor of rare life or a curse to whomever left the sparkling unaccompanied on full will, potential prey for those ill-intentioned, Nitrozeus was wholly uncertain and wouldn’t pry for any specifics.
The sparkling met the police cruiser’s attentive regard and, tilting her helm, turned to the tracker as if questioning. He raised an optic ridge and said, “Oh, him? That’s Barricade, little one.”
The cruiser looked at him finally. “You can understand what she’s inquiring about?”
“Nah,” Nitrozeus replied. “For all I know, she could be pointing to your badge, or that gaping wound in your chest plate. I’m just making guesses here.” He gazed at her again. “She’s cute, ain’t she? Look at her little wings. They’re fluttering. Means she’s happy.”
“Have you any knowledge of the carrier?” Barricade questioned. “Any possessions forgotten, anything?”
“I found nothing but this sparkling, ‘Cade.”
A muttered curse. “Someone needs to uncover something. We’ll have to run some tests.”
“Sure we will.”
Barricade watched warily, both the sparkling and he who held her, as Nitrozeus walked closer, arms shifting, and on an impulse long forgotten, one that should have withered completely due to its dormancy yet sprung to revived life in an instant, Barricade offered his own arms to hold the sparkling, doing so entirely without question, feeling the weight descend upon them and add as the tracker carefully placed her in the cruiser’s hold.
The sparkling looked up at him with an innocence he thought had long perished.
“What is this?” he asked, without quite meaning to.
Nitrozeus snorted. “A sparkling,” he said. “What, did you forget what they looked like?”
The quip didn’t at all register as he fell into a subtle, membranal sort of enthrallment. An ancient, ancient act he hadn’t done in so incredibly long that it had been engraved into his subconscious, he brought one clawed servo to the little one’s cheek and softly glid it once across the surface in what you could determine as a caress. He could recall that part of time, older than the decimating war itself, in which the femme elders did this, caressed the younglings for which they cared in a manner so tentative, so soft, that if you didn’t know any better you’d presume them to have experienced motherhood and its consequential toils at one point in their lives, and never would it cross your mind that they had been virgins all their lives, had clung onto their maintained celibacy and ensured its cessationlessness, thereby without youngblood to which they were connected. Yet despite their skirting any romantic relationships and the family they so often consequenced, they seemed to have all of motherhood pre-established in them, refilling the gaping absences of mothers who had perished or left to never return.
“It has been centuries,” said Barricade, to no one in particular. “Is this the last sparkling we have still living?”
Nitrozeus had pinned his optic on the sparkling. “It seems so.”
So it did. The police cruiser knew very well duties loitered yet, awaiting completion, and more added since Nitrozeus’ discovery—but in these handful of moments only, he permitted himself a glimpse into his past, in a part of life that was better, and the scene changed; the sparkling held in the nestle of arms is him, youthful and ignorant still, and his caretaker is still alive in this part of time, holding him in a way that he would some far, fateful day years later, miss terribly.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
They retreated to their posts an hour or so preceding the actual approach of night, thus day was still wide awake and very much stark in its shine across the sky when they reached the area of their established residence—albeit said “residence” was more an aged shack that was molding, but mildly stable, a good and the only reason for their occupation being set here. The others would not arrive until the middle of the day to succeed, thus was the cause for their early settling.
However, their silently-made plans to grasp a good, long recharge experienced delay when the sparkling proved aversive to rest. No matter what it was they did, pamper her with soft, clean blankets or position her in a way that would attract slumber, she would refuse with a wail and a frailing of limbs, servos fisted and making harsh contact with one of the mechs on scant occasion.
Now Nitrozeus was in the process of coaxing the little one into tranquility by means of holding her in his arms again, Barricade trying his best to maintain fixation on anything other than the ceaseless, shrill wails and cries—and the view of the setting sun, Cybertron’s sun, creeping down to the horizon to rest beneath it, as well as the hues of dying day and the night inching closer forth from the end periphery of that distance over there, served as efficient divergences to his focus, but frequently he’d find himself drawn again to that crying again, and soon the incessant noise gathered enough in his audials that he could distract himself no more, thus he turned to Nitrozeus and the sparkling.
He would have asked, in a most demanding, vexed tone of voice,
Have you any luck with that as of yet?
, but the current sounds were answers in themselves and there was little need in questioning the obvious. In lieu, he stared at the sparkling and hoped—foolishly, tiredly, desperate as he was for ephemeral respite from the noise—that the command to
Be quiet and recharge, let us be in peace
could pass through a regard. Of course, and to none of his surprise whatsoever, it did not.
Nitrozeus groaned, letting his helm fall back on the wall with a dull thump. His optic slid to Barricade, half-slitted as his own need for rest bore heavy on him.
“Do you wanna try?” He held out the sparkling.
Barricade glared. “What makes you think that I have the capability to make her hush?”
“Shit, man, I don’t. I just want the noise to stop.” A slow, tired blink. “Sing her a song or something.”
“I am a
soldier
. Not one of those useless entertainment artists you damage your malfunctioning processor with.”
“This ain’t America’s Got Talent, you don’t have to have Ariana Grande’s vocals,” Nitrozeus countered. “Just a good lullaby, or something, to calm ‘er down.”
The cruiser grumbled. “I suppose you must think of me as a radio now? Fool. Why is it that
you
cannot sing?” he asked accusingly.
“Because,” Nitrozeus said, “I don’t know any lullabies.”
“That is false.” The cruiser narrowed his optics.
“I wish it was, hell. My carrier left me after I was born, and my asshole of a sire kept me in a basement for half of my life before appointing me his
de facto
slave for the rest. It took me a while to discover songs.” The wailing ascended a level of volume and he huffed, “I swear, man, I’m not gonna judge—just sing the damn song so she can quiet down.”
Without awaiting a response, which would have most likely been a cemented decline, he placed the sparkling into Barricade’s arms. Now shut tight and stitched up was the chance to object and refuse. The cruiser hissed wordlessly as he adjusted his position to accommodate the flailing sparkling.
He turned to glare at Nitrozeus, but the tracker was already turned to the side, chasing sleep as the responsibility of the little one was now out of his servos. On and on the wails stretched, and finally Barricade decided, so be it; sing he would.
He sifted through his memory, and when finding a song he recalled being sung when he was very young, cleared his throat and began: “
Day turns to night, all the people go inside…”
But the wailing increased.
“Oh,
hell
no. “
Barricade whipped his helm to the tracker. “Shut your trap. You said you weren’t going to judge.”
“I didn’t know it was that bad,” Nitrozeus gawked. “My mistake, man.”
The cruiser growled and shoved the sparkling back to the tracker, then stalked away, leaving the mech to the sparkling and her wailing.
“Wha—hey, man! You can’t just leave me with this!” he called to Barricade's retreating form. “‘Cade!
Barricade,
get your ass back here!”
Barricade ignored him, venturing further into the night. Away from that awful, vexing, ceaseless noise that if he heard a second more he would fall off the edge.
“I need my fucking sleep!”
Somewhere. There had to be somewhere he could rest. Nitrozeus could be sleep deprived for all he cared; who knows, perhaps come the morning he’d be far too tired to talk Barricade’s audial off.