literature

Slipping Chapter 1

Deviation Actions

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Literature Text

Arcee touched down on Earth, leaving the safety of her shuttle into the wide organic land. Truthfully, she was a little uneasy, but life was life in all its forms, even organic. A few of the humans were gathered around her shuttle, and she recognised the authorities in the small crowd.

"I am Arcee, I come only to recover any decepticons that are hiding on your planet," She stated, stepping back a little as one of the organics approached her.

"Well try to blend in a little. Every time one of you robots come, you always cause a huge commotion," An organic with blonde hair grumbled. Raising a hand and waving her off, he started to try and disperse the crowd, mumbling," This is why I hate machines."

Dipping her head, she apologised and said," Excuse me, I'll find a vehicular mode from this planet straight away."

Her mission was to locate Starscream and any of his clones that still remained, and cause as little trouble for the humans as possible. Optimus Prime and his group were still back on Cybertron, clearing up what had all happened and explaining what Cybertron Command was still in the dark about. Most of the other cybertronians were leery about organic planets, but somebot had to find the Starscreams, and she volunteered. Arcee had spent so long sitting on a medical table in a secured room, she felt almost guilty for not being able to contribute more to the autobot effort.

Walking through a parking lot, her optics landed on a motorcycle to her liking, and she swiftly scanned it. Transforming, she began her search for the mech by locating Allspark fragments using a device Sari had created (their last account of the mech stated he was kept online by a fragment of the Allspark embedded in his helm). It wasn't picking up much, so the pink motorcycle drove trying to cover as much area as possible. She was told it couldn't scan a very big radius, so she would have to comb the area.

"Excuse me."

Coming to a halt, she saw a dark haired organic coming her way.

"You are cybertronian, yes?" He had noticed her lack of driver, and immediately hoped his assessment was right.

Unfolding into robot mode, she gave the affirmative. "Yes, I'm Arcee. Is there something I can help you with?" Her voice was soft with her natural sweet inclination, the reason she had studied so she could teach sparklings.

Speaking directly to an organic was kind of fascinating in a way; he was so tiny and looked so fragile, and she giggled to herself before letting him continue. She mentally berated herself, it was rude to judge on appearances, but the little humans were small and cute, and it was hard to take them seriously.

"I am Professor Isaac Sumdac, and my daughter is on your planet..."

"Your offspring on my planet?" She asked, slightly surprised. Cybertron was so xenophobic, it was hard to imagine. "Is Sari your offspring?" The young cybertronian that tagged along with Optimus Prime and his team was different, and had no records of existing on Cybertron. She'd been meaning to ask Ratchet about her...

"Yes! Oh, is she alright? Have you spoken to her? How is she doing? Is she homesick?"

"She's alright. I haven't personally spoken to her, I'm afraid, but she's in the hands of Optimus Prime, so she's safe." The look of relief that crossed Professor Sumac's brought a smile to her faceplate. It was like she was teaching sparklings all over again; that warm feeling a knowing that you pacified an curious, anxious bot... well, organic...

"Could you do me a favor and deliver this to her when you return to cybertron?" He asked, holding out a small device that fit in the palm of his hand and had a screen on it.

"Of course, Professor Isaac Sumdac," she said, kneeling and holding out her servo for the tiny package. As she unfolded a compartment in her chest and placed it there for safekeeping, she said," I'm sorry, but I must be off. I have an important mission to complete."

"Oh that is no problem. Good luck on your mission, and thank you so much!" He waved goodbye and she did the same before transforming and rolling out.

Her scanners started crazily alerting her to a fast moving Allspark shard, and she looked to the skies to see a harrier jet. Looked like she found Starscream, or by taking a closer look at the coloring, a clone.

Revving her engines in pursuit, Arcee sped up and tried to determine where he was heading. She was soon disappointed to find the harrier jet crossing over a large body of water. Apparently she was going for swim. As her front wheel entered the water, she realized it was much too deep for her to swim through, and backed up. What should she do? She was losing the clone.

Retracing her tracks, she found the professor just a little distance from where she had left him. "Professor Isaac Sumdac," She called out. He really needed to shorten his name, it was such a mouthful.

He looked back and asked," Arcee?"

"I need to get across that body of water, I don't know where, but I'm following a decepticon."

"Decepticon? I have a boat that you could use to track him!"

"Thank you," The cybertronian said with a sweet smile.

It wasn't long before Arcee was sailing through Lake Erie and tracking the peculiar shard of the Allspark. She had to admit, traveling by water was worse than traveling through space, if only because she hadn't experienced it very often. Before the war she had seldom left Cybertron, being too busy with attending to the teaching of sparklings, and her home world didn't have much in the way of water.

The harrier jet came back into view as he was landing on an island, and Arcee maneuvered the vessel to come to a stop at the beach, albeit, she more docked on the beach and out of the water... Hopefully the scrapping and snapping sound was an indication of her breaking anything.

"Halt, sir. Agent Arcee of Cybertron Command," The pink femme yelled, jumping onto the sand and bringing out two electric blue swords. Watching the harrier jet unfold, she gasped in surprise and exclaimed," You're a femme!" The intelligence feed had said that Starscream and his clones had taken the form of harrier jets. The last time she checked, Starscream was most definitely a mech.

"Last time I checked," The teal and purple cybertronian snarked in response.

"Are... you a clone of Starscream?" Arcee let her servos lower, but still held the swords ready for action if she needed it.

Growling at the name, Slipstream snarled," Don't remind me."

"I'm to take Starscream and all clones I find into custody," Arcee informed the other, not letting empathy into her voice. This had to be done for Autobot security. It didn't matter that she'd be taking in a bellicose but otherwise nonviolent (so far) femme.

"Of course you are. Of course that slagging mech has had to ruin my life even further, posthumously none the less!" She spat kicking at the sand she stood upon and raising one of her nullray guns. "I'm sick of that slagging crankshaft making my life a living Pit!"

Readying her swords and lowering her center of gravity for better control should she have to dodge, Arcee asked," Posthumous? He's offline?"

Gritting her dental plates and lowering her weapon, Slipstream nodded and brought out a bright blue crystal from a compartment of hers. "That's why I'm here. Someone has to revive the mech."

A piece of the Allspark, Arcee noted. "Why do you seem to hate him so much? Starscream, I mean, he created you." And if she hated him, why would she be reviving him?

"Yeah, aren't I sooo lucky," Slipstream scoffed. "The others were lucky. The megalomaniac, sycophantic, even the coward was more lucky than I. I guess when you fail your whole entire life, get beat to the ground by friend and foe alike, and are so pathetic you can't even lead a small group of clones, one deserves to have a large helping of Self Loathing. Well guess what? I represent his self loathing." She started kicking the sand again, and a piece of grey metal began to come into view. "It's not even fair. I hate myself so much that I couldn't stand my true form. Being a clone, there wasn't much room for personalization, so I chose the most extreme, changing genders, but it still wasn't enough to actually change anything!"

Arcee hesitated then sheathed her swords and approached the seeker.

"And no matter what I do, I have to hate myself and him even more so. I can't barely survive with him offline as much as I loath him, because my sole purpose is to wish him offline." With a stronger kick, ringing metal could be heard, and more of the gunmetal grey corpse was revealed. She had found his body in downtown Detroit where he'd fell offline, and relocated him here so she had time to locate a new shard of the Allspark.

"Let me help you," Arcee offered, bending down and grabbing the crook of his arm. Watching another senselessly beat a fallen mech, even a con, was unsettling to the pink femme. She hefted him out of the sand and gazed to the clone, wondering what she would do now.

Angry tears threatened to leak from her optics, but Slipstream quickly wiped them away. Insecurely crossing her servos, she muttered," It's just not fair. I'm miserable, there's nothing I can do about it, and it's all his fault." Wings drooping she added," And now you're going to try and arrest me. I'll probably fail to get away since I'm structured after this piece of scrap." 'This' was emphasized with another light kick, though Slipstream had obviously lost her enthusiasm. "And I'll be kept for the rest of my days locked up in some small room."

A frown pulled at Arcee's mouth. "I've spent the last four million meta-cycles locked up in some small room. I was put into a coma during the Great War."

"Well it sucks to be you. At least you don't have to hate everything you do, how you look, and what you represent," Slipstream hissed bitterly.

Taking out her console panel that held important information, Arcee calmly started reading," I am looking for Starscream, a mech who is last known to take the form of a harrier jet, and clones of himself." Looking up to the femme standing across from her, she held out a servo to grab the Allspark fragment. It was uncertainly placed in her palm and Arcee finished," Thank you unregistered citizen for identifying and locating Starscream for me. Please keep a lookout for any of his clones you might find."

Slipstream wore an expression on confusion before asking," Why are you doing this for me? I'm a con."

"Silly bot," Arcee teased as she had many a sparkling, in a warm and endearing voice," Everyone knows that the decepticons are taken care of. Only a few, like Starscream, remain from the old regime."

Taking a few hesitant steps back, Slipstream prepared to jump into the air and transform to her alt mode. "Thank you..."

"Oh, and one more thing..."

"Slipstream," the clone supplied.

"One more thing, Slipstream," Arcee said with a nod," The 'lucky' sycophantic clone was able to insult one of us as we were questioning him the other day."

That would have seemed like the most insignificant sentence of all time, except it meant that Slipstream wasn't necessarily bound to self loathing for the rest of her life. A fellow clone had deviated from his programming, even if only for a nano klick.

"Thank you... For everything," Slipstream awkwardly said before leaping into flight.

Starscream was much larger than herself, so Arcee had difficulty lugging him back to her sea vessel. In retrospect, she should have asked Slipstream for help. After taking him back to her shuttle (as discretely as possible (meaning not at all, for which she apologized to the head of authorities)) and returning Professor Isaac Sumdac's boat, she locked Starscream in stasis cuffs and barred him into his cell.

Tentatively, Arcee took the little shard that Slipstream had handed over, and reached for his helm where a shard had been previously. She didn't even need to plunge the little jewel in as she had feared, it seemed drawn to the spot and actually slipped out of her servo before her digits reached their target, sliding deep into his helm. A brilliant blue filled the small space and the once dead seeker's optics flashed a gleaming crimson.
Don't know where I'm going with this, or if I'm continuing, but this was fun to write :XD: I had everything up till Slipstream handing over the shard written for almost a month now (when I first finished watching Animated) and then seeing TFA on the hub reminded me I had this laying around ^^;

*I know that in TFA Arcee is a car... but she's too small to be any Earth car I know of (except those smartcars that look like toy cars). She's even smaller than Bumblebee if I remember correctly (I know, I know, Size May Vary ie. Prowl is taller than Bee)... So I decided that her alt form that's a car is from Cybertron. She scanned a motorcycle on Earth :ohnoes:

Personally, I believe that Slipstream represents Starscream's self loathing, so I made her represent exactly that in this little fic. It would explain why she always belittles him and refused his form. It's also canon that she revives him with a shard of the Allspark, so I messed with that a lil' :meow:

I got the idea for this after reading [link] by ~JetfireWeasley5

They're really not the same (I'm not worried about anyone thinking I copied or anything), but still, I like to admit when another's work inspired me :aww:

[Chapter 1] You're looking at it!
[link] [Chapter 2]
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Metalchick36's avatar
This is a good start! And I like how the clones are developing their own personalities.