[AU] Promises

[vosseeker]

Starscream jerked upright in his berth, battle protocols coming online with a sharp whine that chased the last vestiges of recharge into the otherwise empty room. Across the space to his left, the security lock on the large double doors glowed a reassuring green, intentionally easy to spot even as his processor was still firing all his subroutines. On his right, a similar one glowed green beneath the expansive arched windows that led to the wide balcony. His ventilations were short, turbines hissing for air beneath his plating, until he'd visually and with his sensor sweep cleared the room of any potential threat.

Just a memory flux, nothing more.

It was cold in his personal quarters, he noted as his protocols cycled down, but then his slim frame didn't produce much heat when he wasn't in flight, and retained even less with its scant armor and plating. The planetary environmental system was probably acting up again, and even when it was functioning perfectly, it had a long way to go before it achieved the reliability and modulation levels of pre-war Cybertron. Uncharitably, Starscream doubted that it would be high on Megatron's list of priorities to address: in the northern hemisphere even at the pole, Iacon was in the height of summer... in the southern hemisphere, Vos was often cool especially at night.

Half-past fourth joor, his internal chronometer read. Still a while before the sun would break the horizon and begin to warm things, and even if he were inclined to try sleeping again, he didn't relish getting back into a chilly berth. And even interrupted it was more sleep than he sometimes got; he'd make do.

He stood, leaving the plush metal-mesh coverings where they'd half-fallen. The housemechs would get them, and would make the room up neatly while he was out for the day. Starscream didn't keep anything of sensitive importance laying about loose even in his personal quarters anyway. He had his own energon dispenser, and filled a cube half-full from the hottest setting, hoping that downing it would somehow warm him from the inside. It helped, a little.

Briefly he thought about calling the attendant on duty, but just as quickly dismissed the idea. While there was one guaranteed to be awake — they worked in alternating orn-long shifts, so that there was always one awake to be available for the Winglord's orders — it would alert the whole Citadel and Starscream didn't feel like putting on airs when his processor was still pounding from its too-abruptly interrupted recharge cycle. Despite the grand scale the Citadel was being reconstructed on, Starscream actually maintained a fairly small "personal" contingent of staff, numbering slightly more than a dozen — not counting the guards, of course. By contrast the previous Winglord had employed hundreds, but Solarburn had fallen deep into the Pit of epicurean tendencies, a mistake that Starscream did not intend to make.

Could not afford to make, in either the wealth or political sense of the concept.

Instead, braced by the hot energon in his tank, Starscream unkeyed the window lock and pulled the portal open, grimacing at the face full of biting wind that came whistling down from the troposphere. He stood there a moment, watching the low-burning lights of the mostly-sleeping city below, interspersed with sections of buildings staffed at all hours. In the distance, the Ion District's new medical center pulsed a slow, reassuring beacon of light outward from its peak at regular intervals.

He stepped off the balcony, freefalling briefly — that exquisite sense of true weightlessness, completely unbound by gravity and reality both, was as code-deep in him as his very spark — before triggering his transformation sequence. His jet mode took hold and Starscream banked, arching lazily around the Citadel's face, skirting a series of scaffolds with ease as he angled downward.

The Hot Spot had been fortified as soon as it was discovered, the small irregular cluster of pools come across during an excavation of old debris, of ash and rubble from the Vos-That-Was-Before. And it was there that Starscream directed his wings, pinging the ever-present guards on duty so they didn't shoot first and ask questions later, which he'd ordered them to do, on the off-chance they didn't recognize their Winglord's flightform quickly enough.

A series of acknowledgement glyphs, some more startled than others, were quick to dance across his HUD as the guards protecting the aerial approach to the Hot Spot stood down and withdrew for his privacy, and Starscream angled into the protective gridiron that encircled the pools. He'd ordered the area to be kept as "natural" as possible, so it remained unbuilt except for some discreet workstations for medics, a careful ridge of shoring along the edges of the pools themselves, and a small area to sit (mostly for him).

The liquid sentico metallico swished gently against the edges, natural movement created by the ebb and flow of the planet's electromagnetic field. The sentico was bright, a light viscosity that indicated it was being well-supplied with nutrients and critical minerals, all good signs of a healthy batch forming. Here and there, disturbances of the still-developing protoforms created spots of ripples. This close to the Hot Spot, the air was warmed by the magma-hot liquid; tension in his wing struts began to ease out.

"You should be pleased you do not yet have the capacity for memory fluxes," Starscream said humourlessly as he sat on the low bench just outside the largest of the pools, to the assortment of someday-Vosians. His. "They make for poor berthmates, and poorer awakenings."

It would be some time before the protoforms were developed enough to understand any sensory input at all, let alone be able to react to it — right now they were still little more than raw sparks, their protoforms only beginning to coalesce around them, the most critical of internal functions still in basic development. If anything, they were a captive audience.

"And I envy your warm beginning. I hope you remember that, in feeling if not in detail. Some of us didn't get that, you know. Assembly lines are cold. That's all you know when you come online as a Cold Construct, so aptly named, because they didn't bother warming your frame internals before shoving a spark in your chamber and letting it ignite. It takes days to feel like everything's up to proper running temperature, because you don't know any better."

Starscream puffs out a bit of air from his vents; it condenses in the air. "None of you will have that start though, which is good. Solus willing you'll never feel so disconnected from your frames you want to pull all your plates off until it feels right. I'm not morally opposed to frame reformats — even I'm not that hypocritical, given how many I've done — but we don't exactly have an abundance of empty frames laying around for you yet. So your Winglord kindly requests that you be content with your frames, at least for a while, and thanks you for your understanding."

The sentico continued to swirl quiet and elegant, rippling in a mesmerizing way.

"I'm still working on securing a dedicated blacksmith for Vos. The best ones are Caminus-trained, and I'll not have anything less than the best, but Camiens far more heavily favoured the Autobot cause so finding one whose moral outrage isn't off the charts is a tricky challenge. I must be absolutely sure of their loyalty, their motivations. No one whose fidelity is even remotely in question will be allowed here."

He leaned forward, cupping one hand under his chin. "It's too early to tell your frame types. Seekers, fliers, grounders, even minicons for all those are very rare here. Or they were, I suppose anything is possible now. Regardless, you will all be Vosian. You will hear Vos is Vos, under her wing we all be from your onlining. It's important, so if you retain anything of these late night chats of ours, it should be that. There's a lot to it, and you'll learn it in time, but the basis is that you will always have a place you belong. No matter your frame, no matter your coding, from now until your sparks return to the Well."

He smiled, a brittle and tired thing, but still so full of determination. "That is the promise of the Winglord I give to you..."