0% personality, yet happy

• Just need away, your nerves jangling and you’re afraid you’re going to start crying again and you hate it. Had always assumed you’d do well under pressure. That you’d at least react. But you’d just froze up and let it happen. “Sure,” he says sounding uncertain as his shifter slides into reverse and he backs up to turn around. ‘Can you talk to me?’ You ask, rubbing at your eyes with the heel of your palm, as your skin crawls. Wanting a shower, wanting to scrub until your skin’s raw, until you feel clean again. “Someone introduced Sideswipe to cherry bombs,” he says and you let out a shaky breath. Focusing on his voice, letting his chatter numb you as you disconnect.

• You’re silent, field still so strange and messy, but he keeps talking. Telling you about the tiny fireworks and Sideswipe tossing them in energon cubes, tossing them at bot’s peds to startle them. The little things too small to actually harm a bot. Of Kup chasing the bot down after Sideswipe had blown up his energon in his face. Can’t tell if you’re even listening, but he knows that sometimes noise is better than silence. That sometimes he’s desperate for anything that keeps his own thoughts silent. Suspects that’s why he can’t stop talking. Even if he’s annoying someone, that’s better than being alone with his anxiety.

• Hate that you keep wondering if it was something you did or didn’t do. If it was your fault. Because you know it wasn’t, but you can’t stop drowning in it. But his nervous rambling helps. Gives you something else to think about. And he’s bouncing onto the rutted out logging road, his undercarriage scraping in places before he’s parking at the lake. Reaching to find the lever, he lays the seat back before you can and you twist onto your side, back to his door. Surrounded by him and safe. So thankful he’s not prying because you’d break down if he did.

• Turning at a noise, he stares with a frown at an empty bucket rolling across the concrete. Sliding his ped to intercept it, he glances at the haphazard mess this humans had left of things waiting to be put away, the disorganized chaos bothering him. Venting, he bends to pick up the bucket and put it back where it goes. And he hears something skittering around behind the pallets. Plating lifting slightly, he frowns. An animal? Supposes that even with the gate and walls, an Earth animal could have gotten back there.

• Keeping low as you walk in a crouch, you reach out an arm and deliberately shove a precarious stack of soap bottle to make the whole thing rock before moving as quickly as possible for cover. Exhaling as you listen to the sound of peds coming closer, you make the sound. And Red Alert stops short. “Hello?” He calls out, voice trembling. Moving as quietly as you can to a new spot, you make the noise again. Where is he now? You’re pretty sure he hasn’t moved.

• Frozen as his venting grows ragged and his spark constricts, he knows that sound. And it’s the stuff of nightmares made flesh. How has one of those things gotten on world? Had it stowed away on a ship? Even a single scraplet can strip a mech to the spark. What if it’s not a single scraplet, though? What if there’s a pack of them? Drawing his blasters as he backs away, every shadow seems malicious, rife with shapes waiting to launch themselves at him. To eat him alive.

• Pulling the little cooler from subspace, he opens it as you watch. And he pinches the fish filet between his servos, holding it up as you ruffle your feathers, beak preening them. “You don’t like salmon?” He asks as you ignore him. Isn’t sure why he keeps coming back and trying to coax you closer. Maybe it’s because he’s lonely. Because he’d fallen into recharge out here before and came online to you perched on his chassis, staring at his face like he was a puzzle to figure out. Knows he’s probably being silly and giving you too much credit.

• You’re just a bird. It’s nice to have someone to talk to, though. “You know what I like about you? You’re a great listener. Though you could at least pretend to laugh at my jokes,” he says as your head lifts to stare at him, wings adjusting against your body. “I know it’s silly to feel alone when I’m surround by other Autobots, but sometimes I feel like I’m talking to the wall.” Wiggling the raw salmon enticingly, your head tilts the other way as you track the movement.

• Launching yourself from the limb, you wing closer and land in the grass out of reach. “Decide you’re good with salmon?” He asks, leaning slowly and wiggling the filet as you stare at his face, not the fish. Probably scared he’ll grab you if you try for it. “I’m not like that, you know? I know you belong out here where you’re free and I’m not trying to trick you. Promise,” he says flipping the fish your way and you move with a shocking suddenness to seize it and tear hungrily into it.

• Feathers ruffling and settling after you finish the snack, you eye him and hop closer. “You want more? I have another one,” he’s saying as you study his face. And you launch yourself into the air, reaching for the magic and gathering it to yourself feeling that glorious shiver of your shape unraveling. And he’s saying something, yelling in alarm as you choose a new form and swing yourself into his lap to straddle him as his plating lifts slightly, his mouth hanging open in shock. ‘Hello, living machine,’ you breathe, giving in to the urge to cup his face in your hands since he promised to not trap you. What is he? Not a human thing. Feels alive and you have so many questions. Grinning up at him, your hands run all over him, exploring in fascination until he’s gasping ‘woah-wait, wait’ and catching your wrists.

Compared to Arcee, neither of them is meant to have their own chapter, for now, and i doubt either will ever show up in the fic itself outside of a few throwaway lines

however, they exist in the settings and i spent too much time thinking about them not to show them off.

So. Sunder and Nickel are part of the team of medics Sentinel trusted with his health before and after the assassination of the Primes

Nickel is his physician and general medic, she makes sure he is stll in health by pestering the shit out of him every once in a while

why? because she knows what his insides look like and that they WILL impair his life quality, especially as he gets older

(not to say that he will die young either way, but he likely would...)

either way. She is a pre war-end bot who was forged halfway in the quintesson war, but served as a civilian medic for most of the time, until most medics weren't called to serve as army doctors - and as i mentioned in another post, she was not aware of Sentinel's ploy

She is the perfect physicial for him because she is small enough to climb him like a tree and glare directly in his face whenever he took her prescriptions too lightly

she also has medic hands and can potentially perform surgery on him if necessary - she did in the past

Sunder, on the other side, is Sentinel's mnemo/neurosurgeon

he is not as batshit as he is in the IDW comics, but he has a taste for theatricals and likes a little too much the 'threateningly evil doctor' his facecard gives him

Sunder in Hatchling is an outlier, and his abilities allows him - via specialized scanners in his optics - to remotely access the memories and deep coding of everyone around him (within a radius of 15 to 25 mechanometers, depending how hard he focuses on the individual)

mnemosurgery howerver is still both pretty damaging and addicting for the surgeron, and i cannot stress enough how he has absolutely 0 control over his outlier

because of this, he followed (still does to be fair, even if not as much) specialized therapy courses to dampen the effects that being flashbanged with everyone's memories causes him and the addiction that came with it

After some time however, he did find a solution to his issue, that being "plucking his damn eyes out"

which, ironically, worked.

Like. he can focus to keep himself out of other mech's processors, but it was too tiring. so plucking his optics out and making them removable on demand felt more convenient

At some point Optimus lets him poke around his processor and review his memory files

From then on Sunder wants to put Optimus under a microscope and study him like a speciment.

Mostly because of how his whole ghost chat works, and how his processor seemingly straight up turns off and back on - with no lasting damage - every time he detatches from his frame to speak to either Primus or the Primes in private

the first time he also tried to review Optimus' live visual footage and got glared at by Prima - so he learned fast not to try that one

He and Nickel are conjuxed in all of this

why? because i drew them and instantly imagined malewife Sunder and his small angry wife Nickel and went "yeah makes sense"

(Their relationship started a few months after Sunder got out of therapy for the loss of his brother- it wasn't all roses and flowers of course, with both he and Nickel having their own fresh shit to deal with, but it worked out in the end)

anyway, when he gets too unhinged she smacks him with medical datapads and he returns normal again/hj

he tries to pull the doe eyes move on her and it would work better if he had eyes at all