#backstop

ELLE'S HANDWRITING

-TP

Caprina: It all started with this guy in this photo: The Sandman! I like to call him Sandy, but don't tell him I said that: he's not a huge fan of that nickname. It all started a long time ago, when I was very little; a random horse had wandered on my grandparents' horse sanctuary. Unlike all the other horses, she was... beautiful. Long luscious blonde hair and a silky white coat. I couldn't belive something so pretty could exist, it was like a pony I'd see in a cartoon. Despite showing up so suddenly, the horse grew fond of me really quickly and wouldn't go to anyone else unless I said so. Then one day, she disappeared. All that was left of her was a pile of yellow, sparkly dust and... a horseshoe.

Caprina: I didn't know why I was so drawn to that horseshoe. Maybe because it was so shiny or that it was one of the last things left from her. I didn't know. All I did know was that I kept it. When I was older, I still kept that horseshoe with me, and I turned it into a necklace.

One random night, when I was in the third or fourth grade, I woke up to see that same horse standing over my bed. I wasn't scared, strangely. I felt... comforted. I didn't even complain when she offered me on her back, we flew out of my house and into the sky. After flying through the clouds, I entered a spacious, dreamy palace where I met Sandy. From what I learned, he was the reason we slept peacefully at night and awoke with yellow dust in our eyes when we wake up. I was so confused by all of this that I just had to ask: and the Sandman only smiled and said... "Would you like to work for me?" Apparently, he saw potential in me: my heart was bright enough and I was a good enough person to be his student.

Did you know rhinos irl aren't super big, they're like human height

Here's backstop

Dear Honored Hero,

Dinobot and a small retinue of high-ranking Scale Walkers were very lucky to have travelled to Cybertron for a diplomatic meeting when “Onyx Prime” began his attack on Cybertron—followed shortly by Unicron’s reactivation and Eukaris’s destruction. Furious at the seeming intransigence of the Cybertronian government to prevent this catastrophe and convinced that the standard-formers had once again misled and betrayed his kind on a grand scale, Dinobot formally announced his secession from the Council of Worlds—a token gesture, of course, but one that resonated with many other ex-Eukarian refugees who had narrowly avoided extinction.

When Cybertron itself fell to Unicron, Metroplex teleported the citizens of Iacon to Earth, close to Victoria Falls. But while the other Cybertronians prepared for their respective encounters with destiny, Dinobot had a different future in mind, and rallied several like-minded Eukarian separatists—Backstop, Repugnus, Wreckloose, Filch, Kraken, and Hardhead among them—to leave under cover of darkness and start anew somewhere else. Their exodus took them across central Africa, travelling by night as explosions raged in the heavens above them… and after days of travel, as the sun rose over a black hole to illuminate the green, sweeping plains of the Vwaza Marsh wildlife preserve, Dinobot announced that their journey was over.

After thirty years, “Eukaris Secundus” has grown from a refugee camp on the plains into a small, self-sufficient settlement nestled into the green slopes and blue lakes of the pristine wilderness. Fliers nest amidst the peaks of Mangali and Mwanda; swimmers inhabit the cool green depths of Lake Kazumi, and Dinobot himself holds court in the village itself, where he takes counsel from the representatives of the four tribes—Vertebreak of the Scale Walkers, Nyx of the Air Walkers, Hammerbyte of the Wave Walkers, and Santon of the Fur Walkers. Wind and solar farms synthesize all the energon they need from their natural surroundings, and the hippos, elephants, and wildebeest who call the reserve home benefited from the addition of disgruntled expatriates—the arrival of animals who can shoot back has greatly discouraged poachers and big game hunters. Although Dinobot himself had little patience for dealing with humans, Eukarian delegates eventually worked out an agreement with the Malawian government in which they received amnesty and full citizenship in exchange for maintaining the preserve and dealing with poachers.