#bob is found

-to make sure that the damage isn’t more extensive beyond the cracked optics.

Bob is still shaky from everything, but with watery optics he listens and the plating retracts.

Behind it he’s smiling.  Bob’s jaws are enormous enough to split his face when unhinged, and rowed with cruel teeth.

Honestly, the small smile on his face should be chilling, razor thin and hiding needles as it is, but it simply…isn’t.

For all the raw power and destructive potential Bob has... Despite his naïveté, and incomprehension of the vastness of his own strength, there has always been something gentle about him.

And it’s a relief to see that even now after everything that gentle thing still is there.

Sunny: “….I doubt it.”

If anyone there was fluent in Vosnian, their audios would be blistering as Thundercracker spewed the foulest, crudest and downright most insulting string of curses across the comm lines in a furious string of clicks and whistles. Gradient would have been so proud. And impressed. Probably slightly horrified at some of the suggestions. Even if they couldn't understand it, that Thundercracker was in distress was easy to understand.

-are meant to stun.

It’s essentially a flashbang mechanism that activates on impact. When their creators constructed their frames, the goal was for him and his brother to be equals in ability. The perfect team.

Able to cover the other’s weakness. 

Sunstreaker’s flash-bangs, obviously, were designed to incapacitate. He was supposed to be the one who set up a target.

Sideswipe, who once was equipped with blades in his arms, was supposed to be the one who put the target down.

It was for the sake of efficiency, allegedly. Sunstreaker was supposed to be the one who initiated, and Sideswipe was to be the one who finished things. Something that would have made it easier to protect their “charge” (had they ever been assigned to one)

Not that things ultimately turned out that way which was more than fine with the both of them. Ultimately they never became the things they were supposed to be. The things they were made for, and, Primus if that wasn’t a relief.

They had no love for their creators, or their creator’s intentions.

Still, even if he loathed them both, Sunstreaker understood the why behind why they designed him and his brother given what they were supposed to be. He understood the balance between his and Sideswipe’s designs. They were equals in speed, in strength, in dexterity... And when there was something one could do that other could not, the other often balanced that deficiency out with the opposite ability.

For example

Sideswipe was immune to the sort of cold that would throw most into a system wide failure.

That meant Sunstreaker had the inverse.  His dense polymer armor made him nigh impervious to even the most violent heat.

Heat-

This thought leads to an idea.

It’s a split second decision made almost the second his hand closes around the face of the Insecticon that’s been trying to kill him for the last several minutes.

The Insecticon who had hurt Bob.

He routs all non-essential energy and then some to his arms, and he pushes the system as hard as it can go.

 The air begins to ripple and swelter as he deliberately overheats the mechanism to an impossible, superheated point. 

It scorches the air.

The paint on his hands and arms begins to melt and slide away. 

The energon in his limbs scald through his lines and feels ready to ignite.

The lines of lights threaded through his arms threaten to blind him, and he hears the pops of protest as more delicate wiring overheats.

This is not what this system is intended to do. This is not how it’s supposed to function or be used. He’s essentially breaking himself to force a result, but his frame should be able to take it.

He can handle the heat.

Can the other?

The Insecticon shrieks as his plating begins to give, and spitefully Sunstreaker ignores the pain in his own lines and ratchets up things further.

It’s an endurance game he’s just initiated.

Let’s see who gives first.

is a goliath next to Sunstreaker

Stronger than him.

More durable than him.

And clearly it would like nothing more than to tear him apart.

It’s clear to see that. It’s just sense.

But Sunstreaker has fought many people in the past who outclassed him in size. In durability. In raw power. Countless times he had faced against those who had always relied on their brute strength. Why shouldn’t they have? It must have worked up to a point. 

However, brute strength did not equal skill, and that was something Sunstreaker had in spades.

That and fury.

So he evades and he ducks and he avoids taking on the full brunt of any direct hit and when the creatures before him thinks he’s backed Sunstreaker into a corner-

The beginning of the end.

Sunstreaker will have a moment. A moment to process that they actually found him. That he was alive. That there was something to bring home.

Bob was okay.

Well.

Relatively.

Sunstreaker sees blue.

There’s blue on Bob’s face, dripping down his face mask, down his neck, and into his collar plating. Energon. It’s not hard to guess what happened. 

One thing at a time. That’ll get dealt with.

Bob’s optics are covered by his hands now. His audios too with the smaller set.

Which is good.

Because now?

Sunstreaker

sees

red.