#oooh lore

A little headcanon that leaked into this au was Travis being the sibling to Vanessa, it's an indulgent headcanon me and my partner have

"I hate you," Blades mutters.

Quickshadow doesn't dignify that with an answer.

They've been stuck below ground for maybe a few hours now. Blades had spent the first hour panicking, the second hour sleeping off the exhaustion, and from then on the hours started to blur as he woke up and immediately started moping.

Quickshadow grimaces at the taste of dirt as she licks her claws clean, before going back to attacking the cave wall. Their comms are blocked from this far down, and there's absolutely no way the other rescue bots are picking up their signals. She can only hope that they saw exactly where the ground had opened up beneath her and Blades and are digging accordingly.

But they've also been down here a while, so that might be a stretch.

"You could help, you know," Quickshadow snaps, deciding Blades doesn't deserve grace anymore. Sure, he's a flier trapped who knows how deep underground and clearly isn't taking it well, but sitting in the corner pouting most certainly isn't helping anyone. "You do have claws."

Blades doesn't answer, so she keeps pressing. "If you actually want to get out of here, we must work together, you know-"

"Primus, you sound just like Hot Spot," Blades snaps, and Quickshadow pauses out of pure confusion.

Who is Hot Spot?

"'Oh, we're brothers, we're a team'," Blades mocks, and Quickshadow gets the distinct feeling that Blades isn't really talking to her anymore. "'The power of love and friendship and we have to stick together' and look where that got us!" He heaves a vent, putting his face in his hands. "No. No, he was right, we should've stuck together. Maybe then they wouldn't all be dead."

Quickshadow's interest is piqued, that's for sure. She's always been partial to mysteries, and enforcer training certainly doesn't help.

But this brings up a whole host of questions. Normally "brothers" is a term used for split-sparks and gestalts, though he fondly calls his team that. Was Blades part of a gestalt? Are they all dead besides him? She thought he didn't participate in the war, what could've possibly happened?

"Who is all dead?" she asks, and Blades meets her with a glare, but no answer, so she presses. "Were you part of a gestalt? A combiner team? I thought you never saw war, but all combiners were drafted right away, weren't they-"

"SHUT UP!"

Quickshadow's mouth snaps shut. Blades is glaring at her with more force than she thought him capable of, his rotors raised angrily and threateningly.

"All bots like you ever do is ask questions!" he screams, voice reverberating off the walls of the cave. "'What did it feel like'? 'Cause of death'? 'Maybe you'd like to come into the lab so we can study you'! 'Are you sure you felt him die'? All these motherfucking questions and I still don't know anything!"

Quickshadow opens her mouth to say something, anything, but Blades is whirling on her again. "Shut up!" he shouts. "I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it," he mumbles over and over, like a mantra, sinking down to the ground and pulling his knees to his chassis.

Quickshadow blinks. Something about what Blades was saying is ringing a bell in her processor, but she can't quite put a digit on it. There's some story, maybe something she heard in a break room or passing a mech on the street, something about a murder, or maybe a series of murders, having to do with a gestalt... but she can't quite remember.

Wasn't there a kidnapping case as well? Naturally forming gestalts were extremely rare, of course when the war broke out Autobots and Decepticons would want to have combiners on their teams.

Maybe I could look into it for you, she almost wants to say. I could get access to some old files. Maybe deep in my memory banks, there's something that could help you.

I want to help you.

"You don't hate me," is what comes out of her mouth.

"...No."

Holy sh## it did work I’m alive

Something feels wrong lmao

Wait…

Notices the… well, everything.

UH OH

That’s not… a ########### is it?

>Equip

>Equip