[ID: The “Teammate” series. Eight pictures exploring the history of Nitroxide as a member of a team.

Teammate. Six duplicate servos (clockwise: red, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange) are in a circle with digits pointing inward; these are the NTs, Nitroxide’s original team at the Facility.

Solo. Five of the six servos have gone grey with deactivation; only Nitroxide’s green servo remains in color and is now balled into a fist.

Guidance. Nitroxide’s servo, fingers out, is across from Primadonis’ larger orange/green servo, which faces upward in offer.

Fledged. Primadonis’ servo is greyed out in deactivation; Nitroxide’s servo remains in color and is balled once more.

Creation. Nitroxide’s empurata servo (with 4 claw-like, eschewed digits) with digits out appears in a circle alongside the servos of the original Sparkhaven Founding Cohort, including Solarflare/Solar Pax (straight across), Piledriver (to the left), Benzyl and Butyl (to the right).

Decimation. A post-Sparkhaven plague circle of servos from the Cohort; only Solar Pax and Nitroxide remain with their servos reaching for each other.

Disconnection. The NTs’, Primadonis’, and the Cohort’s greyed ghostly servos overlap in a circle in position of the previous pictures. Nitroxide’s current empurata servo (fingers out) is overlapped by her original servo in the same position.

[ after the attempted stolen ship hijacking]

Solar Pax: You saved me. I owe you my life.

= Location: Data corrupted, Time: Data corrupted, Status: 32 Errors Detected; 20 high-severity =

[ I should have never volunteered for this raid. ]

Each step feels like a eon as he wanders away from the crash-site. His optics fritz, distorting the already difficult terrain and making it even harder to navigate. With his fuel lines severed (and his left servo simply gone somewhere only Primus knows), energon seeps out and drips across smoldering debris with a sizzle.

His HUD clouds with errors and warnings while the city screams around him in a mangling of fear and flight engines.

[ Rise up! Rise up! I’ve been shot down on my first real flight. ]

The aerial continues, sweeping the errors to the side and rerouting resources as he goes.

The mech rests his injured arm against his chassis as he peeks around a corner, watching a combiner topple a building like a bitlet’s construction set. It is one of his, but he’s not sure how far he trusts them really. Time for a shortcut along a side street; it could be cover while he tries to repair his arm and stay online.

[ I don’t belong here. Not a warrior nor war-frame. I’m a recon-plane, not a bomber! ]

Slowly, the pain ebbs as he goes. After a while, it simply disappears, and he wonders what was wrong in the first place. It feels like he could fly again, but his HUD is already pushing warnings at him against it.

The streets are ruined here, or maybe they were always like this. No mechanisms stir, not even a glitchmouse.

[ I need to get out of here. Regroup. ]

Flight engines sound from around the corner, but not at the right tempo for any frame he knows of. The aerial stumbles that direction, and sure enough it is a ship, not a sentient.