#thunderclash

Author's Note:

hey hi hello <3 i wasn’t expecting to update this so soon after making chapter 2 but my brother keeps inviting me to sit with him while he plays video games so i keep bringing down my laptop so i can write while he attempts to 100% red dead redemption 2 lol

good lord though do NOT expect me to keep this pace

— ⛈ —

It felt good, finally being able to wash away all the gunk in his gears. Standing under solvent and picking out bits of organic particulate from his seams, flaring out his plating to get it out of the tiny cracks and crevices. Hot Rod probably couldn’t afford a more in-depth cleaning until later, what with the briefing Springer expected from him in a few breems, but at the very least, he could make it look like he wasn’t just having a mudslinging fight with the largest empurata he’d ever met.

Speaking of, actually, said empurata—Thunderclash, with their fragging unpronounceable name—wasn’t actually… doing anything. They just stood there, glancing between Hot Rod and the showerhead spraying solvent down against his plating.

“What?” Hot Rod said. “Don’t you, like… want to clean yourself off, big guy?”

Thunderclash tilted their head—their go-to expression of confusion, evidently.

“Do you not know what washracks are?” Hot Rod asked. And he said it in a joking tone of voice—because, what, was Thunderclash just hosing themself down in solvent before? But even as he was saying it, it suddenly felt extremely plausible. “Primus, you don’t, do you.” And it wasn’t really a question. With a long, hissing sigh, Hot Rod stepped out of the spray of warm solvent so he could take one of Thunderclash’s servos and pull them under.

Thunderclash seemed hesitant to follow, but ultimately allowed Hot Rod to guide them into place, although they didn’t do anything more than stand there. The showerhead’s pressure was high enough that Thunderclash didn’t have to do much for the solvent to start washing away all the gunk on their plating. And, as it did, Hot Rod came to the swift realization that either Thunderclash had the worst taste known to Primus or no choice in how they chose to color themself.

Rich blues, bright teals, pure whites, and bold reds, accented with an unfortunately beautiful shade of gold that did not go with the rest of their colors. Beyond the horrific color palette, though, were so many decals that Hot Rod wondered for a moment if Thunderclash was a racer with how many sponsors they had.

Or…

Tentatively, Hot Rod reached out a servo to brush his digits over one such decal and he came to the sharp realization that it wasn’t a decal, but a brand. Almost all of the many, many foreign symbols were either pressed or embossed into their metal, perhaps twenty or so brands marking up this strange empurata like… like…

Like a gladiator. That’s what Thunderclash reminded Hot Rod of. Brutal efficiency, armed to the dentae with inbuilt weaponry, tougher than a tank with armor to match, but branded and mutilated to keep them in line. Hot Rod was… probably extrapolating a bit too much from extraneous evidence, but once his processor made the connection, he just… couldn’t quite unsee it.

Not a gladiator, perhaps, but undoubtedly someone’s weapon.

::Hot Rod. You wanna have that conversation you promised me sometime during the next vorn?::

Hot Rod groaned at hearing Springer’s voice coming through his comms, and he reached into one of the shelves set into the wall to drag out a scrub brush, shoving it in Thunderclash’s direction. “Alright, get yourself cleaned up, I’ll be back.”

Thunderclash delicately took the item between unsteady fingers, looking down at it and then back up at Hot Rod.

Ugh. “You are a sad mech who has lived a sad life,” he said, mostly only because he knew Thunderclash didn’t understand a word of what he was saying. He snatched the brush out of Thunderclash’s hand and then grabbed said servo to use the brush to dig into the joints and seams. Thunderclash leaned in to watch better and made a soft little sonorous sound. They gave a nod that Hot Rod hoped implied understanding.

After a moment, Hot Rod held the brush back out. Thunderclash took it… and paused for a moment. Then, they slowly reached out to take one of Hot Rod’s hands to delicately scrub at the joints in his wrist. Hot Rod boggled, staring down at where Thunderclash’s massive blue hand dwarfed his. What a weirdo, he thought. But he didn’t immediately pull away.

::Hot Rod. I know you’re getting this,:: Springer sounded off in his audial once more. ::If you don’t respond in the next breem, I’m assuming your new nemesis has gone on a rampage and started murdering my crew.::

::Your crew?:: Hot Rod couldn’t help responding. ::Since when did you become Captain, huh?::

::Since Ultra Magnus put me in charge of you idiots.::

::Blurr’s the only one who actually knows how to pilot a ship.::

::I can pilot the ship!::

::The only piloting you know how to do is turning on the Nav computer and letting the autopilot do its work.::

::Will you just get over here?::

Hot Rod sighed and pried his arm out of Thunderclash’s hold—the big guy had migrated up to his elbow joints while Hot Rod was poking fun at Captain Springer over here. “It’s fine, Thunders, let’s just—let’s just do it later. You’ll have a great time with the washracks we have on base, let me tell you.”

::Gimme a klik,:: Hot Rod said through his internal communications. ::I gotta deal with Thunders, first.::

He guided Thunderclash through drying themself off—of course, his own plating was dry in a klik with a brief burst of heat through his lines—and then toted them through the halls to the tiny common room of their dinky little ship. Arcee and Blurr were sat at a low table, playing some kind of card game between the two of them. At his entrance, Arcee beamed up at him.

“Hot Rod!” She exclaimed, startling Blurr so badly that he dropped his cards all over the table. “There you are! I can’t believe Springer thought it would be a good idea to—dear Primus, who is that?”

She came up short (quite literally, heh) at the sight of Thunderclash probably looming over Hot Rod’s shoulders. “This is my new arch-enemy,” Hot Rod explained, using the servo not holding Thunderclash’s wrist to point back at them. Then, turning to said arch-enemy, Hot Rod pointed out Arcee and Blurr and gave their respective names.

“Thunderclash,” said Thunderclash.

“And why are they here?” Blurr asked, his tone clipped.

“What, was I just supposed to leave them in the Quintesson base?” Hot Rod said with a huff.

“Quintesson—?” Blur started, optics cycling wide, but Hot Rod held up a hand.

“Not important, can you guys watch Thunders for me? I need to have a chat with Captain Afthole.”

Arcee snorted. “Sure, yeah. Go deal with Springer, we’ll watch this… Thunderclash.”

“We will?” Blurr asked, somewhat incredulously.

“Cool. Also they kinda don’t know any words, so you’ll have to be slow with them, ‘kay? Cool,” then, without waiting for an answer, Hot Rod turned to face Thunderclash and said, very slowly, “Thunders. Stay—” he pointed at the ground, “—with Arcee and Blurr.” With those words, he pointed at the two mechs in question.

Thunderclash seemed to take a moment absorbing that, before slowly saying, “Ssstay… w’ Arceeee… ‘nd Burr.”

“Yes,” Hot Rod said with a little smile. “Good bot.”

“I guess with three mechs, we can play a game of Triad,” Arcee said, glancing down at where Blurr’s cards were lying face up on the table, revealing his truly awful hand.

“You want to try teaching a mech who doesn’t know any words how to play Triad?” Blurr was giving Thunderclash a dubious look.

“Alright, don’t have too much fun,” Hot Rod said over his shoulder as he took off back down the hall, “I’ll be back in a bit!”

Now—time for big, green, and grumpy.

Springer was hovering over the navigation computer, glowering down at the controls. “I can pilot a spaceship,” was the first thing out of his intake.

Hot Rod scoffed.

“I can!” Springer insisted.

“Sure, Spring,” Hot Rod said amicably. Then, before Springer could start up again, he was continuing on, “So, you saw the base, right? The Quintesson base on the planet you dumped me on? That base?”

Springer sighed, but his field teeked guilt. “Yeah. Was that you who blew it up or your new buddy?”

“Okay, firstly; we are not buddies. Second, duh that was me. I used that code that Jazz gave me, y’know the one that explodes their generators?”

“Is that what it does?”

“Yeah, but before I did that I got some sweet intel,” Hot Rod said with a smirk. “Downloaded a list of targeted systems from their database. Or, y’know, at least a list of all the coordinates that the outpost was ‘bridging to.”

Springer’s jaw dropped. “Hot Rod. Tell me you did not download a file out of a Quintesson database.”

“I have good firewalls!” Hot Rod was quick to insist. “And Red Alert sneaks me top notch antiviruses all the time! There was no way I was gonna pass up the chance to get something that big!”

Springer groaned into his servos. “You are going to get yourself killed one day and they’re gonna have me court-martialed for it.”

“I’m not gonna die and you’re not gonna get court-martialed for it, dumbaft.” Hot Rod reached up to cuff Springer over the helm. “I’ll put it in my will, or something. In the case that I have died on some misadventure or another while Springer of the Wreckers was supposed to be coddling me, make sure that Springer gets let off the hook for it, ‘kay?”

“You do not inspire confidence,” Springer said with a sigh. Then, “Should I call ahead, then? Tell Magnus what we’ve got for him?”

“Only if you do it. I’m not gonna be the one to tell Mags that I stuck my cable in a Quintesson port.”

“Eugh,” Springer grimaced. “Don’t even joke about that, Roddy.”

“That all then, your Captain-ly-ness?”

“Don’t start,” Springer said, but the flourishing bow Hot Rod gave him made him have to suppress a smile. Though it was replaced quickly by a more mischievous expression. “Actually, one more thing. That, uh, nemesis of yours? T’undre-class or something?” Incredibly wrong, but Hot Rod probably couldn’t successfully correct him, so whatever. “Since you’re the one who brought them on board, I expect you to keep an optic on them, alright?”

Hot Rod’s intake fell open. “What? No, you’re joking. Tell me you’re joking.”

“Finders keepers, or whatever,” Springer said with a laugh.

Hot Rod scowled at the mech, but ultimately gave little more than a token protest. Even if Thunderclash was his enemy—patronizing aft that they were—they were also a mystery, and Hot Rod had always been terrible at leaving those well alone.

Also, again, it wasn’t like he exactly wanted to just leave Thunderclash in the lurch. Guy was stranded in the middle of nowhere with no methods of communicating and Hot Rod was supposed to just abandon them like a sad little turbofox? Pits, no.

Soon enough he was dismissed and left to his own devices with the news that they’d reconvene with Ultra Magnus’s freighter in two cycles and join them in heading back to the Autobot base. Hot Rod couldn’t help the sigh that left him as he walked through the halls of their ship. He liked Springer, and he’d always been a good friend to Hot Rod, but ever since all that slag with High Command…

Springer had been treating him differently. A lot of people had been treating him differently, in all honesty, but Hot Rod didn’t care about most people. But for Springer to be one of the ones making it weird? It… it kinda bothered him more than he let on…

Shaking off those thoughts, Hot Rod made his way back to the common room to find Arcee, Blurr, and a very squished-looking Thunderclash all sitting around the low table. Hot Rod let out a soft laugh at the sight of giant Thunderclash with their giant servos ever so delicately holding their cards.

“How’s it hangin’?” Hot Rod asked, leaning over Arcee’s shoulder to steal a glance at her hand.

“Hot Rod, your guy might not know a lick of Cybertronix,” Blurr said, “but they sure know how to fleece a mech in Triad.”

Hot Rod perked up. “They knew the game, then?”

Arcee shook her head. “I don’t know if they’d ever even seen cards before in their life—I had to show them all the numbers and such first—but they’re a fast learner, Roddy.”

Thunderclash tilted their head. “Roddy?” They said, with an upward lilt at the end.

Hot Rod pointed a firm finger in their direction. “Do not call me that.”

“So you can call them Thunders but they can’t call you Roddy?” Arcee asked with a laugh.

“Hot Rod,” he emphasized. “My name is Hot Rod. Not Roddy. Got it?”

Thunderclash gave a nod, though it was a mystery whether they truly understood anything out of Hot Rod’s intake. Then, they laid out their hand on the table, and Blurr and Arcee both let out groans. Hot Rod gave a whistle. “Damn, you weren’t lying, they are good.” Kind of unfair, really. Hot Rod sucked at Triad.

“Please, can you take them with you, Hot Rod?” Blurr asked. “I’m tired of losing to someone who can’t even pronounce the word four.”

“Fou’?” Thunderclash said, peering curiously in Blurr’s direction.

Hot Rod snorted. “Sure, sure, I’ll take them off your hands. I wanna see if I can get some fuel in them anyways.”

Arcee waved them off and Thunderclash dutifully followed after Hot Rod when he tugged at their wrist, chirping their goodbye to Arcee and Blurr.

“Nice to see you’re making friends,” Hot Rod said once he was out of hearing range of the two. He even let out a bit of his field to poke Thunderclash with it. The mech teeked of delight and relief. A lot of relief actually, wow. “What, they weren’t talking to you at all?”

There was no way for Thunderclash to know what the question-curious in Hot Rod’s field actually meant, but they pressed back with their own sensation of… of loneliness.

Hot Rod’s smile faltered.

Thunderclash’s field had been warm and welcoming every moment since that first burst of confusion and fear, but this was the first bitter edge that Hot Rod had felt. An ache in the soul, not the body. Although… Hot Rod would like to get a better look at them, make sure that blast hadn’t done anything to them, nor whatever slag they were up to before going through a Quintesson space bridge.

Calling upon his medical training, Hot Rod let his own reassurance wash over Thunderclash before he began tugging them in the direction of the ship’s very own medbay.

Well. It wasn’t a medical bay so much as a medical closet. Their ship didn’t have that much space on it for anything more than a single berth, a basic scanner, and several cabinets with a pretty measly amount of supplies. Still, it was enough for a cursory check up, and it wasn’t like Thunderclash was actively dying or something.

“Alright, big guy, up you go,” Hot Rod said, gesturing to the slab while he pulled a couple things down from the cabinets. When he turned back, Thunderclash was still just standing there, looking down at where Hot Rod had gestured to. Primus, they really were so stupid. And sad and pathetic, ugh. Hot Rod patted at the medical berth. “Come on, Thunders. Up.”

Slowly, haltingly, with glances back at Hot Rod every now and again as if to make sure they were doing it right, Thunderclash climbed up onto the berth. Their legs—many jointed and more digitigrade than the typical plantigrade of most Cybertronians—made sitting a little awkward, but it just meant that their pedes stuck out instead of hanging down.

Hot Rod smacked the scanner online and Thunderclash jolted as a bright light washed over them. A moment later, their results were in and…

… Hot Rod had no idea what he was looking at.

“You can never just make things easy, can you?” Hot Rod grumbled. Most of the responses were just reading as errors, unable to even comprehend Thunderclash’s situation, and Hot Rod did not like how low the estimates of their energon were coming back as.

Current hypothesis: Thunderclash’s armor was too thick for the shitty scanner to actually penetrate. If true, then he’d probably have to wait until getting back to base, since Magnus and the main Wreckers’ ship had a medbay only barely superior to this one. If untrue… Hot Rod didn’t really know what he’d do.

For now, at least, he’d settle for getting some energon in Thunders and keeping an eye on their levels.

“We don’t exactly have… a wealth of high grade lying around,” Hot Rod said, grunting with effort as he stretched up to reach a high cabinet and try to drag a supply box off of the shelf. “But we’ve got a ton of medical grade, if you can stand the taste—oh scrap!”

Hot Rod fumbled the crate he was aiming for, but before it could land on his helm, a big blue servo was lunging forward to catch the box. Hot Rod gave a quick vent of relief before taking the box himself and setting it on the berth next to Thunderclash. “… Thanks,” he said, somewhat begrudgingly. Thunderclash’s field spoke of warm mirth. “Glad you think this is funny.”

Inside the crate were a dozen or so sealed cubes of medical grade energon. It wasn’t the best stuff to survive on, but it was full of good minerals and spiked with nanites to boost immune systems, so it was kind of painfully healthy.

Hot Rod removed a cube, eyed Thunderclash’s pure size, and removed two more. He handed the first to Thunderclash… and watched them proceed to stare blankly at it.

“Don’t lie to me, I know you have an intake,” Hot Rod told them. Not even the worst cases of empurata took away their ability to fuel. Hot Rod had seen intakes in the neck, the wrist, even one bot who had to fuel through an opening just below their spark chamber, meaning they had to expose it every time they got hungry.

Still, just to cover all his bases, Hot Rod demonstratively cracked open one of the cubes and gave a sip. “It’s fuel, see? Fuel.” He pressed forward a sense of satisfaction and fullness in his field. Thunderclash gave their cube a long, curious look.

Thunderclash didn’t have anything immediately recognizable as proper kibble, and they had very few transformation seams. So far, the only things Hot Rod had seen them transform were their hands and arms into guns or blades. But he got his first look at a new minor transformation as Thunderclash’s visor pushed outward and flipped down, revealing…

Hot Rod had to flatten his field down to his plating before any of the instinctual disgust could leak into it. Behind Thunderclash’s visor was not a face. It also wasn’t the typical things Hot Rod found in the helms of mechs he’d had to patch up. Instead there was…

Gore. It was gore, pure gore, a mess of wires and lenses and strange mechanisms all shoved in a space far too tight for them all to fit alongside things like, oh, a brain module. From the chaotic mess of innards, something poked out—some tiny metallic probe that dipped into the energon cube for a moment before drawing back into the tangle of wires and circuits.

Only then did Thunderclash very carefully tip the cube into the mess—no, into a tiny hole, the smallest intake Hot Rod had ever seen—and begin to very slowly drain the cube, holding their helm at an awkward angle the entire time. Hot Rod roughly reset his vocalizer as he handed off a second cube to Thunderclash who—still with their visor flipped out, a mess of exposed circuits peering at him instead of a glowing red not-face—teeked incredulity before repeating the process with the second cube.

Hot Rod attempted to hand them the third, but Thunderclash was already flipping their visor up, a firm denial in their field. Either they weren’t as low on energon as Hot Rod thought or they were remarkably fuel efficient.

Hot Rod stared at the cube in his hand for a long moment before just downing the entire thing himself. It went down as easy as swallowing sand, but Hot Rod needed it more than he’d care to admit.

“Alright, Thunders. One more stop for today,” Hot Rod said, putting things back in their places and gesturing for Thunderclash to follow.

Their ship only had three habsuites, each meant to house two mechs. Arcee had claimed one for herself and refused to share with anyone. Springer and Blurr had bunked together, leaving Hot Rod to get his own hab all to himself. Mostly on account of his funny little habit of teeking at mechs in his sleep, something that very few mechs he’d known could stand.

Springer said Hot Rod’s EM field hurt at half blast. Arcee said it was practically deafening when he pushed it out in full. And half the Autobots had Iaconic sensibilities whether they actually spent any time in that city or not, so basically everyone thought it was beyond discourteous to have your field be anything but tucked up close to your plating—

But Thunderclash didn’t seem to care. If anything, they seemed more disconcerted to not feel Hot Rod’s field, though that may have been because it was, so far, their only way of communicating.

The hab was pretty small when Hot Rod showed it off to Thunderclash. Two recharge slabs, one right above the other, and a single small locker set to the side.

“Home sweet home,” Hot Rod said, hauling himself onto the upper berth. “For now, anyways. I’m sure they’ll set you up with a nice room back at base, maybe even get you some cool roommates. Do you mind roommates?”

Thunderclash was doing what they did best and staring at utterly innocuous things like they’d never seen them before.

“It’s a recharge slab. You recharge on it. Like this,” and Hot Rod lied back on his own berth and offlined his optics.

Thunderclash made a soft noise, and then stuttered out, “H… Hot Rod?”

“‘Sup?” Hot Rod rolled over, optics flicking back on. Thunderclash seemed to pause, looking between him and the lower berth. Then, slowly, they hobbled onto it. Hot Rod watched, leaning over the edge of his slab, as Thunderclash settled. They looked a bit awkward and squished, like they weren’t used to recharging on their back. Maybe they used those standing stations. Terrible way to live, did awful things to your knee joints, but some mechs liked it.

Hot Rod rolled back into his own berth and considered. He could defrag for a bit, get some recharge in…

With a soft vent, he pulled up the file he’d downloaded from the Quintessons instead.

It was carefully walled off from the rest of his files, just in case, but it really shouldn’t be anything nasty, it was just text.

Most of it was numbers—coordinates by Quintesson notation, so Hot Rod couldn’t just translate them directly and send them in—but Hot Rod was surprised to realize that a couple entries had some text alongside the numbers.

“What does that even say?” Hot Rod mumbled aloud, glancing at one entry. “What is that… [Close]? No… [End]? Oh, [Empty]. [This] ← [Empty].”

Hot Rod heard the sound of shuffling beneath him. Then, a voice slowly spoke, “[Query] | [This] ← [Theoretical: Speech] → [Quintesson (Language)]?”

Hot Rod… paused. Slowly leaned over the berth.

Thunderclash was looking up at him, startled curiosity in their field.

That… was Quintesson. Slow and stilted and heavily accented, but… Quintesson.

Hot Rod wracked his processor. He knew some Quintesson. Almost nothing of their written language, but you spend a long enough time at war with them, and you pick up some stuff.

Query indicated a question, obviously. This… probably referred to Hot Rod, given the context. Quintessons didn’t really do verbs, so Speech in the Theoretical attached to Quintesson (Language) was asking…

Do you speak Quintesson?

Hot Rod vented out very slowly.

“[Affirmative].”

— ⛈ —

Closing Note:

Author's Note:

thunderclash chapter yayyyyy <333 um forgive me if there are any mistakes, this was edited late late late last night while i was half asleep and i'm too lazy to go back and re edit the damn thing lol

— ⛈ —

Thomas McCleary had spent a lot of time staring up at the stars when he was a kid.

He had fond memories of climbing up onto the roof with his dad, pointing a telescope up at the night sky, and learning all of the constellations his dad knew by heart alone. The sky had been so bright out in the middle of nowhere where he grew up. A sea of scattered paint droplets across a blue-black canvas, artwork ever in motion.

He’d left most of that behind when he moved to the city. Never again would he see more than a sparse few stars, he’d thought. Never for him to stare up at the sky and see the slow turning of the galaxies above.

Thomas had always had a unique sort of luck, though. At least, that’s what Soleil always told him.

“I cannot believe you’re not dead yet,” she’d said one night, celebrating the survival of another invading wave.

Thomas had laughed and told her that the kaiju would have to try harder to get him down. “I mean more in general,” Soleil had elaborated, “You’re so reckless with yourself, I’m sort of surprised you even survived to see the kaiju invasion in the first place.”

A separate admission after a much more harrowing battle, “You’re gonna die in that robot, Tommy. They’re gonna kill you before the kaiju ever do.”

Once upon a time, Thomas McCleary and Soleil Fèvre-Starr had been the faces of the EDC’s mecha program. Thunderclash, piloting the Vis Vitalis with a roguish grin for the cameras. Firestar, posing provocatively in front of the mecha that she’d named Nova Star to match her callsign. Thomas had walked arm-in-arm with Soleil on many an occasion and listened to the people coo over the ‘mom and dad’ of the mecha program. He remembered Soleil miming puking the first time she’d heard about it.

But things didn’t last. Nova Star was destroyed in a kaiju attack and Soleil could never sync with any other mecha enough to be combat ready. She ended up retiring to a life of doing publicity for the EDC, smiling at cameras and flaunting her colorfully dyed hair—a new color every month, just the way she’d always done it.

As for Thomas McCleary… well, he’d spent so long on the front lines at this point that he was starting to forget that Thunderclash wasn’t his real name. And it’d been a good while indeed since he last made any public appearances, official or otherwise.

He was fine, for the record! He was still piloting the Vis Vitalis, still kicking kaiju ass, better at it than ever since his mecha’s big remodel. He just… didn’t have time to go to press conferences or interviews. The kaiju were appearing more and more often and Thunderclash—Thomas, he was still Thomas, even if he barely heard that name anymore—felt like he only had so much time left to defend his home.

Any day could be his last, the day the kaiju dragged him to his watery grave over the Pacific. Thunderclash sure as hell always fought like he knew he was dying tomorrow. If any day would be his last, he might as well go out doing what he did best.

… He hadn’t spoken to Soleil in a while, either. She was always busy and he was always gone.

He spent so much time fighting at her side that sometimes he forgot that she wasn’t there to watch his back anymore. He’d never blame her for his mistakes, but God, he hoped she didn’t blame herself for not being there. It was supposed to be fine. It should’ve been fine. But Thunderclash always had a terrible habit of doing the things that needed doing, regardless of whether or not they were good ideas.

In some ways, though, Thunderclash was still lucky. The mecha were all sealed and pressurized, given how often they had to duke it out in the middle of the ocean, with enough oxygen to last a week due to Tarantulas’s paranoia. The Vis Vitalis came with enough food and water to last a month for… reasons. Reasons that definitely had nothing to do with Thunderclash working himself into an early grave.

The only reason any of that would matter was because it gave Thunderclash all the more incentive to do something stupid.

He was with Deadlock when it happened, patrolling out by the coast. It was half genuine—again, kaiju attacks were getting more frequent—but half PR. People liked seeing the mecha, liked knowing they were protected by metal titans that could totally squish whatever alien invaders might come for their city. Deadlock hated all the posturing, Thunderclash knew, but could never turn down a patrol on the off chance that it might actually amount to something more than wandering around and getting dirt and sand in the gears of their mecha.

Which was, as a matter of fact, exactly what happened on that fine day. Kaiju crawled out of the sea and looked somewhat surprised to find two mecha waiting there for them. It was a little comical, in a way, the way they came to a sudden stop at the towering figures him and Deadlock made. Only for a split second, though, because the moment after that was all chaos and adrenaline.

Let it be known, Thunderclash could be impulsive. Sometimes he acted before he’d fully thought things through. Most of the time, that little fact was the thing saving his life, keeping him from being chewed up by the kaiju he mowed down. Sometimes…

The kaiju had these bombs they always dropped before they bailed out of a place, a little warning telling their enemies to clear the hell out. Most mecha, while sturdy as all hell built up from scavenged alien alloys as they were, couldn’t withstand the blast at close range. It was what took out Nova Star back then. Soleil was lucky to climb out of the half-melted mecha with only some second-degree burns and a concussion.

The the Vis Vitalis, though, had been recently reworked. Part of that rework was triple-reinforced plating that could shrug off most human bombs with little more than singed paint.

No one knew where the kaiju went when they left, where they came from to begin with, how they got to Earth. Originally they came down from the sky, plummeting through the atmosphere like living meteorites. But soon enough, they started coming from below, crawling up out of the sea.

When the kaiju they were fighting—from a team of twelve down to just a triad—started looking panicked, Thunderclash found himself already acting on an idea before it’d even fully formed in his head. He saw the bomb drop and shouted over comms to Deadlock, “Bomb! Deadlock, evacuate now!”

“Copy!” Deadlock called back and Thunderclash spied his secondhand mecha—repainted with grays and golds from the pure white Wing had done it up in—as it bolted from the scene. A moment later, Deadlock was shouting, “Thunderclash, what the hell are you—!?” but Thunderclash ignored the explosion as he launched himself into the sea after the kaiju.

Through the off-blue blur, he saw their tentacled forms fleeing from the shallows into deeper water. He kicked off after them, not bothering to worry about anything but knowing, but finding out—

The world exploded in green. Glowing, swirling colors, like a galaxy full of radioactive stars. A sensation of vertigo, the weight of the world dropping out from beneath him, falling on top of him. For a moment, Thunderclash couldn’t see.

Then the Vis Vitalis’s floodlights powered on and Thunderclash found himself in a massive metal room lined with two great circular archways on either side. The trio of kaiju shrieked, words that Thunderclash barely understood, especially not spoken as frantically as they were, and suddenly the room was aglow in green alongside the Vis Vitalis’s floodlights. A vortex of pure, liquid light, spiraling open in one of the massive archways. No, one of the massive portals.

“Thunderclash? Why are you reading as being off the coast of Easter Island?” The crackling of his comms was fuzzy and nearly incomprehensible, but Thunderclash couldn’t help the incredulous laugh that the words punched out of him. “And… four thousand meters below sea level?”

“There’s a kaiju base,” Thunderclash breathed out, “they’ve been teleporting in and out of here. Mark my location, Prowl. I don’t know if I’m coming back.”

“Thunderclash—” Prowl started, a sudden hardness to his voice, “Do not act recklessly. The team—”

“—Doesn’t need a dead-weight like me,” Thunderclash said, raising an arm cannon at the kaiju scrambling towards the green vortex. “You’ve got my will. If anything happens—”

Which was, of course, when something happened.

As two of the kaiju bolted for the portal—Thunderclash still wasn’t really over that, for the record, wow—the third threw its mass up against the Vis Vitalis and sent his shot wide. Instead of hitting the escaping kaiju or even the portal they were gunning for, one of his missiles hit the wall. And Thunderclash was abruptly reintroduced to the fact that he was currently four kilometers underwater.

The room cracked and then buckled and then it didn’t matter that he hadn’t hit the kaiju, because the entire structure collapsed into itself. Over the course of a split second, water flooded the room as air rushed out, Vis Vitalis’s plating creaked around him, an ominous, echoing noise that sent shudders down his human spine, and Thunderclash had barely a moment to see the arch of the portal bending inward before he was thrust through the green once more and—

The universe—

Pinched.

It was different than the first time, less a sensation of vertigo and more pure essence of wrongness as Thunderclash fell through the portal with a gasp. He barely even registered the fire that followed him, the portal collapsing in on itself and then exploding outward, focused only on trying to right himself before—

The first thing he saw beyond the pulse of red lights was the pair of kaiju that had attempted to flee from him, shouting at a third that wasn’t the one they’d left behind. Thunderclash moved without thinking and the two kaiju he’d been tailing were, quite suddenly, left without heads. Still reeling from his trip through green eggs and hell, Thunderclash struggled to focus on his next opponent. It was one of the crab-like armored kaiju, the ones with less tentacles and more segmented shrimp legs.

Vis Vitalis’s transformed arm, a long blade made for cutting up kaiju, still wasn’t quite up to the challenge of cracking open kaiju carapace on its own, but Thunderclash had more than enough experience that, as the crab approached him, it was easy enough to dance around its initial jab and sink his blade into one of the thin grooves between shell plates.

He thought he had a moment to try and gather himself, but Thunderclash was swiftly surprised by a sound above him. When he whirled about, guns at the ready, he was treated to the sight of… of a mecha falling down upon another kaiju that had been attempting to sneak up on Thunderclash. Rather than use inbuilt weaponry, the mecha pulled some kind of giant dagger from… somewhere and sliced right through the seams of the kaiju’s armored plating, downing it in just a moment.

As the mecha turned towards him, Thunderclash was surprised to realize that, well…

The Vis Vitalis was an unusually large mecha, as all the old ones used to be. Built during the tail end of the first wave, she’s over ten meters tall and bulky as all hell. Tarantulas has refined her design, certainly, made it so that Thunderclash doesn’t have to give up speed with power and size, but she’s still only a couple meters taller than the smallest mecha.

The smallest mecha besides this one. Because this mecha was tiny. Could a person even fit in there? Maybe someone really short, if they sort of scrunched up in the chest area. Thunderclash almost wondered if it was some sort of powersuit instead of a real mecha—maybe that’s what the red symbol on the mecha’s chest meant?

They reel back slightly at the sight of him and Thunderclash is treated to the visible shock plain on the mecha’s… face. Holy shit, they have a face. A supremely emotive face with two wide pure blue eyes, a pointed nose, and a mouth with what looked like teeth inside of it, what the hell…

Thunderclash tilted his head as he crouched down, saying softly, “What in the world are you…?”

The tiny mecha’s face scrunched slightly and their apparently fully animated mouth moved to form words… but what came out were strange robotic noises, all beeps and boops and chopped up tones. Thunderclash couldn’t quite resist a flinch at the noise, utterly foreign and not at all what he was expecting out of the mecha.

A moment later, their head jerked to the side and Thunderclash followed their gaze to a set of probably-doors being forced open by three more crustacean kaiju, this trio each wielding a long pointed spear ending in a glowing blade. The tiny mecha let out a series of trilling beeps and whistles, but Thunderclash was already lunging forward, knocking one kaiju down with the swing of a fist and using his still transformed arm to puncture the soft side of another.

The third reeled at the sight of him, but thrust forward with its electro-spear. Thunderclash easily stepped out of its reach and then caught the weapon in one hand, snapping off the glowing tip and rushing forward to sink his blade into the juncture of its neck. The kaiju gave a gurgle as it died, slipping off of Thunderclash’s blade and collapsing into a heap on the ground.

Thunderclash turned back to the first kaiju, but found the tiny mecha using their dagger to deal with it before it could get back up. When they looked up at him—and it was up, God, he was not over how tiny they were—their expressive face formed into another look of surprise and they mumbled more techno-nonsense.

Thunderclash pointed in the direction of the doorway, and the tiny mecha made like they were going to follow… but they paused and held up a hand—with five digits and full articulation, it seemed—before scampering off to some corner. Thunderclash trailed after them, stepping carefully over the wreck of the room.

The archway he’d come in through was wrecked almost beyond recognition, cutting Thunderclash off from his only way home. A quick test of his comms returned nothing but static and a notification on his HUD telling him he was out of range. Hopefully he was still in the same solar system. Hopefully he was still in the same galaxy…

Thunderclash peered down at the tiny mecha as it bashed a fist against a machine until its display settled. He crouched down to get a better look as the tiny mecha plugged a cable attached to its body into the machine. Thunderclash had no idea what they were doing, nor how they got a cord that could plug into kaiju technology, nor how the tiny mecha even ended up here to begin with!

With a shudder, the mecha unplugged from the machine, and there was something odd about the way their cable pulled back into their wrist, not with a spring-loaded snap but not having to be shoved back under plating. Without really thinking, Thunderclash reached out—but halted as the mecha turned back around, another quick spill of modem noises on their tongue, ending in a slight flinch at the sight of him.

The tiny mecha held up their hands and frowned (frowned!) at him, and Thunderclash realized just how close he’d gotten to the little guy. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to make you claustrophobic,” Thunderclash said with a little chortle. The tiny mecha paused and then let out another little series of beeps. After another moment of silence, they went on with… with a different sort of sound font, some kind of synth-y tune going up and down all over the place.

A moment later, they switched to a different sound, deep and rumble-y like grinding gears. They cycled through a couple more and Thunderclash was startled to realize that these sounds were some kind of language. The tiny mecha was attempting to communicate with him through sounds produced by machinery.

Thunderclash shot back a few of his own, asking, “¿Hablas Español? Parlez-vous français? Uh… Nín huì shuō zhōngwén ma? What else… Nihongo wo hanasemasu ka?”

Nothing he tried seem to elicit any response from the tiny mecha, but to be fair, nothing they tried was at all familiar to him either. In fact, none of the ‘languages’ they ran through seemed anything like any human languages. Thunderclash had heard of languages heavy on clicks or whistles, but not… not these industrial noises.

He had something of a sinking feeling in his gut.

Finally, the tiny mecha simply threw their hands up and seemed to accept defeat; the two of them wouldn’t be able to communicate any time soon. They fiddle a bit more with the kaiju machine before turning, grabbing Thunderclash by the wrist, and trying to drag him along with them. The Vis Vitalis though was supposed to be immovable even to the toughest kaiju, which meant that the tiny mecha nearly fell over when Thunderclash didn’t immediately move with them.

He was quick to stabilize them, though, and followed as the mecha began a quick pace through the door and out beyond.

Striding through massive metal tunnels—hallways, they’re hallways, this was a building with gigantic hallways scaled to be walked through by kaiju—Thunderclash was coming to a sobering realizing at the sight of just how empty everything was. He’d hoped—well, he’d thought that the kaiju portals might actually lead somewhere important, but it seemed as if the place he’d landed in was little more than a waypoint, just one stop between conquering planets.

The only other kaiju they encountered were two more of the tentacled kind, which were easy enough to slice through almost before the tiny mecha could react to their presence. Thunderclash was hoping to preserve some of his ammunition for emergencies, since he was starting to come to the conclusion that he probably wouldn’t be getting home anytime soon.

The tiny mecha’s swift jog through the building slowed to a halt as they looked around, a slightly panicked expression on their face. They turned back towards Thunderclash, warbling a few notes before punching the wall. Mock-punching, actually, not even attempting to do any damage at all. Thunderclash considered the mecha and then the wall before it clicked: they wanted him to punch the wall.

Better idea: why not just take the entire thing down? The Vis Vitalis was built to survive the concussive rounds used by those kaiju with firearms, and that was before it was modified with outer plating strong enough to (hopefully) survive a nuclear blast. All Thunderclash had to do was lean one shoulder down and send it forward and the metal walls gave out like so much tissue paper beneath him.

The world outside was… was red. Red and orange and gold like the brightest of forests in autumn, but that didn’t quite feel like a correct analogy, because it wasn’t trees Thunderclash was looking at, but… he almost wanted to liken the structures to moss, but on a much larger scale. Less single branching stems and more masses of fluffy red and orange and gold.

He only had a moment to stare in awe, though, before the tiny mecha was scrambling through the hole he’d made in—in the building, wow—and beeping excitedly up at him. Thunderclash gave a thumbs up and felt a bemused sort of appreciation as the tiny mecha awkwardly copied the motion. Then, they were grabbing at him again and trying to tug him further away, into the strange, autumnal world beyond, when—

Thunderclash often moved without thinking. It had saved his life quite a few times and saved many others quite a few more. Barely a moment after he saw the brief flash of light, he threw himself at the tiny mecha, shielding them from the sudden blast as the kaiju base suddenly blew up.

What had happened? Was there some kind of… self-destruct button for kaiju who didn’t want their bases to be compromised? Would Thunderclash ever be able to find a way back home with his only way back now further blown to bits? And, most importantly, was the tiny mecha okay?

Evidently, if the way they were beeping and trying to push him up was any proof. Thunderclash pushed himself up, swiveling his head around to see the destruction. He let out a whistle at the sight of the structure all blown apart—gnarly stuff. Thunderclash eased himself up off of the ground, lifting the tiny mecha up with him and gently setting them back down on their own two feet.

The tiny mecha did a quick loop around Thunderclash, inspecting his frame but seeming to find no fault and ending their inspection with a pat on Thunderclash’s hip. Then they skittered off again, waving for Thunderclash to… follow? Presumably? And… well, he had nothing better to do, nowhere else to go, and no one he knew besides the corpses of some kaiju in a smoldering building.

The tiny mecha led him into the mass of strange foliage—alien foliage, with limbs which ended in bulbous nodules instead of paper-thin leaves, all so tightly packed together that one could barely see through them to the densely filled inner structures. All of them in shades of vibrant sunset, like a world forever stuck in twilight.

And the sky, oh the sky. To contrast the vibrant reds, the sky above was a soft pale green almost the color of seafoam. We’re really not in Kansas anymore, Thunderclash thought to himself. But unlike Dorothy, Thunderclash didn’t have any magical red slippers to click three times and send him home. Just the Vis Vitalis to keep him alive and a mecha barely little more that twice the height of a human to guide him through unfamiliar lands.

But, even so, there was something sort of magical about it all that stopped Thunderclash from devolving into catastrophizing.

Every now and again, the little mecha would pause in their quick stride to glance back at Thunderclash. And every time, at his nod, they’d quicken their pace a little, so that by the end they were moving at a sharp jog and Thunderclash was doing a power walk to keep up. Eventually, their path led them to the top of a cliff where some discarded piece of machinery lay. Beyond that was a stunning view of the destroyed kaiju building, lit up by flickering flames and spewing black smoke up into the atmosphere.

After a moment of admiring the view, Thunderclash peered down at the tiny mech once more, asking them, “What now?”

He didn’t really expect a response—it wasn’t exactly like prior attempts at communication had yielded anything more than a headache—but he was given a new string of sounds, these ones… almost human in their intonation. But… still utterly incomprehensible. Alongside it, though, the tiny mecha used their fancy five-fingered hands to make a series of signs.

Thunderclash pondered what sign language he knew… it was unlikely for the tiny mecha to know ASL and not American English along with it, but surely Thunderclash could try—

… But no, he stalled barely a moment after beginning. His hands could easily form signs, but the Vis Vitalis didn’t have this tiny mecha’s dexterity nor the same amount of digits or joints.

The tiny mecha suddenly grasped at his—the mecha’s—hands and turned them over, digits tracing over his palm and—and delivering what the Vis Vitalis registered as tiny vibrations against it. How fascinating… Thunderclash really wished he knew the tactile sign language used by deafblind people.

The tiny mecha made a sudden hissing sound, like the release of pressurized air, startling Thunderclash slightly. As realistic as it would be, it didn’t seem to be coming from the mouth… openings along the back or side, perhaps? The Vis Vitalis vented hot air through openings along its spine—Thunderclash remembered well the many warnings he’d gotten from Tarantulas about keeping those vents clear lest he risk overheating.

Thunderclash was drawn back into the present by the tiny mecha letting out a series of clipped beeping noises, pointing a digit right at Thunderclash’s chest—rather, at the Vis Vitalis’s chassis, right over the spot where Thunderclash’s human body was tucked away. Then, they let out another slower release of air and—

And—

Something came over Thunderclash then, like a wave crashing against the rocks. And Thunderclash was, momentarily, caught in the surf, hit with a rising tide of nausea and a bolt of awareness that knocked him right out of the sync and into his real body. For a moment, all he could do was feel, feel down to his bones that he was fragile and human and going to die out here with no one there with him—

But there was someone there. Someone here. Not just next to him, but as close as if they were in the cockpit with him. And Thunderclash realized abruptly he could feel more than just their presence, their proximity, but… them. Their interiority, their emotions. This was a message, intentions pressed forward for him to understand where words meant nothing.

It was a question, a desire to clear up this misunderstanding. And, after his moment of sickened panic at the initial contact, Thunderclash tried to push back with his own understanding. I get it. I hear you. I feel you.

They stayed there for a bit, basking in their moment of mutual understanding. Then, the tiny mecha tapped themself on the chest, right over the bright red symbol, and said… two short words.

What?

After a pause, the tiny mecha did it again, repeating… oh, repeating their name! Or… possibly the name of their mecha or the name of whatever that symbol was or represented. “Hot Rod.”

Slowly, carefully—Thunderclash didn’t have this tiny mecha’s delicate touch and he didn’t want to… to push them over or something—Thunderclash tapped the mecha. “‘ot Rot,” he attempted to say, though even to his own ears, that didn’t sound right.

“Hot Rod,” they repeated, emphasizing the start and end of each word. Harder on the front, softer on the end.

“Hhhot Rod,” Thunderclash said. It was still sort of awkward, but the tiny mecha—Hot Rod, apparently—seemed to think it good enough and gave him a sharp nod.

Then, far less carefully, Thunderclash tapped his own chest, right over where his human body was sat. “Thunderclash.”

“T… Ton-durclass?” Hot Rod tried. Thunderclash let out a soft huff of laughter.

“Thunderclash,” he repeated, feeling the phantom sensation of a smile on his human face.

“T’hunderclaaass.”

The over-correction on emphasis would almost be enough to get another laugh out of him, but he just repeated the name again. “Thunderclash.”

Hot Rod let out a series of furious-sounding beeps—backed by the way their… their soul, Thunderclash really had no other word for it, went spiky with what felt like irritation—but within that, Thunderclash heard a shortened form of his name, plain as day, making it sound a bit like Thunders.

Belatedly, he remembered once more that Thunderclash was his callsign and not his name, but trying to make things easier by seeing if Hot Rod would have a better time trying to pronounce Thomas might only result in more confusion. So, Thunderclash it was. Or, rather, Thunders.

Thunderclash did laugh again, and then because he really couldn’t help himself, reached out to carefully give the tiny mecha a pat on the head. They were just so damn cute!

Immediately following his actions, Thunderclash felt Hot Rod’s soul spit out a feeling like sputtering indignation and mild offense. Cute, maybe, but probably not some kid, no matter how tiny they were compared to Thunderclash, no matter how adorable their mecha’s pouting face looked.

They let out a low series of sounds, a rumble-y intonation to them that Thunderclash suspected was some kind of performative sort of intimidation. Just to see what would happen, Thunderclash reached out again to try and pat Hot Rod’s head once more.

He was quite surprised, then, when very suddenly, Hot Rod burst into flames.

Now Thunderclash would readily admit it, he kind of panicked at the first sight of fire. Mecha on fire was never a good thing and usually immediately preceded their own total combustion and, ultimately, their explosion as the reactor core of the mecha grew too hot. So Thunderclash did what Thunderclash did best: he moved without really thinking… and proceeded to pick Hot Rod up and dump them into the swampy waters of this planet.

He felt the brief shock followed by a loud disgust as Hot Rod flung themself out of the water and back onto dry land, plating fluffing out like a cat’s fur, steam visibly billowing from the openings. They turned to level him with the most incensed look Thunderclash had ever seen on anyone’s face, be they man or mecha.

Thunderclash laughed so hard that the Vis Vitalis copied his body’s movements with it, shoulders shaking with mirth. Thunderclash felt the sharp edge of Hot Rod’s soul poking at him, before it suddenly turned playful, a sensation that said, oh, you think you’re so funny? Well, I’m about to be hilarious.

Hot Rod shoved their hands into the muck, scooped up a bunch, and proceeded to fling it at Thunderclash, splattering him with a mix of water, dirt, and mossy plant matter. Thunderclash let out a squawk of surprise before barking out, “Oh, you’re on!”

He’d never… he’d never really played in his mecha before. He’d done PR stunts with it, of course, had lifted a few humans into his robotic hands now and again for reasons that weren’t person is about to get killed by kaiju. Sometimes fighting the kaiju had felt like play, but there was always an edge of danger to it. Even if it was fun—and it really did used to be, especially back when he had Soleil, Firestar at his side—you knew that you were always one wrong step away from death. Your own, a loved one’s, the entire earth’s.

But he’d never… he’d never played. Not like this. Not when he was made of so many tons of metal. Never with another mecha.

Well. Thunderclash might be stranded in the land of Oz forevermore, but at least he had a friend with him.

Their play fight of slinging mud and moss at each other came to an abrupt end when Vis Vitalis picked up a noise like far-off jet engines, but getting closer and louder at a speed that Thunderclash couldn’t quite comprehend. He straightened suddenly, head pointed up in the direction of the approaching sound. Cameras zoomed, telescopic lenses focusing on an incoming… something. UFO, except since Thunderclash was probably on another planet and possibly in another galaxy, that didn’t exactly mean much.

Hot Rod gave a sharp beep of surprise that quickly faded into a feeling of relief and Thunderclash powered down the Vis Vitalis’s weapons systems at the feeling. If Hot Rod trusted this… whatever this was, then Thunderclash would trust them.

Whatever this was turned out to be… what could only be a space ship. A big one too. In fact, Thunderclash had to take a moment to recalibrate, because he was thinking it was big in comparison to himself as the mecha. But, being big in comparison to the Vis Vitalis just meant that this ship was massive compared to the tiny human below.

The ship squished some of the mossy structures below it as it landed, and Thunderclash watched with no small amount of trepidation as it sort of… unfolded was the best word he could think of. One part of it simply bloomed outward into an opening and extended ramp. And, walking down that ramp at a swift trot was another mecha.

Where Hot Rod was—or at least had been under all the mud splatters—all bright oranges and golds and even a bit of pink, blending in well with the flora of this planet, the new mecha matched this planet’s sky. Darker and more yellow-toned than the seafoam green up above, but a tried and true green nonetheless.

They were bigger and broader and built with blockier, sturdier plating, but they were much closer to Hot Rod in build than Thunderclash. Silvery face with blue eyes that widened in surprise at the sight of them, five fingers, one of those articulated hands wrapped around some kind of probable gun. The new mecha’s face quickly turned to something of a glower, but whatever their intended actions were, they were interrupted by Hot Rod approaching them and beeping furiously in their direction.

(“I cannot believe you dumped me in a fragging escape pod onto a fragging organic planet infested with fragging Quintessons! I could kill you!”)

The new mecha made a spitting static noise, stumbling back slightly and raising their free hand in a placating gesture. Hot Rod’s soul was flaring with indignation, though it was still more of a petty feeling than genuine hurt. Thunderclash watched on as the two of them… argued? Maybe?

(“Look, Kup said I was supposed to keep you safe, Roddy! What if the Quintessons had boarded us? What if we’d gone down?”

“Well at least we’d be going down together! Primus, Springer, do you really think I’m so weak that I can’t fight off a few measly Quintessons?”

“I don’t think that. I don’t! I know you can hold your own, I just—”

“So help me, if you say some schmoopy slag like, I just care, I will sick my new nemesis on you, don’t think I won’t.”

“I wasn’t gonna—I didn’t—Roddy, who in the pits is this?”)

Hot Rod made another pressurized air noise and turned to Thunderclash while pointing to the new mecha. “Springer,” they said, short and clipped.

“Sprin’er?” Thunderclash tried. The new mecha gave him a bewildered sort of look. Thunderclash could tell his first try really wasn’t up to bat, but Hot Rod tilted their head this way and that before nodding, a smug feeling in their soul. The new mecha—Springer, no matter how poorly he pronounced it—made a face like… like wincing. Like pain? A performative show? Something leaking through the sync?

(“Primus, Roddy, can you pull your field in a bit? You’re giving me a serious ache in my processor.”)

Thunderclash felt the briefest moment of Hot Rod’s sharp flush of embarrassment before their soul… snuffed out. Thunderclash startled at the sudden lack of outpouring emotion, the emptiness where before had been sensation. Hot Rod glanced back towards him, an apology in their expression if not broadcasted from their soul.

(“Sorry,” Hot Rod mumbled towards Springer.)

“Springer,” Hot Rod repeated, pointing towards the green mecha. Then, Hot Rod pointed to Thunderclash.

Ah. “Thunderclash,” he introduced. Springer stared for a long moment before letting out a single short word.

(“Huh.”)

Thunderclash watched on as the two went back to their bickering. It seemed less charged than before, but that might only have been because Thunderclash could no longer feel Hot Rod’s emotions. Finally, after a lot of furious gesturing, Hot Rod made a loud beep and scampered up to Thunderclash, tugging on his frame. Tugging him towards the probably-a-spaceship, where Springer was already climbing back up the ramp.

Well. What else was there to do? Where else was there to go? At least Thunderclash was technically one step closer to returning to Earth, this way. He will have achieved space flight. Step one, done.

With how utterly massive the ship was, Thunderclash was expecting to have to step carefully around a veritable army of little people staffing it. Maybe not little humans since he was already on an alien planet occupied by alien invaders and hanging out with Hot Rod, who seemed to only speak in dialects of fax machine, but… people. Who else would be piloting the mecha?

But Thunderclash was surprised to see… no one at all. Not a single soul besides him, Hot Rod, and Springer. The green mecha peeled away from them, gesturing vaguely down one utterly massive hall while they went down another. Hot Rod dragged him in that direction, making an exaggerated modem startup noise, and now that Springer was gone, Thunderclash could even feel an edge of the exasperation Hot Rod was feeling.

Thunderclash considered the massive hallways they walked through, the height of the ceilings that stretched far enough overhead that even he didn’t have to duck. Considered everything he’d seen about Hot Rod so far.

There was something… something odd here, something that Thunderclash was on the verge of figuring out, he just needed something…

Hot Rod stopped at a door. A massive door, like the kind they used for the hangars where they stored the mecha not in use. And, right at about head level for Hot Rod and hip level for Thunderclash, there was a sort of raised screen big enough that Thunderclash could’ve fit the Vis Vitalis’s entire hand over it. Hot Rod tapped his hand against it and the massive doors slid open.

Inside was a white room with metal piping all along the ceilings and walls and what looked like giant drains set into the floor. Thunderclash tried to do some mental math and pondered if the holes of the drains were big enough for him to fall through. Him as a human, that was. He watched, somewhat bemused, as Hot Rod fiddled with some of the metal pipes until a sudden spray came on overhead.

Water. Or… some other transparent liquid, which very quickly washed away most of the mud and dirt and moss clinging to Hot Rod’s frame. It was… a shower. This room was a bunch of showers. Mecha-sized showers.

Thunderclash took another long look at Hot Rod. Having a face and hands didn’t really make much sense for any mecha. The size and shape of them that could probably barely fit a pilot let alone a reactor core. Their soul reaching beyond the confines of their body, beyond the confines of their mecha even…

But what if they didn’t have a mecha? What if… they were the mecha?

Did that make any sense at all? Did it explain everything or just confuse it all the more? Thunderclash didn’t know. Suddenly, he felt like he didn’t know a whole lot.

Regardless of whether or not his theory was correct, there was absolutely one thing that he could be certain of: Thunderclash was without a doubt on an alien spaceship surrounded by alien lifeforms, and he was possibly a million or more light years from home.

Everything had a silver lining though, at least that was what Thunderclash liked to think. If nothing else, he’d officially achieved his boyhood dream of journeying into space. Maybe not via a rocket ship, but concessions had to be made somewhere.

— ⛈ —

Closing Notes:

the plot thickens. soup metaphor?

thunderclash and hot rod both internally using they/them pronouns with each other because they have no idea what the other’s gender actually is (mmh. they call me the woker…)

also hey was that prowl on the comms? huh

—